James O. Mason



James Ostermann Mason (born June 19, 1930) was the Acting Surgeon General of the United States from 1989 to 1990. He was also a director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Mason earned B.A. and M.D. degrees from the University of Utah and a masters and Ph.D. of Public Health degrees from Harvard University. He was the first managing director of the LDS Church's Unified Welfare Services, directing the church's hospital system. He served as the executive director of the Utah Department of Health until 1983, when he was named director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia; Mason held the directorship of the CDC until 1990.

In 1989, the U.S. Senate confirmed Mason as Acting Surgeon General, which made him head of the United States Public Health Service. He later he served as the American delegate to the World Health Organization. In 1994, he was called as a general authority of the LDS Church, serving in its Second Quorum of the Seventy until 2000. He currently is a member of the board of trustees of Evergreen International, a Utah-based non-profit organization that seeks to assist Latter-day Saints and other Christians who wish to diminish same-sex attraction and homosexual behavior.

As a young man, Mason served as an LDS Church missionary to Denmark. Before his call as a general authority, Mason was a bishop, stake president, and a regional representative of the Twelve in the church. Mason wrote a pamphlet for the church titled, "Attitudes of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Toward Certain Medical Problems", which expresses the church's views on abortion, birth control, and homosexuality.