Walter Dowdle Called Tough, Able : Head of U.S. AIDS Fight Lost In-Law to the Disease

Walter R. Dowdle, the newly appointed coordinator for all federal AIDS programs, has a very personal perspective on the insidious, always fatal disease: Last summer, his wife’s cousin succumbed to AIDS five years after receiving a transfusion of contaminated blood during a mastectomy.

“The public thinks AIDS always happens to somebody else,” Dowdle said in a recent interview. “It doesn’t.”

Dowdle, 56, director of the center for infectious diseases of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control, recently was appointed to oversee all federal AIDS programs administered by five agencies of the Public Health Service, an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Necessary Job

It was a job created through necessity--the last two assistant secretaries for health found themselves spending so much of their time on AIDS that they had little time for other health matters.

Dowdle, who now divides his time between Washington and Atlanta, rarely speaks of his family’s own experience with AIDS.

In fact, colleagues and friends said they had not been aware of it.

Instead, when asked about him, they describe a gentle, unusually soft-spoken man who is highly regarded as a scientist and administrator--and, in the words of one co-worker, “the only person I know who walks home from work carrying a plastic bag with him to pick up trash.”

Most important, however, they said Dowdle was among the first in the public health community to take the AIDS epidemic seriously.

‘Decent Person’

“He’s always been a fair and decent person, honest about what he can do and what he can’t do,” said Jeff Levi, political director of the National Gay Task Force, who has often been at odds with the Reagan Administration and the Public Health Service over AIDS policies. “From the gay community’s perspective, he will play an important role in keeping the dialogue open.”

Tim Westmoreland, assistant counsel to the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health, agreed.

“He has years and years of unimpeachable public health credibility,” he said. “He knew AIDS was a crisis before the Reagan budgetmeisters would give him any funding to attack it. If the Administration had appointed a political person, questions would have come from every outside group about whether decisions being made were public health or political ones. I think Walt’s decisions will be public health ones.”

Westmoreland recalled: “One time, I’d really had it up to here with the Reagan Administration line. I met with Walt in Atlanta. I complained bitterly and loudly and was met with this kind of gentle acceptance. He doesn’t return anger with anger. He is very reasonable, but not in a pop-psychologist or bookish sort of way.”

‘Doesn’t Have to Threaten’

William Watson, former deputy director of the CDC and a neighbor of Dowdle, described him as “tough if the need is there--but his ego is in such good shape that he doesn’t have to threaten anybody. He knows he can hold his own in terms of science.”

Perhaps it is this attitude--a scientific, public health perspective--that appears to keep Dowdle above the controversies, political and otherwise, that continue to surround AIDS.

“It’s hard for virologists to think of this in terms other than what it is,” Dowdle said. “What it is is a virus trying to make a living--doing what viruses do. There is nothing evil about it. I’m not trying to be flippant--but, when you deal with a virus, you must reduce it to its simplest form.”

Dowdle remembered the first reports of the baffling ailment, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which cripples the immune system and leaves its victims’ bodies powerless to resist cancers, severe neurological disorders and “opportunistic” infections.

8,500 Deaths Reported

It is transmitted through intimate sexual contact--with the exchange of bodily fluids such as semen and blood--and through the sharing of unsterilized hypodermic needles. Those at highest risk include male homosexuals and bisexuals, intravenous drug users and their steady sexual partners. As of Monday, there were 16,780 reported cases and 8,500 deaths.

“We knew it was something highly unusual,” he said. “Right from the beginning, we considered it something quite significant.”

Today, he rarely discusses his relative’s illness, except when talking about the impact of a blood-screening procedure introduced last year. He believes that it has greatly increased the safety of the nation’s blood supply.

“Prior to the blood test, I would have been extremely hesitant for my family or myself to accept a blood transfusion,” he said. “I would have no such concerns now.”

Watson, his neighbor, called Dowdle “a workaholic.”

Picks Up Tin Cans

“He works too hard,” Watson said. “If he’s not at the office--which he is too much--he’s picking up tin cans and bottles along the street or working in his yard. I didn’t even know he had taken on this new responsibility until a mutual friend called. This friend is an elderly gentleman, in a retirement home, who can’t drive. Walt brings him to church every Sunday. The man called and said Walt was going to be spending more time in Washington--and could I drive him when Walt wasn’t here?”

Dowdle, a short, balding man who is a native of Irvington, Ala., joined the CDC in 1960 as a research microbiologist in the respiratory virology unit and became chief of that unit in 1964.

In 1972, he went to Australia on a World Health Organization fellowship for a year at the Australian National University’s school of medicine. In 1973, on his return to the CDC, he was appointed director of the virology division of the bureau of laboratories. He became the CDC’s assistant director for science in 1979 and director of the center for infectious diseases in 1981.

Held WHO Post

Dowdle has also served as director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centers for Influenza and Virus Reference and Research.

He is married and has three children, one of them a professional mountain climber.

Dowdle will be chairman of an interagency AIDS task force made up of representatives from the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

“If he makes a mistake,” his friend Watson said, “it will be a mistake of the head--not of the heart.”