Dr. William Heyward: A Soldier Against AIDS

What can one say about Dr. William Heyward? There is quite a lot, actually. He is a man who has given up his personal comfort in order to rid the world of infectious diseases. He has tirelessly studied and planned in an effort to stop humanity from having to suffer. But where did his career start, and why is his name often brought up when someone mentions AIDS? As it turns out, Dr. William Heyward began his career very simply.

The Beginning

William L. Heyward was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1950. He attended Emory University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry in 1972. His next stop was the Medical College of Georgia, where he successfully graduated with his medical doctorate in 1976. After he finished his internship and residency, Dr. Heyward chose to work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most often called the CDC.

The CDC and Alaska

Dr. Heyward was immediately stationed in Alaska, where he worked on beating infectious diseases such as hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type B, and pneumococcal disease. While he was there, he became the first doctor to study the HIV/AIDS virus and how it was affecting Alaskan natives. At this point in time, very little was known about HIV/AIDS. Many people believed that you had to be a homosexual to contract it, and still others thought that only those who imbibed in drugs were struck down by the virus.

Dr. Heyward was fascinated with the virus and went back to school in order to learn more. He attended Johns Hopkins University and studied Epidemiology from 1986 until 1987. After that brief time away, he went back to the CDC with a new goal in mind: to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Studying HIV/AIDS

Dr. Heyward traveled around the world studying HIV/AIDS. His travels took him to Brazil, Zaire, the Congo, the Ivory Coast, Thailand, and a number of other places. He became the director of Project SIDA, or Project AIDS, in 1990, but was forced to leave Zaire just one short year later due to a revolt.

He chose to then join the World Health Organization so that he could conduct HIV trials, in order to see if there truly was an HIV vaccine that would stop the virus from spreading. He was the first man to begin the HIV Vaccine Unit in the CDC and he continued to work toward a Phase III trial for those living in the United States and Thailand.

After the CDC

Dr. William Heyward left the CDC in 2000. This busy and talented doctor couldn’t sit still, however, and began working with VaxGen, a pharmaceutical company that was working on creating a working HIV vaccine. Dr. Heyward stayed with VaxGen until 2004, when he left and started Quattro Clinical Research, a company that consults with pharmaceutical companies about infectious diseases in an effort to help them stop infectious diseases such as HIV and AIDS from destroying the world. Dr. Heyward is truly a doctor for the people.