Dr. William Heyward: Learning All There Is To Know
Dr. William Heyward is a man who has made it his life’s mission to learn how to stop viruses and diseases from destroying humanity. He was born in 1950 in Atlanta, Georgia. Medicine became his passion at an early age and he attended the Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and emerged with a B.A. in Chemistry in 1972. Directly after that experience, he went to the Medical College of Georgia to become an M.D. After he completed his internship and residency, he worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC
The CDC is an agency of the United States Department of Health. The primary purpose of the CDC is to improve the health of all people. The Center for Infectious Diseases is just one branch of the CDC. It deals with diseases that cause serious illness, disability, or death. This is the branch that Dr. William Heyward began working for once his residency was finished in 1979.
Alaska
Dr. Heyward moved from Georgia to Anchorage, Alaska, in order to research a number of different diseases, including Haemophilus influenzae, pnsumococcal disease, hepatitis B virus infection in Alaskan natives, and botulism. Dr. Heyward was directly responsible for beginning a vaccine project to eliminate Hepatitis B from Alaskan natives. The program began in 1981 when almost 4,000 Alaskan residents were tested for hepatitis B markers. The vaccine was eventually delivered to all of those who needed it, and showed that the vaccine helped to protect against the hepatitis B virus. Thanks to this program, hepatitis B is almost entirely eliminated in Alaska.
HIV/AIDS
After Dr. William Heyward made a huge impact in Alaska, he decided to go back to school in order to study infectious diseases more. He attended Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health in Maryland and received an M.P.H. in Epidemiology. Afterwards, he went back to the CDC and started the International AIDS Program. In this new job, he traveled to numerous places, including Honduras, Zaire, which is now Congo, Brazil, and the Ivory Coast. He also helped the CDC to set up field stations to study AIDS in both Thailand and the Ivory Coast.
He became the Director of the AIDS project, known officially as Project SIDA. In this capacity, he hoped to learn more about the virus and how to stop it. A revolt led him to return to Atlanta in 1991, however, but this didn’t stop Dr. Heyward. Instead, Dr. Heyward took a position with the HIV Vaccine Unit in order to attempt to find a cure for preventing HIV.
Dr. Heyward eventually left the CDC and began working with VaxGen, a pharmaceutical company that is focused on creating a cure for the HIV/AIDS virus. Dr. Heyward is a man who knows exactly what he wants, which is to cure all of the diseases that plague mankind, starting with one of the worse: AIDS.