Former City Health Commissioner During First AIDS Outbreak Dies at 86

The city's Health Commissioner at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s has died.

Dr. David Sencer died in an Atlanta hospital Monday after a bout with pneumonia. He was 86.

Advocates initially faulted Sencer and the Health Department for responding slowly to the epidemic, but eventually he came to be viewed as a defender of individual rights.

Sencer opposed efforts to close bath houses as a way to slow the spread of the disease. He said doing so would drive the disease underground and make it more difficult to reach people.

He also supported circulating free syringes to drug addicts to reduce the habit of sharing them. The idea was rejected, but eventually became a widely accepted practice.

Sencer came to the city post after being the top public health official in the country. He was the longest serving head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

His tenure there was distinguished by a global effort that succeeded in eradicating smallpox world-wide. The last naturally occurring smallpox case was reported in the late 1970s.

But his time at the CDC was also marred by the 1976 swine flu vaccination campaign. Forty million Americans received the vaccine, but the epidemic never struck -- and the vaccine was linked to a paralyzing condition that struck hundreds of people.

The campaign was suspended in December of that year, and Sencer lost his job.

"He was the scapegoat," said Dr. Howard Markel, a University of Michigan medical historian who knew Sencer.

But experts understand why he chose to be aggressive, and Sencer will be remembered fondly in the public health community, Markel added.

"I'd rather have somebody who over-reacted" than someone who didn't do enough, he said.

Sencer also was in charge in 1976, when CDC investigators identified the bacteria behind an outbreak of strange lung infections at a Philadelphia convention of the American Legion. The condition would become known as Legionnaire's disease.

"He was the longest-serving CDC director and he may have been the most popular," said Dr. Stephen Thacker, a CDC official who was a young investigator on the Legionnaire's case.

He was "a walk-around director" who regularly prowled the agency's halls and asked people what they were working on, added Thacker, the CDC's Deputy Director for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services.

In recent years, he remained an energetic and regular presence at the CDC. He was an adviser for the agency during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and was sometimes used as a de facto CDC historian. He retained his love for disease examination, and often attended seminars in which young investigators discussed their cases.

Sencer was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., and got his medical degree from the University of Michigan and a master's degree in public health from Harvard University.

He is survived by his wife, Jane, and three children.

With the Associated Press