page_title: David Sencer
section_title: U.S. Public Health Service career
hierarchical_section_title: David Sencer / U.S. Public Health Service career
caption_attribution_description: English: This historic photograph showed the former Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director, David J. Sencer, M.D., M.P.H., during his Directorship, in his office as he was pointing to a piece of artwork depicting what appear to be Triatomine sp., or "kissing bugs", which are known to transmit "Chagas disease". Dr. Sencer held the CDC Director’s position from 1966 until 1977. Also called "American trypanosomiasis" (tri-PAN-o-so-MY-a-sis), Chagas disease is an infection caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. Worldwide, it is estimated that 16 to 18 million people are infected with Chagas disease; of those infected, 50,000 will die each year.
context_page_description: David Judson Sencer was an American public health official who orchestrated the 1976 immunization program against swine flu. Between 1966 and 1977, he was the longest serving director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 1981 to 1986, he was Commissioner of Health of the City of New York.
context_section_description: In 1955, Sencer joined the US Public Health Service. In 1960, Sencer became the assistant director of the CDC, and in 1966, the director. In this capacity he played a major role in 1974 in establishing Emory University's public health department, which later became the Rollins School of Public Health.
  During Sencer's administration, the CDC grew considerably, addressing for the first time malaria, nutrition, tobacco control, as well as family planning, health education, and occupational safety and health. Additionally, Sencer prepared instructions for the quarantine of astronauts returning from the moon, which was suspected to harbor extraterrestrial pathogens. During This time Sencer also hid The Tuskegee Study from the public and refused to put a stop to it.
  The agency's most successful undertaking was a smallpox-prevention project in Central Africa and later in the rest of the world. This was among the CDC's first significant dealings with international public health, which the CDC presently directs. At the forefront of the effort was William H. Foege, who said: "I never asked [Sencer] for anything that he didn't deliver...He said you couldn’t protect U.S. citizens from smallpox without getting rid of it in the world, and that was a new approach. People in the field got all the praise, but he was the unsung hero. He just kept providing what we needed."
  After the swine flu outbreak of 1976, in which over 200 recruits in Fort Dix, New Jersey were infected, Sencer resolved that all US citizens should be immunized. Precipitated both by his apprehensions of a recurrence of the 1918–1919 flu plague and by President Gerald Ford's incitement, the decision was later criticized as "rash and wasteful". It led the United States Public Health Service to request up to 200 million doses of vaccine. However, the anticipated pandemic did not emerge, and "rising percentages" of the 45 million vaccinated were afflicted with Guillain–Barré syndrome, which provoked over 24 deaths. Sencer was both condemned and supported. Having worked with Sencer at CDC, the dean of Emory's Rollins School, James W. Curran, explained, "Dave Sencer made a hard choice, and he did it for the right reason — to protect the American public... He was trying to protect Americans had there been [a swine flu epidemic], and absent one, there was bound to be criticism." In 2006, Sencer wrote a report on the swine flu program: "When lives are at stake, it is better to err on the side of overreaction than underreaction... In 1976, the federal government wisely opted to put protection of the public first".
  That year, Legionnaires' disease, then unidentified, killed 29 attendees of a Philadelphia American Legion conference. Sencer sent 20 epidemiologists there to investigate, and months later they attributed the disease to a type of bacteria in the air-conditioning system in the hotel where the conference was held. When Jimmy Carter's presidency began, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Joseph A. Califano Jr. dismissed Sencer as "part of the normal turnover of staff when administrations change".
caption: Sencer points to a depiction of Triatomine sp., which transmits Chagas disease.
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