DATE: Friday, September 12, 1997            TAG: 9709120598

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   67 lines

ONE-TIME NOMINEE FOSTER, IN NORFOLK FOR A SPEECH, PRAISES CHOICE OF SATCHER

Dr. Henry Foster, whose nomination for surgeon general was shot down by abortion opponents two years ago, says the president is smart to nominate Dr. David Satcher to the job.

``They could not have chosen a better person than Dr. Satcher,'' said Foster, who was here Thursday to talk to students at Eastern Virginia Medical School.

In 1995, conservatives fought Foster's nomination in large part because the obstetrician and gynecologist had performed abortions. Foster now serves as the president's adviser on teen pregnancy.

Foster worked with Satcher for 11 years at Tennessee's Meharry Medical School, where Foster still spends part of his time. His colleague, he said, is ``extremely dedicated.''

Clinton has said for months that he likely would name Satcher for the job.

Thursday morning, Foster arrived late and a bit breathless for his talk in a Sentara Norfolk General Hospital auditorium. He apologized to the medical students, saying he had been on the phone with Donna E. Shalala, secretary of health and human services, concerning an important announcement, though he did not say what the news was. Then he launched into his talk on public health and universal health care.

In an interview later, Foster said he would help the administration deal with the next nomination ``in an informal way. I would not want to have any kind of official role.''

Unofficially, he could give his friend and colleague a lot of advice about enduring a political bruising.

Within a few hours of his nomination, Foster said, people were denouncing him. But ``I could have walked in their office (and) they wouldn't know who I was.''

Though he calls himself a student of politics, he said he was surprised by how much the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee hearings were taken up with demagogy.

``I thought the effort there would be to find the truth,'' he said. ``I was wrong.''

Nevertheless, he said he has no bitterness about the experience.

``Politics is this way,'' he said with a shrug. ``Other people can't define you. I knew who I was.''

The post has stayed empty since Joycelyn Elders was fired in December 1994 for pronouncements on masturbation, abortion and other controversial topics. This has led to suggestions that America doesn't need a surgeon general.

Foster disagrees. ``The nation needs a doctor as spokesperson,'' he said. He noted that former surgeon general C. Everett Koop helped the nation by alerting people to the risk of AIDS, and that Luther Terry provided a similar service in 1964 by telling people about the relationship between smoking and lung cancer.

And he said the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a group of 8,000 doctors who respond to disasters, is losing good people because there isn't a strong leader. The corps is under the surgeon general's office.

If Foster ever feels inclined to lament his own lost opportunity to hold the job, he can take comfort in the fact that many great men have suffered a political pummeling.

He has been reading a biography of President Lincoln, looking at the cartoons that were published in Lincoln's day. ``They were as vitriolic and pernicious as anything you see today.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot

Ron Williams, left, a student at Eastern Virginia Medical School,

and EVMS President Edward E. Brickell, right, flank Henry Foster as

they listen to a speech at the school Thursday.

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