Doctor to the U.S.

During last year's ruckus over the safety and distribution of the Salk polio vaccine, the man responsible for bringing order to the confused and emotional situation was Dr. Leonard Andrew Scheele. As Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, he was doctor to the U.S. people, and it was his job to insist on the priority of scientific precautions over political speed. This brought him into unhappy conflict with the then Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Oveta Gulp Hobby. A quiet career man for two decades, Scheele became increasingly aware that the hazards of public service are poorly compensated. Last week, without forewarning, he quit. His decision was made, he wrote President Eisenhower, "in the interests of providing more properly for the future security of my family" (wife and three children, ages nine to 18). Their future security: his new $60,000-a-year job as president of New Jersey's Warner-Chilcott Laboratories, drug manufacturers. As Surgeon General, his salary was only $16,800 a year.

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