Peter Bourne

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Peter Bourne bigraphy, stories - Physician, anthropologist, biographer, author, civil servant

Peter Bourne : biography

1939 –

Peter Bourne (born 1939 in Oxford, England) is a physician, anthropologist, biographer, author and international civil servant with experience in several senior government positions. He is currently chairman of the board of the American Association for World Health, and Professor and Vice Chancellor Emeritus at St. George’s University Medical School, Grenada. He is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford.

Life and career

Bourne was born in 1939 in Oxford, England. He initially received his early education at the Dragon School before attending Whitgift School, Croydon. He graduated with an M.D. degree from Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, in 1962, and received an MA in anthropology from Stanford University, California, in 1969. After graduating, he entered the military, serving as a Captain in the United States Army. He was assigned to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), where he studied the psychological and physiological effects of stress on basic trainees and men in combat. He spent one year in Vietnam as head of the Army’s psychiatric research team, where he was awarded the Bronze Star, the Air Medal and the Combat Medical Badge. After returning from Vietnam he was active in the anti-war movement.

Bourne became active in Democratic politics in 1971 when he worked in the offices of the newly elected Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter. Bourne was also influential in convincing Carter to run for the Presidency several years later, and became a deputy campaign manager for Carter in Washington.

After setting up and successfully running Georgia’s first statewide drug treatment program, Bourne was asked to take a position as deputy in charge of treatment programs in President Nixon’s Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP) in Washington.

Under Jimmy Carter, Bourne was appointed special assistant to the President for health issues. He resigned this position amid controversy. On July 19, 1978, he was initially placed on leave after he was caught using a false name to prescribe sedatives to a White House colleague. Within 36 hours after this revelation, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) director Keith Stroup leaked a story to reporter Jack Anderson that Bourne had attended a party at Stroup’s house where Bourne snorted cocaine. The event was a NORML Christmas party in 1977 with Hunter S. Thompson and David Kennedy in attendance. After this revelation, Bourne resigned.

In 1979, Bourne became an Assistant Secretary-General at the United Nations, where he established and ran the "International Drinking Water Decade," a 10-year program that provided clean drinking water to 500 million people worldwide. After leaving the UN in 1982 for the private sector, he served on the boards of numerous charities.

In 1995 as an Advisor on Foreign Policy to US Congressman Bill Richardson, Bourne accompanied him to Baghdad for a meeting with Saddam Hussein to secure the release of two American aerospace workers who had been captured by the Iraqis after wandering over the Kuwaiti border. Richardson and Bourne subsequently collaborated on a number of such efforts in Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, and North Korea, where they helped win the release of an American lay preacher who had crossed to the wrong side of the border.

Dr Bourne has authored over a hundred articles and written or edited ten books.