Dan Gross/The Gazette Tom Cody, a Bethesda resident who is writing a book about the National Institutes of Health. He is looking for a publisher for “Inside the NIH.”

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Dan Gross/The Gazette Tom Cody, a Bethesda resident who is writing a book about the National Institutes of Health. He is looking for a publisher for “Inside the NIH.”
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Dan Gross/The Gazette Tom Cody, a Bethesda resident who is writing a book about the National Institutes of Health. He is looking for a publisher for “Inside the NIH.”

Dan Gross/The Gazette Tom Cody, a Bethesda resident who is writing a book about the National Institutes of Health. He is looking for a publisher for “Inside the NIH.”

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How to say no to the White House — Rule No. 1: Buy time.

“First of all you say, ‘Let me think about it,’” said Thomas Cody, a Bethesda resident whose mentor, fomer NASA administrator James Webb, gave him the valuable advice in 1972.

Cody put Webb’s rule to use as executive director of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1972 to 1974, and assistant secretary for administration from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1974 to 1976.

At 82, Cody is not slowing down. The semi-retired Harvard graduate is putting the final touches on a book about the history of the nation’s preeminent health research organization, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda.

After hundreds of interviews, the author of three books will see his last work published — one way or another. He wrote “Inside the NIH” after getting the go-ahead from his literary agent, who has since died. He is looking for a publisher.

“It’s just such an incredible story,” he said. “I’m not doing it to make money, I’m doing it because it needs to be done.”

Cody was born in 1929 in Holyoke, Mass., a paper mill town that died when the factories closed.

At 12, his first job earned him 25 cents per hour weeding asparagus on a farm. By then World War II was raging, and many of America’s young men were overseas.

The son of an accountant, Cody had the option not to work. But with three brothers, he needed to save money to put himself through college. The mill work was repetitive, but it introduced him to people he would not normally meet — first-generation immigrants who spoke a variety of languages.

“I think my father thought it would teach me it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and indeed he was right,” Cody said.

After graduating from College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., with a degree in classics, he moved to Boston. Despite attending Boston College for graduate school, he could not resist the lure of the military and signed up for the Marine Corps.

Deployed to fight in the Korean War, his biggest challenges were boredom, subzero winters and pit vipers. By the time he had arrived, the situation had stabilized.

“Mostly we saw in trenches and looked at each other,” he said.

After the war

Cody applied to Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School from Korea, and was accepted to both. While waiting to start his master’s in business administration, he helped build a dam as part of a construction crew.

He met his wife Kathleen, now deceased, before the Korean War. Together they had two children.

“She was quite a lady,” he said.

Kathleen had her own home cooking show in the early 1950s, the first in Boston, before being hired by General Electric. She narrowly lost out on a cooking show spot filled by Julia Childs.

Her father, Freddie Maguire, was a Major League Baseball-player-turned-scout. A second baseman for the Boston Braves, the Chicago Cubs and the New York Giants from 1922 to 1931, Maguire holds the record for the longest career with the fewest home runs — 1, Cody said.

“I’d come home and there would be all these ballplayers, ex-ballplayers, in my home,” he said.

Cody has worked in business consulting since 1962, and started his consulting firm, The Washington Group, in 1981.

Working for Nixon

Cody’s work for the EEOC and HUD was done under President Richard Nixon.

He took over in 1972, a year which saw the toothless EEOC receive new enforcement powers — including the ability to pursue litigation — according to the the commission’s website.

During his tenure, the EEOC, Department of Justice and Department of Labor signed a landmark discrimination decree with AT&T to eliminate discriminatory recruiting, hiring and promoting practices against woman and minorities.

Cody was hired, in part, thanks to his friendship with Fred Malek, an assistant to Nixon who went on to serve under President George H.W. Bush.

“There weren’t a lot of people busting down the door to work there anyway,” Cody said. “It was a ticket to hell in those days.”

The infant organization needed streamlining, and it was difficult for a middle-aged white man from the business world to win acceptance.

“As a white guy out of the consulting business, the Black Panthers said, ‘Who are you?’” he said.

It was a tough transition from government back to private industry. After filing charges against four of the country’s largest employers, General Electric, General Motors, Ford and Sears Roebuck, some did not welcome him back into the business community.

“When I came back to business in consulting, there were people who didn’t want any part of me,” he said. “They never forgave me for working with the enemy.”

jablamsky@gazette.net

NIH has history of being ahead of the curve

In the 1950s, talented scientists did not work for the federal government.

That changed thanks to Dr. James Shannon, director of the National Institutes of Health during its golden years, from 1955 to 1968, said Thomas Cody, author of unpublished book “Inside the NIH.”

The National Institutes of Health traces its roots to 1887, but it was not until 1935 when Mr. and Mrs. Luke Wilson gifted 45 acres of their Bethesda estate for NIH use. The agency expanded rapidly during Shannon’s tenure, growing from four institutes to 18, Cody said.

“He hired probably the most talented Jewish scientists in the world,” Cody said.

At that time, talented scientists got jobs with Harvard University or The Rockefeller University. But Jewish people had a hard time getting hired at places such as Harvard, which is why Shannon hired them.

Among the NIH’s achievements, Cody cites cancer research, HIV and AIDS diagnosis and treatment and the Human Genome Project.

Cody said there was a time when the NIH represented nearly all of the cancer research in the country. In the 1960s, chemotherapy, an often prescribed treatment for cancer, was laughed at. The NIH was responsible for a lot of the early research.

Doctors at NIH treated early AIDS patients, and spent nights and weekends writing the protocols that were used across the country to treat those inflicted with the disease.

Virtually all of the major successes in HIV and AIDS research come directly or indirectly from NIH, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“The history of AIDS research is really the poster child for how the NIH really benefits both domestic and global health,” he said. “We fund the overwhelming majority of AIDS research.”

When Fauci first started treating AIDS patients in 1981, their median life expectancy after diagnosis was six to eight months. Using drug cocktails developed by NIH or with the aid of NIH grants, the median expectancy increased to 50 years. NIH also co-discovered the HIV virus and developed the first test to screen the blood supply.

More recently, scientists announced a vaccine that protected monkeys against infection from Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, that species’ version of the virus. The experimental vaccine regimens reduced the monkeys’ likelihood of becoming infected by 80 percent to 83 percent. For monkeys that did become infected, it substantially reduced the amount of virus in the blood. The study was co-funded by the NIH.

Other successes include the Human Genome Project, which finished under budget and ahead of schedule. NIH ran the 13-year project — which identified all the genes in human DNA— and completed it in 2003. Analysis of the data is ongoing, with the help of NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute, said NHGRI spokesman Larry Thompson.

“It was like landing on the moon was for NASA,” Thompson said.

Researchers think the data will enable the development of medical treatments tailored to each person’s genetic makeup. Already, dozens of medications contain warnings from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that recommend genetic testing prior to handing out a prescription.

These are stories that Cody thinks must be told.