Stephen Dawson obituary | Sexual health
My friend Stephen Dawson, who has died of cancer aged 78, had the dubious fortune of being a new urologist when Aids first struck in London in the early 1980s.
The son of Philip, a nuclear physicist at the Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment, and May, a housewife, Steve was born in London, attended King Alfred’s School, Wantage, and studied medicine at University College Hospital before becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in the late 1970s. The decade that followed was both clinically fascinating and emotionally challenging.
Working in genitourinary clinics around London, Steve helped track the rise of opportunistic HIV diseases while being unable to do much to treat them. It was typical of him that in 1988 he left AIDS medicine in London for the professionally less glamorous Slough to work as the first consultant in genitourinary medicine in east Berkshire. When he arrived at Upton Hospital, he recalls, his department consisted of three part-time doctors and a nurse; there was no HIV care.
By the time he left 28 years later in 2016, the center had become the first fully integrated sexual health service in the UK, offering holistic treatment across all medical disciplines; a model which had since been adopted by other primary care trusts.
Although an accomplished physician, Steve had interests beyond white coats. Around the age of 70, he began writing film scripts. (He himself had movie-star good looks, a fact of which he seemed entirely unaware.) Three of these were made into short films, screened at festivals in Europe and the United States; a fourth feature film was still in the works when he fell ill last year.
He also achieved some success as a painter, particularly in acrylic portraits. “Most people don’t like my paintings,” Steve says cheerfully. “I don’t blame them.” This distrust was not shared by the jury of the BP Portrait Awards 2016, and one of his works was retained until the final of the competition. Visitors to Steve’s hospital bed in London were drawn on a graphics tablet on his lap, the brightly colored results remotely resembling those of Hockneys.
A lifelong lover of the sea, Steve retreated to Hastings in East Sussex to paint, write and do crosswords; usually he reached the Times final crossword championship.
A brother, Geoffrey, predeceased him. He is survived by his partner, Dimitry Kalinin.
