[1] His paternal grandfather, Burton James Lee, had been an oncologist and the first clinical director at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center after its relocation.
[8] As a youth, Lee attended the Buckley School on New York City's Upper East Side, and then graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.
[11] Rosamond married Thomas Campbell Plowden-Wardlaw, a prominent New York attorney, on July 2, 1954,[12] and died on November 4, 1971.
[11] The couple had four children (Jared E., Timothy M., Marion Rogers, and Cecelia DeWolf), leaving Lee a large, extended family of seven siblings.
[6][8] Leaving the Army in 1963, he volunteered for Medico International, and spent time in Algeria administering to refugees, people injured in the country's civil war, and victims of torture.
[8][15] Returning to the United States, Lee rejoined the staff at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he worked as an oncologist and chemotherapist.
He argued that while the cancer could be put into remission, the cause of the illness was poorly understood and the damage to the immune system remained untreated.
His views were so controversial that Memorial Sloan-Kettering officials barred him from talking to the National Cancer Institute for 10 years.
[1] The article was widely debated within the profession, and generated a back-and-forth discussion in the journal's letters page between Lee and his critics.
[10] Colleagues counseled him against taking the position, noting that many previous Physicians to the President had been pressured into keeping presidential illnesses a secret, damaging their reputations as doctors.
Lee was assisted by Colonel Lawrence C. Mohr, Jr., MD (a United States Army expert in emergency care) in providing White House healthcare.
[6] Beginning in 1989, Lee prescribed the powerful drug Halcion to help President Bush sleep while traveling.
[22] Lee also treated Bush for intestinal flu after the president vomited and collapsed during a dinner at the home of the Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa in January 1992.
Lee met with a delegation of AIDS activists in the summer of 1989, and agreed to promote journalist Belinda Mason, who had become infected with HIV while receiving blood transfusions during the birth of a child.
[6] The news media said that AIDS activists believe it was Lee who convinced Bush to make a March 29, 1989, speech condemning discrimination against people with HIV and AIDS, and that Lee helped make the HIV/AIDS nondiscrimination provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act palatable to the administration.
Lee was abruptly fired on January 28, 1993, before a new physician had been named after he refused to inject the president with an unknown medication.
[8] Lee retired and lived briefly on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, before moving to Vero Beach, Florida.
He served as chairman of the Indian River County Hospital District, and on the board of directors of the Whole Family Health Center.
[8] In 2005, Lee authored an editorial in The Washington Post in which he condemned military medical personnel who participated in the torture of individuals taken prisoner during the War on Terror.