There he managed together with Gerry Joyce (another Australian surgeon) a District Hospital that had been abandoned by the Belgians following the Congo independence movement and revolution.

Lawson was later awarded a Doctorate in Medicine for his research into the best ways of treating Papuan children suffering from a range of infectious conditions, including pneumonia, diarrhoeal disease and meningitis.

During these years, he became involved in activism, writing and publishing reformist books and articles concerning ways of improving the hospital and health system.

During the initial AIDS epidemic of 1983, together with other colleagues, he met and talked to drug users, documenting the sharing of a single intravenous needle as the main factor in the rapid spread of the disease.

Together with Gertrude Buehring of the University of California at Berkeley, Lawson has contributed to research into Bovine leukemia virus which may also have a role in human breast cancer.