CAP TODAY Pathology/Laboratory Medicine/Laboratory Management
May 2020—William B. Zeiler, MD, CAP president from 1987 to 1989, died March 24 at age 99.
Dr. Zeiler was CAP vice president from 1985 to 1987 and a member of the Board of Governors from 1981 to 1985. He led and was a member of several CAP councils, committees, and commissions.
He was named CAP Pathologist of the Year in 1990, and winner of the Gold Headed Cane Award from the World Association of Societies of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in 2001.
Dr. Zeiler founded and was medical director of the Clinical Pathology Facility and Associated Pathologists Laboratories in Pittsburgh. He served on the medical staffs of various Pittsburgh area hospitals and a rehabilitation center.
Dr. Zeiler
“Bill taught me a lot,” says John C. Neff, MD, professor emeritus in the Department of Pathology at the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine, Knoxville. Dr. Neff served on CAP committees with Dr. Zeiler, whom he credits for expanding his perspective of the pathologist’s role in practice, advocacy, and philanthropy, and for his foresight.
“He had a way of anticipating not only what was going to happen but what a lot of pathologists and physicians in general wanted to happen,” Dr. Neff says.
Starting in the late 1980s, “There were a lot of pathologists and physicians who wanted guidelines, and we were just beginning to enter the era of genomic medicine and specialized medicine,” Dr. Neff says, noting that it was in Dr. Zeiler’s term that the CAP Molecular Pathology Resource Committee was created (now the Molecular Oncology Committee). Dr. Zeiler, who trained as an internist before entering a residency in pathology and “had an insight into medicine that a lot of pathologists don’t have,” Dr. Neff says, advocated for having pathology lead the effort to develop laboratory testing guidelines.
Dr. Zeiler was an early and leading proponent of international laboratory accreditation standards. The CAP now accredits laboratories in 58 countries.
He championed the building of the current CAP headquarters. In a December 2014 CAP TODAY column, then CAP president Gene N. Herbek, MD, wrote that Dr. Zeiler was “a zealous advocate for the then new CAP TODAY and a steady hand that guided consolidation of our staff activities in Illinois. Some who opposed the staff consolidation liked to point out that the construction site in Northfield, Ill., was a swamp, but Dr. Zeiler held true, as he always does, and that swampland now supports beautiful gardens.”
Dr. Neff recalls touring the headquarters in Northfield during the building’s 1990 dedication and asking about the excess space that wasn’t yet finished. “I said, ‘What’s this for?’ Dr. Zeiler replied, ‘We’re going to grow.’ I said, ‘Not this much.’ He said, ‘They’ll be building extensions, you watch, John.’” And for years there was a space shortage, owing to growth, until the internal layout was altered.