Gilbert Beebe, 90, Researcher of Survivors of Radiation, Dies

[John Jacobus <crispy_bird@YAHOO.COM>]

This article from NYTimes.com 



Gilbert Beebe, 90, Researcher of Survivors of Radiation, Dies



March 11, 2003

By STUART LAVIETES 



Gilbert W. Beebe, an expert on radiation who had a crucial

role in studies of survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on

Japan and the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

in Ukraine, died on March 3 in Washington. He was 90. 



As a member of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, later

called the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, at the

National Academy of Sciences from 1958 to 1977, Dr. Beebe

created studies of cancer rates among the 284,000 survivors

in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 



The research suggested that children were more likely than

adults to develop radiation-induced cancer. Girls younger

than 10 were found to be highly susceptible to breast

cancer, which developed more than a decade after exposure.

Women older than 40 appeared to be highly resistant to the

disease. The study also documented a slight increase in

leukemia, which reached its peak seven or eight years after

the bombing. 



In 1977, after retiring at 65 from the National Academy of

Sciences, Dr. Beebe joined the National Cancer Institute at

the National Institutes of Health. At the institute, he

organized and led investigations into the accident at

Chernobyl in 1986 that examined the cancer rates of the

88,000 cleanup workers exposed to excessive radiation and

of children in a fallout area 54 miles north in Belarus. 



Dr. Beebe, who graduated from Dartmouth and received a

Ph.D. in sociology and statistics from Columbia, began his

career in the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army in

World War II. Immediately after the war, he helped organize

and became director of the Medical Follow-up Agency at the

National Academy of Sciences. The agency followed the lives

of the 15 million people who had served in the armed

forces, examining links between military service and

disease. One study tracked soldiers who had survived bullet

wounds to the heart. 



"Dr. Beebe wrote flawless protocols for the scientific

design of large-scale medical studies," a colleague at the

National Cancer Institute, Dr. Robert W. Miller, said.

Gilbert Wheeler Beebe was born on April 3, 1912, in Mahwah,

N.J. 



Surviving are his wife of 68 years, Ruth, of Alexandria,

Va.; four children, Christopher, of Alexandria; Brian, of

Santa Barbara, Calif.; Beatrice, of New York; and Alfred,

of Salisbury, Md.; and five grandchildren. 



http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/obituaries/11BEEB.html?ex=1048392702&ei=1&en=1babf9e242689e70





Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company


-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird@yahoo.com

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