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Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11340.
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Committee Biographies

Richard R. Monson, M.D., Sc.D. (chair), is associate dean for professional education and professor of epidemiology at the Harvard University School of Public Health. He earned an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and an Sc.D. in epidemiology and biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health. He was a Fulbright scholar. His research interests in epidemiology include evaluation of the risks of exposure to radiation, health effects of exposure to machining fluids, and potential health effects of environmental exposure to chemicals. From 1992 through 2004, he was principal investigator of a Superfund program project award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Dr. Monson has served on numerous national and international advisory groups, including two committees of the National Research Council (NRC), and on several public and private advisory committees that addressed issues concerning exposure to radiation and the potential health effects of environmental exposure to chemicals. He served as chair for the multinational peer review of the epidemiology program of the U.S.-Japan Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF). Dr. Monson was a member of the scientific committee on Effects of Radiation on the Embryo-Fetus, of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP). He served as editor of Cancer Causes and Control from 1993 to 1998. Dr. Monson has more than 150 publications in radiation and occupational epidemiology, including the text Occupational Epidemiology.


James E. Cleaver, Ph.D. (vice chair), is a professor of dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco Cancer Center, with a joint appointment in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. His research interests have focused on the effects of ultraviolet light, internal emitters (tritium and carbon-14), radon, and chemical carcinogens on human cells in culture from patients with mutations in genes involved in DNA repair and genetic instability. He is best known for the discovery that the human disease xeroderma pigmentosum is defective in DNA nucleotide excision repair. Dr. Cleaver is a member of several professional societies including Radiation Research, the American Society for Photobiology, the American Society for Human Genetics, the Environmental Mutagen Society, and the American Association for Cancer Research. He received the Radiation Research Society Research Award, the Senior Investigator Award from the American Society of Photobiology, and the Lila Gruber Award for Cancer Research from the American Academy of Dermatology, the Luigi Provasoli Award from the Phycological Society of America, and the John B. Little Award for radiation research from Harvard University; he was the 47th Faculty Research Lecturer for the University of California San Francisco in 2004. He was elected to the Roll of Honor of the International Union for Research on Cancer, Geneva, in 1997. He was president of the Genetic and Toxicology Association of the Bay area for 1999-2000. He was a member of the NRC Committee on Risk Assessment of Exposure to Radon in Drinking Water. Dr. Cleaver is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).


Herbert L. Abrams, M.D., a faculty member at Stanford Medical School from 1951 to 1967, served as professor of radiology from 1960 to 1967, when he was appointed Philip H. Cook Professor and Chairman of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, as well as chief of radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana Farber Cancer Institute (1967–1985). He returned to Stanford as professor in 1985. Long interested in the applications and effects of ionizing radiation, he was the first to demonstrate the striking influence of age on the lethality of total-body radiation in mammals (Proc Soc 1951) and, together with H.S. Kaplan, explored the mitigating effects of regional shielding on radiation mortality. His studies of the incidence and distribution of metastases in carcinoma; of the role of lymphography in detection of metastases and of the effects of lymphatic obstruction (NEJM 1965, 1967, 1968); of the altered

Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11340.
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response to pharmacologic agents of the tumor vascular bed in animals and humans (Nature 1964; Cancer Research 1979); of renal, adrenal, hepatic, pancreatic, colon, and splenic tumors (1951, 1964, 1965, 1980, 1982, 1983); and of the reasons for and effects of overutilization (NEJM 1979) and underutilization of X-rays (NEJM 1984) have appeared in major journals over the years. Dr. Abrams served as a member of the Radiation Study Section of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Planning Committee for the Symposium on the Medical Implications of Nuclear War (1985); as one of the four physician members of the congressionally mandated National Council on Health Care Technology and as co-chair of its Methods Section (1986-1990); as chairman of the NIH Consensus Conference on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (1987); as a consultant to the Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments; and as one of two American members of the International Blue Ribbon Panel on the future of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima (1996). His examinations of the “Medical Problem of Survivors of Nuclear War” (NEJM 1981); “Medical Resources After Nuclear War: Availability vs Need” (JAMA 1984); “Nuclear Radiation in Warfare” (XV Berzelius Symposium 1988); “The Fallout from Chernobyl” (The Bulletin); “Human Reliability and Safety in the Handling of Nuclear Weapons” (Science and Global Security 1991); and “Security Issues in the Handling and Disposition of Fissionable Materials” (1993) and other related subjects have been published in numerous journals and four multiauthored books. A member of the IOM since 1980, he is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Radiology of Great Britain and the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. The author of more thean 200 articles, he has also written and/or edited eight books on health policy, technology assessment, and the clinical and pathophysiologic aspects of cardiovascular disease. The Crookshank Lecturer of the Royal College of Radiology in 1981 and the Caldwell Lecturer of the American Roentgen Ray Society in 1982, he was also the recipient of the Gold Medal of the Association of University Radiologists in 1984 and the Gold Medal of the Radiological Society of North America in 1996. In 1998, he presented the Charles Dotter Memorial Lecture of the American Heart Association. He was the founding vice-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. Currently, his time is divided between his work in radiology at the medical school and his activities as a member-in-residence of the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation.


Eula Bingham, Ph.D., is a professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Bingham’s interests include risk assessment, regulatory toxicology, environmental carcinogenesis, and occupational health surveillance. She was a volunteer investigator at NIEHS and an Assistant Secretary of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration. She was the first recipient of the William Lloyd Award for occupational safety. Throughout her career, Dr. Bingham has served on numerous national and international advisory groups, including advisory committees of the NRC, the NAS, the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Labor, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, NIH, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The committees addressed issues concerning research needs in health risk assessment and the potential health effects of environmental exposure to chemicals. In 1989, Dr. Bingham was elected to the IOM.


Patricia A. Buffler, Ph.D., is professor of epidemiology and the Kenneth and Marjorie Kaiser Chair of Cancer Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. Her current research interests in epidemiology include studies of leukemia in children, health effects of exposure to tobacco smoke, and health effects of nonionizing radiation. She has served on numerous national and international advisory groups including advisory committees to the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency, the University of California Office of the President, the National Research Council and the World Health Organization (WHO). From 1996 to 2002 she served as a visiting director for the U.S.-Japan RERF. She has served as president of the Society of Epidemiologic Research, the American College of Epidemiology, and the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology and as an officer of the Medical Sciences Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She was awarded the American College of Epidemiology Lilienfeld Award in 1996 and the James Bruce Award in Preventive Medicine from the American College of Physicians in 1999. She is a fellow of both the American College of Epidemiology and AAAS and is a member of the IOM.


Elisabeth Cardis, Ph.D., currently runs the Radiation Group at the IARC, where she was previously chief of the Unit of Radiation and Cancer and head of the Radiation Programme. She is responsible for the planning, conduct, and analyses of numerous epidemiologic studies of cancer in relation to exposure to radiation—both ionizing and nonionizing. She has been consultant to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). She is currently a member of the Steering Committee for the EMF-Net project; of the International Advisory Committee for the WHO International EMF Project; and of the Scientific Council of the French Agence Française pour la Sécurité Sanitaire et Environnementale. She is a fellow of the Institute of Physics. She was a member of the International Commission for Non-ionizing Radiation Protection Standing Committee on Epidemiology from 1998 to 2002 and has been a corresponding member since then. She is also a member of the Scien-

Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11340.
×

tific Council for the Joint Congress of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology and the International Society for Exposure Assessment (ISEE-ISEA), Paris 2006, and was a member of the Scientific Council for the 6th International Conference on High Levels of Natural Radiation and Radon Areas (Osaka, September 2004) and of the International Programme Committee for the 11th International Radiation Protection Association (IRPA) Congress, Madrid 2004. She has been responsible for numerous projects supported currently or previously under the European Commission’s Quality of Life, Radiation Protection, and INCO-Copernicus Programmes.


Roger Cox, Ph.D., is director of the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) at Chilton, Oxfordshire. He was formerly division head and head of the Radiation Effects Department. After his Ph.D. research in microbial genetics, he joined the MRC Radiobiology Unit at Harwell in 1971 where he was involved in cellular and molecular research relating to postirradiation repair, mutagenesis, and tumor development. At NRPB (1990–) he has continued to pursue personal research interests in the mechanisms and genetics of radiation tumorigenesis. Roger Cox is involved in the work of a variety of national and international committees considering radiation effects and radiological protection. These include the NRPB Advisory Group on Ionizing Radiation (1995–), the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP; 1989–), and UNSCEAR (1989–1993 and 1996–).


Scott Davis, Ph.D., is professor and chairman of the Department of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Washington and a full member in the Program in Epidemiology of the Division of Public Health Sciences at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington. He obtained his undergraduate degree in biology and chemistry from the University of New Mexico, a master of science in community health from the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of Washington. He served as a research associate in epidemiology at RERF in Hiroshima, Japan, from 1983 to 1985. His primary research focus is radiation epidemiology. For more than a decade he has directed two major research activities investigating the effects of ionizing radiation on human health. One is a series of studies in the Russian Federation of the effects of exposure to radiation from the Chernobyl Power Station. These studies have focused on the risk of thyroid cancer and leukemia among children in the Bryansk Oblast. The second is a long-term follow-up study of thyroid disease in persons exposed to atmospheric releases of radiation from the Hanford Site in eastern Washington State (the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study). He has conducted several epidemiologic studies of the possible health effects associated with exposure to power frequency magnetic fields, focusing on the risk of leukemia and breast cancer. Recently this work has expanded to include investigations of the effects of exposure to light-at-night and circadian disruption on melatonin and reproductive hormones important in the etiology of breast and other hormone-related cancers. He has also maintained a long-standing interest in the etiology of leukemias and lymphomas and has directed epidemiologic studies of Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. Dr. Davis was a Special Fellow of the Leukemia Society of America from 1986 to 1987 and the recipient of a Research Career Development Award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) from 1988 to 1993. He is an elected member of the American Epidemiological Society and a fellow of the American College of Epidemiology. He was recently elected a member (academician) of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.


William C. Dewey, Ph.D., is emeritus professor of radiation oncology, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). From 1981 to 2004 when he retired, he was director of the Radiation Oncology Research Laboratory at UCSF. Dr. Dewey earned his doctorate in radiation biology from the University of Rochester in 1958. He was a faculty member of the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at M.D. Anderson Hospital in Houston, Texas (1958–1965), and of the Department of Radiology and Radiation Biology, Colorado State University (1965–1981). He served as president of the Radiation Research Society in 1979 and was Failla lecturer of that society in 1989. Dr. Dewey was program chairman for the Ninth International Congress of Radiation Research in 1991, and chairman and organizer of Third International Symposium: Cancer Therapy by Hyperthermia, Drugs and Radiation in 1980. He is the author and coauthor of 264 publications mainly on the effects of radiation and hyperthermia on mammalian cells in culture. He received the Andrew G. Clark research award in 1977 and was an American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) gold medal recipient in 1998. Dr. Dewey is known, in part, for his studies of the effects of radiation and hyperthermia on synchronous cell populations and for the number of investigators in the radiation biology community who trained in his laboratory.


Ethel S. Gilbert, Ph.D., is a biostatistician in the Radiation Epidemiology Branch of NCI. She holds a B.A. in mathematics from Oberlin College and an M.P.H. and Ph.D. in biostatistics from the University of Michigan. Her current research includes studies of workers at the Mayak nuclear plant in Russia, studies of second cancers after radio- and chemotherapy, and radiation risk assessment. Formerly, Dr. Gilbert spent several years as a senior staff scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, where her research focused on epidemiologic studies of nuclear workers, including combined analyses of national and international data. Dr. Gilbert is a fellow of the American Statistical Associa-

Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11340.
×

tion, and a member of the NCRP, and she served on the BEIR VI committee.


Albrecht Kellerer, Ph.D., is professor emeritus at the University of Munich. He was formerly professor of radiation biophysics at Columbia University in New York, and subsequently professor and chief of the institute for medical radiation research at the University of Wurzburg. Dr. Kellerer’s research specialties include microdosimetry, radiation risk assessment, and radiobiology. Dr. Kellerer was a member of the German National Commission for Radiation Protection and a member of committees of ICRU and ICRP.


Daniel Krewski, Ph.D., M.H.A., is professor of medicine and of epidemiology and community medicine at the University of Ottawa, where he serves as director of the McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in mathematics and statistics from Carleton University and his M.H.A. in health administration from the University of Ottawa. Dr. Krewski served on the NRC’s Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VI) and is a member of the Board on Radiation Effects Research. He chaired the NRC’s Committee on Acute Exposure Guideline Levels for Highly Hazardous Substances from 1998 to 2004, and currently chairs the NRC’s Committee on Toxicity Testing and Assessment of Environmental Agents. Dr. Krewski has contributed to the publication of more than 500 scientific and technical articles in the areas of population health risk assessment, epidemiology, and biostatistics.


Tomas Lindahl, M.D., obtained his early training in medicine and research at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm. After postdoctoral training at Princeton and Rockefeller Universities, he returned to Stockholm in 1969 as an assistant professor at the Karolinska Institute. Dr. Lindahl is currently director of the Cancer Research UK Clare Hall Laboratories in London. The laboratories have 12 research groups working on DNA repair, recombination, and replication, as well as cell cycle control and transcription. Dr. Lindahl’s main contributions have been in the field of DNA repair, where he discovered the family of DNA glycosylases and the base excision-repair pathway as well as the unique suicide enzyme O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase and DNA dioxygenases for reversal of DNA damage. He also discovered the mammalian DNA ligases and defined their distinct roles. Dr. Lindahl is a fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, and a member of the Academia Europea.


Katherine E. Rowan, Ph.D. (Purdue University, 1985), is professor and associate chair of the Department of Communication at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. Her research concerns science and risk communication, particularly effective methods for earning trust and explaining complex science. Her scholarship on these topics appears in more than 40 journals and edited books. She has presented lectures, briefings, and workshops on science communication and risk communication for organizations such as the Institute of Medicine, the National Library of Medicine, the staff of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Academy of Sciences, Health Canada, Dow Elanco, Portland Cement, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her risk communication consulting clients have included the NIH, the National Library of Medicine, the National Safety Council, and the University of Wisconsin in connection with a grant from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In 1999, she was selected as a journalism fellow by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.


K. Sankaranarayanan, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus in the Department of Toxicogenetics, Leiden University Medical Centre, Sylvius Laboratories, Leiden, in the Netherlands. Dr. Sankaranarayanan’s research activities include understanding the adverse effects of radiation and chemical mutagens and the use of this knowledge for the assessment of biological, especially hereditary, risks associated with the exposure of humans to these agents. He was a consultant in genetics to UNSCEAR (1970–2001) and a member of Committee 1 of the ICRP (1975–2004). In the late 1990s, he chaired an ICRP Task Group on Risk Estimation for Multifactorial Diseases. Since the late 1960s, he has served the journal Mutation Research in several editorial capacities (including executive managing editor) until he stepped down from the editorship in 2000.


Daniel W. Schafer, Ph.D., received his master’s and Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Chicago. Dr. Schafer is a professor in the Department of Statistics at Oregon State University. His expertise includes measurement errors and generalized linear models. Dr. Schafer is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and a past president of the Oregon Chapter of the American Statistical Association. He was scientific adviser to the NCI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for updating radiologic properties of causation tables (1998–2000). Dr. Schafer is coauthor of the textbook The Statistical Sleuth, A Course in Methods of Data Analysis.


Robert Ullrich, Ph.D., is the Barbara Cox Anthony University Chair in Oncology at Colorado State University, Departments of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences and of Clinical Sciences. Dr. Ullrich earned his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He was formerly head of the Radiation Carcinogenesis Unit at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is the current president of the Radiation Research Society. He received the R.J. Michael Fry Research Award of the Radia-

Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11340.
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tion Research Society in 1987. Dr. Ullrich has served on the NRC Panel on Space Radiation Effects, a number of NIH advisory committees, and ICRP Committee 1 and the Task Group on Estimates of Radiation-Induced Cancer at Low Doses.

Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11340.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11340.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11340.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11340.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11340.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11340.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11340.
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Next: Index »
Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2 Get This Book
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BEIR VII develops the most up-to-date and comprehensive risk estimates for cancer and other health effects from exposure to low-level ionizing radiation. It is among the first reports of its kind to include detailed estimates for cancer incidence in addition to cancer mortality. In general, BEIR VII supports previously reported risk estimates for cancer and leukemia, but the availability of new and more extensive data have strengthened confidence in these estimates. A comprehensive review of available biological and biophysical data supports a "linear-no-threshold" (LNT) risk model—that the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans. The report is from the Board on Radiation Research Effects that is now part of the newly formed Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.

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