Robert Peter Gale

Robert Peter Gale ( born 1945 in New York) is an American physician and internationally recognized specialist in radiation sickness. The award-winning specialist in leukemia and other bone marrow disorders coordinated in 1986 by order of the Soviet government, the medical care and the study of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. He teaches in Los Angeles and London and is involved in the development of new anticancer drugs.

Training

Gale studied biology and chemistry at Hobart College and graduated in 1966 at the State University of New York in medicine from. In 1976, he earned a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California at Los Angeles. His work as a postdoctoral fellow was from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH ) and the Leukemia Society of America promoted, he was going Bogart Fellow and Scholar.

Career

From 1973 to 1993 Gale worked at the UCLA School of Medicine and focused on the topic of molecular biology. He developed a program for bone marrow donation and built this in the international medicine at the leading point. With John Liebeskind he also worked on psychological topics.

Gale has written over 800 publications and more than 20 books. Interviews and newspaper articles were in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, USA Today, published in Der Spiegel and the Wall Street Journal. He was involved in several film scripts, including Chernobyl: The Final Warning, as well as Fat Man and Little Boy and City of Joy starring Patrick Swayze.

Awards

• Presidential Award, New York Academy of Sciences
• Scientist of Distinction Award, The Weizmann Institute of Science
• Distinguished Alumni Award from Hobart College and Intra - Science Research Foundation Award

He received honorary degrees from Albany Medical College, LHD of Hobart College and D.P.S. of MacMurray College. With the Emmy his contributions have been awarded to a 60 - Minutes contribution to Chernobyl.

In addition to his involvement in the coordination of medical assistance in 1986 in Chernobyl in 1987 he was active in the Goiânia accident in Brazil, and in 1988 the U.S. government commissioned an earthquake in Armenia. In 1999 he treated on behalf of the Japanese government victims of Tokaimura accident. For his humanitarian activities, he received, among other things, the Olender Peace Prize, the City of Los Angeles Humanitarian Award and the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation Humanitarian Award.

Attitude to the risks of nuclear energy

Gale holds the health risks posed by the Fukushima nuclear disaster for relatively low. This he explains, among other things, that the estimates of the number of cancer cases and disability in newborns in 1986 made ​​by him after the Chernobyl disaster in 1988 turned out to be too high. Moreover, it was in Japan in contrast to Ukraine already managed to prevent the consumption of contaminated milk and milk products and to distribute iodine tablets and thus avoid the widespread in Ukraine thyroid cancer in children and adolescents. In comparison to the psychological consequences of the effects of radiation from the Chernobyl disaster to human health were much less dramatic.

Gale 2011 was used by the Japanese government as an advisor. 2011 as in 1986 he criticized in Interviews and articles in German newspapers in his view, excessive Germans' fear of nuclear energy.

He compares their risks with the risks of the use of fossil fuels and indicates, for example, it would be already in coal mining 10,000 people die annually. Also in the production of solar power plants radioactivity will be released into the environment. He says to the accident at Fukushima:

" The most serious long-term consequences of a nuclear accident are usually not medical but political, economic and psychological. Therefore, the German response to Fukushima should be determined not only by emotions, but fail considerate and thoughtful. "

Personal

Gale is married, has six children and lives in Los Angeles, California. He does a lot of sport and is among other active marathon runner. He is one of the supporters of the United Jewish Appeal, an umbrella organization of Jewish philanthropic organizations in the United States.