Born: 24 May, 1923, in New York.
Died: 31 January, 2010, in New York, aged 86.DAVID V Becker was a pioneer in the use of radioactive materials to diagnose and treat thyroid disease and an expert on thyroid damage caused by
the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion in 1986.
Before he died, Becker was a professor of radiology and medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and an attending radiologist and physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Centre.
Becker was an early leader in the use of radioactive materials for organ imaging and treatment. In his research he took advantage of the fact that one product of nuclear fission is a radioactive form of iodine, which is absorbed into the human thyroid gland just like ordinary iodine.
By measuring the radiation emissions from a contaminated thyroid, physicians can get an image of the organ, and if it is diseased, larger doses of radioactive iodine can be used to destroy it.
After the explosion at Chernobyl, huge releases of radioactive iodine spread for miles over grazing land for dairy cattle, resulting in high concentrations of the iodine in the animals' milk. Many thousands of people, mostly children, were exposed. A study in 2005 linked about 2,000 cases of thyroid cancer to the incident.
After the explosion, Becker led a team assembled by the United States National Cancer Institute that investigated the effects of the radioactive iodine on the thyroid. In 1996, he was awarded a White House citation for humanitarian efforts for the work.
Becker was active in a movement to stockpile a drug called potassium iodide for use in the event of a nuclear reactor accident. Potassium iodide is also absorbed by the thyroid gland, and if given to people downwind of an accident before the radioactive iodine arrives, it will saturate the gland and protect it.
Becker was born in 1923 in New York City, the only child of Albert Israel Becker and Miriam Rosner Becker. He began his work with radioactive materials while serving in the US army during the Korean War. A graduate of Columbia University and the New York University School of Medicine, he established one of the army's first radioisotope laboratories at the Brooke Army Medical Centre, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
Becker also went to Micronesia in the post-war years to study the health of people who had been exposed to radiation from atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs. In one case he examined the crew of a Japanese fishing trawler that had been in the vicinity of a test in the South Pacific.
Becker was the founding director of the division of nuclear medicine at New York Presbyterian, where he worked for more than 50 years, having started there as a resident in 1954. A former president of the American Thyroid Society, he was a consultant to the National Cancer Institute for more than 25 years.
Becker wrote or co-wrote several peer-reviewed studies in the 1980s using cats, beagles and other dogs and did extensive work on the effects of radioactive iodine in animals, often using rats for research.
Dr James Hurley, a colleague at Cornell, recalled an incident decades ago when a veterinarian in New York consulted with Becker after observing a prevalence of thyroid disease in pet cats. Becker decided to take the cats to the hospital. "In the middle of the night," Dr Hurley said, "he brought them in and imaged them on the same machines used on humans."
Becker's first wife, Naomi Isaacson, a sculptor, died in 1974. He is survived by their two children and four granddaughters and his second wife, Lois Lunin.
