Gilbert Wheeler Beebe (3 April 1912 – 3 March 2003), also known as Gil Beebe, was an American epidemiologist and statistician known for monumental studies of radiation-related mortality and morbidity among populations exposed to ionizing radiation from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and the Chernobyl reactor accident in 1986.
Beebe was born in 1903 in Mahwah, New Jersey. Beebe attended Dartmouth College and graduated in 1933. He attended Columbia University and completed graduate studies in sociology and statistics and earned the A.M. in 1938 and Ph.D. in 1942. Beebe carried out a landmark cohort study of contraceptive services in economically depressed areas.
Beebe served in World War II with the Office of the Surgeon General of the United States Army. He worked with Michael DeBakey to help create the Medical Follow-up Agency (MFUA) at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Beebe directed the MFUA until his retirement at age 65. Beebe worked with Seymour Jablon at the MFUA to reorganize the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) in Japan. He spent several tours of duty in Japan, a total of seven years in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the ABCC chief of Statistics in 1958-1960, 1966-1968, and 1973-1975. The Medical Follow-up Agency (MFUA) was succeeded by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF). The RERF produces epidemiological and statistical information that helps to form our current knowledge of radiation related risk of cancer and other long-term health effects in human populations.
In 1977 Beebe joined the National Cancer Institute in what would become the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. During this time Beebe worked with John D. Boice, Jr. In 1986 after the Chernobyl accident, he organized and led an international study of thyroid cancer and leukemia risk among radiation exposed populations in Belarus and Ukraine.
In 2002 Beebe retired from the NCI and remained active as NCI Scientist Emeritus until the day he died. Beebe died in 2003 in Washington, D.C. from acute pulmonary failure. Beebe was survived by his wife of 69 years, Ruth, four children, Alfred, Beatrice, Brian, and Christopher, and five grandchildren.
Awards and honors
In 1973 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.
Established in 2002 by the National Academy of Sciences Board on Radiation Effects Research (a predecessor of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board) to honor the scientific achievements of Dr. Gilbert W. Beebe National Cancer Institute, who was one of the designers and key implementers of the epidemiology studies of Japanese atomic bomb survivors (called hibakusha (被爆者), a Japanese word that literally translates as "explosion-affected people" and is used to refer to people who were exposed to radiation from the bombings) and co-founder of the Medical Follow-up Agency. The symposium is used to promote discussions among scientists, federal staff, and other interested parties concerned with radiation health effects.
Symposia that have been held addressed a wide range of topics related to radiation and health:
2002, Scientific Highlights of RERF Studies and Chernobyl Studies
2003, Psychological Consequences of Exposure to Ionizing Radiation
2004 Recent Developments in Radiation Risk Assessment
2005 Beyond BEIR VII
2006 Pre- and Post-Conception Radiation Exposure: Sensitivity of Gametes, Fetuses, and Children
2007 Sixty Years of ABCC [Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission]/RERF: Major Contributions and Future Studies
2008 Radiation as a Cause of Cardiovascular Disease
2009 Radiation Exposures from Imaging and Image Guided Interventions
2010 Scientific Advances in Radiobiology and Radiation Epidemiology, Implications for Radiation Exposure Regulations
2011 Tracking Radiation Exposure from Medical Diagnostic Procedures
2014 The Science and Response to a Nuclear Reactor Accident
The Condom in Modern Contraceptive Practice.
The clinical effectiveness of lactic acid jelly as a contraceptive.
Contraception in Private Practice: A Twelve Year Experience.
Rubber sheaths as venereal disease prophylactics: the relation of quality and technique to their effectiveness.
The effect of contraception upon human fertility.
Clinical contraceptive results in a small series of patients.
Contraception and Fertility in the Southern Appalachians.
Control of conception in a selected rural sample.
Comparative incidence of neuropsychiatric casualties in world war I and world war II.
Life Span Study Report Number 1: Description of study.
FOLLOW-UP STUDY OF PSYCHONEUROSES Preliminary Report.
Psychoneuroses; military applications of a follow-up study.
Battle casualties: Incidence, mortality, and logistic considerations.
Battle casualties.
Death from wounding.
Location of hits and wounds.
Age and resistance to military stress.
A Follow-Up Study of War Neuroses, Veterans Administration Medical Monograph.
A follow-up study of war neuroses (Vol. 39).
Peripheral Nerve Regeneration. A Follow-up Study of 3,656 World War II Injuries.
Influence of type of ground operation on the wounded in action, US Divisions in World War II.
Expected incidence of certain neoplastic diseases in veterans.
Statistics and Clinical Investigations.
Variation in psychological tolerance to ground combat in World War II.
Research Plan for Joint NIH-ABCC Study of Life-span of A-bomb Survivors.
Lung cancer in World War I veterans: possible relation to mustard-gas injury and 1918 influenza epidemic.
Medical follow-up studies on veterans.
Missiles in the heart: a twenty-year follow-up report of World War II cases.
FOLLOW-UP STUDIES OF WORLD WAR II AND KOREAN WAR PRISONERS II. MORBIDITY, DISABILITY AND MALADJUSTMENTS.
Cancer in Korean war navy technicians: mortality survey after 40 years.
ABCC-JNIH pathology studies.
JNIH-ABCC Life Span Study, Report 5.
Blood group antibody levels in Hiroshima.
Statistical aspects of the program of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission.
Thyroid disease in the ABCC-JNIH Adult Health Study sample, Hiroshima, 1958-59.
Studies of the mortality of A-bomb survivors. I. Plan of study and mortality in the medical subsample (selection I), 1950-1958.
Thyroid disease: A study in Hiroshima, Japan.
JNIH-ABCC Life Span Study, Hiroshima and Nagasaki Report 2, Mortality in Selection, I and II. October 1950-September 1959.
Studies of the mortality of A-bomb survivors: Report 2. Mortality in selections I and II, 1950-1959.
Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission Technical Report 12-68.
The major ABCC samples, Atomic Bomb Causality Commission (No. 12).
Mortality due to cancer among A-bomb survivors.
MEDICAL FINDINGS IN ATOMIC BOMB SURVIVORS.
Mortality and Radiation Dose, Atomic Bomb Survivors (1950-1966).
JNIH-ABCC Life span study.
Studies of the Mortality of A-Bomb Survivors 4. Mortality and Radiation Dose, 1950-1966.
BREAST-CANCER INCIDENCE AMONG ATOMIC BOMB SURVIVORS, HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI, 1950-1969.
Mortality Experience of Atomic Bomb Survivors 1950-74.
Role of Neutrons in Rate Effects of Radiation Among A-Bomb Survivors.
Breast cancer among atomic bomb survivors, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1950-1969.
The atomic bomb survivors and the problem of low-dose radiation effects.
Studies of cancer among the Japanese A-bomb survivors.
Radiosensitivity of skin fibroblasts from atomic bomb survivors with and without breast cancer.
Effects of radiation on incidence of primary liver cancer among atomic bomb survivors.
Present status of surgical adjuvant lung-cancer chemotherapy.
Bronchogenic carcinoma: factors in survival.
Linkage of Wartime Military and Veterans' Records in Cancer Research.
Record Linkage and Cancer Research.
Infectious Mononucleosis and the Empirical Risk of Cancer.
Cancers other than Leukemia.
Comments on "Leukemia risk from neutrons".
Irradiation to the head and neck area and thyroid cancer.
RERF research agenda for studies of radiation-induced cancer.
Developments in assessing carcinogenic risks from radiation.
Leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma.
Recent trends in mesothelioma incidence in the United States.
Results of a pathology review of recent US mesothelioma cases.
Malignant mesothelioma: attributable risk of asbestos exposure.
Childhood thyroid cancer following the Chernobyl accident: a status report.
Epidemiologic studies of thyroid cancer in the CIS. The radiological consequences of the Chernobyl accident.
The stochastic effects of radiation exposure in the Chernobyl liquidator population.
Chernobyl: A Decade.
Chernobyl-related thyroid cancer in children of Belarus: a case-control study.
Histologic verification of leukemia, myelodysplasia, and multiple myeloma diagnoses in patients in Ukraine, 1987–1998.
A cohort study of thyroid cancer and other thyroid diseases after the Chornobyl accident: objectives, design and methods.
Cataract incidence in radar workers.
Assessment of health risks from exposure to ionizing radiation.
Ionizing Radiation and Health: With the late-appearing effects of exposure to ionizing radiation now well identified, research focuses on the measurement of risk.
A methodologic assessment of radiation epidemiology studies.
Critical review of current epidemiological studies on members of the public.
Thyroid nodularity and chromosome aberrations among women in areas of high background radiation in China.
What is desirable and feasible in dose reconstruction for application in epidemiological studies?.
