Geneticist charts effects of nuclear disasters (original) (raw)

MOBILE, Alabama — Dr. Wladimir Wertelecki, a physician, geneticist and professor, could rest on the laurels of a prestigious career with international accomplishments.

But he is more interested in contributing to a clearer scientific and public understanding of the global impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. His ongoing research into the effects of disaster-related radiation and other environmental pollutants on long-term child development has taken him around the world.

Formerly chairman of the Medical Genetics Department at the University of South Alabama from 1974 until 2010, Wertelecki now continues his work along with child development research teams from California, SUNY, Indiana and Emory Universities.

Wertelecki was born in Poland and is fluent in languages of regions impacted by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine. His scientific work is focused on child development matters.

Largely educated in Switzerland and Argentina, where he obtained his medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires, he trained in pediatrics at the Saint Louis Children's Hospital of the Washington University and in Clinical Genetics at the Boston Children's Hospital of the Harvard School of Medicine.

"My aim was to learn medical genetics at a time when there were less than a handful of such fellowships," said Wertelecki.

As a U.S. citizen, he served from 1968 to 1970 as a Senior Surgeon of the United States Public Health Service. He was recruited in 1974 by the University of South Alabama to establish one of the first free-standing Departments of Medical Genetics in the nation, at the emerging USA College of Medicine.

The April 24, 1986, Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine, considered by the International Atomic Energy Agency to be the worst man-made ecological disaster in history, disrupted the lives of millions of people. In its aftermath, most health investigations were focused on cancer induced by radiation, but Wertelecki initiated population studies concerned with ongoing child development, especially birth defects, which continue to this day.

According to the British medical journal Lancet (www.thelancet.com) of April 24, 2010, the results of Wertelecki's child development investigations have re-ignited a controversy among international agencies and scientists concerning the impact of internalized radiation through contaminated food on birth defects.

Since the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011, Wertelecki has been invited as keynote speaker to a growing number of international scientific gatherings concerned with radiation impact on human health and child development. The University of South Alabama is given credit at each presentation as the site where these far-reaching studies originated, Wertelecki said.

The ongoing birth defects population monitoring system established in Ukraine was based on a system the USA Medical Genetics team established in 2000 across 32 counties of South Alabama. Without population monitoring of birth defects, it is difficult to detect the impact of pollutants on the development of babies born in contaminated areas, Wertelecki said.

The conferences are opportunities not only to share results of the investigations in Ukraine, but to stress that "children have the right to be born malformation-free if human society knows how to prevent them," the geneticist emphasized.

"Every disaster injects elements into the environment that threaten children — present and future. So there is a lot of work to do," he concluded.

At a recent scientific colloquium at the University of South Alabama, Wertelecki pointed out two main lessons learned from the Chernobyl and the Fukushima-Daiichi disasters:

"It is not the scale of a nuclear accident itself that makes a human disaster it is the response by officials afterward and the public panic produced. The public should not be treated as idiots and told only the 'good half' of the story, as is often done by official agencies. People have the right to know, the need to believe those who are in charge."

Wertelecki's investigations in Ukraine show elevated population rates of certain types of birth defects, mostly of the brain and spinal cord, according to his 2010 article in "Pediatrics," the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/125/4/e836). However, the geneticist noted, statistics illuminate realities but cannot prove causes.

Wertelecki believes that the often-made comparisons of Chernobyl or Fukushima-Daiichi outcomes with those that followed the atomic bomb explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are wrong.

View full size"Pets Cry" is part of Dr. Wladimir Wertelecki's collection of drawings by Ukraine schoolchildren about the Chernobyl disaster. (Courtesy of Dr. Wladimir Wertelecki)

The impact of the bombs was external radiation, which was intense but short-lived, said the physician. The impact of Chernobyl and Fukushima-Daiichi is ongoing and radiation still in the environment is inhaled or swallowed, leading to accumulation in the body. One mushroom eaten in affected areas may deliver as much radiation as hundreds of chest x-rays, he concluded.

This accumulation is most worrisome for pregnant women. Radiation is an agent that can not only cause birth defects, but alter the human genome with long-term effects on future generations, he stated.

The key population currently under investigation is in the Polissia region of Ukraine, where the population still lives in a radiation-polluted environment. A growing number of infants have been exposed to radiation since their birth. The region, then, is a "natural laboratory" where scientists can learn about the long-term radiation impacts on human health and future generations, stated Wertelecki.

Studies, said the scientist, must look at a host of risk factors for reduced infant brain size in addition to radiation, including maternal drinking of alcohol during pregnancy, maternal nutrition patterns, and other environmental factors.

Ukrainian investigators are currently partnering with six U.S. University teams funded by the National Institutes of Health to study alcohol impact on the unborn there and in selected international sites. Other teams are analyzing radiation accumulation in pregnant women, with Wertelecki serving as the coordinator for the international partnerships (OMNI-Net Ukraine consortium at www.ibis-birthdefects.org/start/uabdp.htm).

A recent review of the results of these studies warranted additional funding from the NIH to expand ongoing investigations. Among his aims, said Wertelecki, is the expansion of the current international research consortium of scientists, "because no single scientific or humanitarian discipline alone can address the complex issues arising from the Chernobyl and Fukushima-Daiichi disasters."

The geneticist gave credit locally to important recently-published contributions by Bin Wang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the Mathematics and Statistics Department of the University of South Alabama. Wang's work has added an important avenue to a better mathematical analysis of growth patterns of Ukrainian children exposed to radiation, Wertelecki said.

Already this year, the much-in-demand keynote speaker has shared his expertise with scientific audiences in Belgium, Switzerland, Ukraine and India. He will soon address other groups in Baltimore, Glasgow, Tokyo, Kyoto and Budapest.

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This story was written by Maurice Gandy, Press-Register Correspondent.

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