Irving Selikoff
Irving John Selikoff (born January 15, 1915 in Brooklyn - † May 20, 1992 in Ridgewood, New Jersey) was an American physician who was responsible for the development of tuberculosis therapies and the research and promotion of the connection between cancer (and other diseases, asbestosis ) and asbestos is known.
Life
Selikoff studied at Columbia University (bachelor's degree) and at the Royal Colleges of Medicine in Scotland (M.-D. degree 1941). He began his specialist training at a hospital in Newark , New Jersey, and then spent over fifty years at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, where he began as an assistant in anatomy and pathology and finally headed the occupational and environmental medicine department from 1966 to 1985, which emerged from the Environmental Science Laboratory he founded .
At Mount Sinai, Selikoff developed a successful tuberculosis therapy with isoniazid and conducted the clinical tests in 1952 with Edward H. Robitzek .
In the mid-1950s he was treating workers for the asbestos workers union, and he noticed an unusual accumulation of mesothelioma among these workers. The connection had already been published by others, but Selikoff carried out systematic interdisciplinary experimental and epidemiological studies (for example of shipyard workers in Long Beach ) and started a campaign that also attracted widespread public attention in the USA. A breakthrough in his campaign against asbestos, which initially met with strong opposition from companies and lobby organizations and made him the target of personal attacks, was a conference of the New York Academy of Sciences on the subject in 1965. Selikoff's efforts have been instrumental in the asbestos regulations that have been passed in the US and other countries.
Selikoff published over 370 scientific articles and edited 13 monographs and oversaw around 70 clinical tests.
In 1955 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research for his tuberculosis therapy. For his asbestos research he became an honorary member of the asbestos workers union. He was president of the American Thoracic Society and the New York Academy of Sciences. In 1979 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .
Selikoff was the founding editor of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine and Environmental Research .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ McCulloch, Tweedale: Shooting the Messenger. The vilification of Irving J. Selikoff . In: Int. J. Health Serv. , Vol. 27, 2007, pp. 619-634, PMID 18072311 .
- ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 7, 2020 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Selikoff, Irving |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Selikoff, Irving John |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American medic |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 15, 1915 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Brooklyn |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 20, 1992 |
| Place of death | Ridgewood, New Jersey |