John Gofman

John William Gofman M.D., Ph.D., (September 21, 1918 - August 15, 2007) was an American scientist and advocate. He was Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology at University of California at Berkeley. Some of his early work was on the Manhattan Project, and he shares patents on the fissionability of uranium-233 as well as on early processes for separating plutonium from fission products. Dr. Gofman later worked in medicine and led the team that discovered and characterized lipoproteins in the causation of heart disease. In 1963, he established the Biomedical Research Division for the Livermore National Laboratory, where he was on the cutting edge of research into the connection between chromosomal abnormalities and cancer.

Later in life, he took on a role as an advocate warning of dangers involved with nuclear power. From 1971 onward, he was the Chairman of the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for his work on the effects of the Chernobyl disaster's low-level radiation exposure on the population.

Early work
John Gofman was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from Oberlin College with a bachelor's in 1939, and received a doctorate in nuclear and physical chemistry from Berkeley in 1943. In his work as a graduate student, he studied nuclear isotopes and helped to describe several discoveries, including protactinium-232, uranium-232, protactinium-233, and uranium-233. He also helped to work out the fissionability of uranium-233. He later became the group co-leader of the Plutonium Project, an offshoot of the Manhattan Project.

Dr. Gofman earned his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco, in 1946. After that, he and his collaborators investigated the body’s lipoproteins, which contain both proteins and fats, and their circulation within the bloodstream. The researchers described low-density and high-density lipoproteins and their roles in metabolic disorders and coronary disease. This work continued throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s.

At Livermore
Dr. Gofman established the Biomedical Research Division for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1963. In 1964, he raised questions about a lack of data on low-level radiation and also proposed a wide-ranging study of exposure in medicine and the workplace at a symposium for nuclear scientists and engineers. This helped start a national inquiry into the safety of atomic power. With his colleague Dr. Arthur R. Tamplin, Dr. Gofman then looked at health studies of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as other epidemiological studies, and conducted research on radiation’s influences on human chromosomes. The two scientists suggested that federal safety guidelines for low-level exposures be reduced by 90 percent in 1969. The Atomic Energy Commission contested the findings, and "the furor made Dr. Gofman a reluctant figurehead of the antinuclear movement" according to The New York Times. In 1970, he testified in favor of a bill to ban commercial nuclear reactors in New York City and told the City Council that a reactor in an urban environment would be "equal in the opposite direction to all the medical advances put together in the last 25 years."

Opposition to nuclear power
Gofman retired as a teaching professor in 1973 and became a professor emeritus of molecular and cell biology.

Dr. Gofman produced a report after the April 26th, 1986 Chernobyl disaster predicting that there would be 1 million malignancies from the fallout, half of which would be fatal.

After a speech Dr. Gofman gave the summer of 1990 on nuclear waste at a national conference of activists, Charles Butler approached him for help. Charles Butler was a retired physicist living in Needles, California and was looking for help to stop the proposed low-level nuclear waste facility at Ward Valley. Dr. Gofman referred him to the Abalone Alliance Clearinghouse in San Francisco. With less than two weeks before the closure of the Environmental Impact Statement, the Alliance was able to mount a letter writing campaign that helped delay the EIS for an additional 90 days. This initial delay gave activists the time to form Don't Waste California and build a grassroots campaign that eventually stopped Ward Valley from opening.

Dr. Gofman also did work on the Diablo Canyon Power Plant.

Legacy
John Gofman was one of the first scientists who offered a clear path to documenting the long-term harm done by radiation using cancer epidemiology. His approach to taking current real-world data on what was happening in communities of radiation-exposed people and projecting likely cancers in the future was a major leap forward. It made it possible to understand that the likely consequences of low level radiation were much greater than previously described. He understood that cancer develops in different people at different ages, and so constructed tables to "predict" the long-term consequences of exposing large populations to radiation. His 1981 book Radiation and Human Health, described this and many other things that are still very relevant to our struggles for public health protection today.

For those people who also work on chemical hazards and protection of children's health, his 1981 book was one of the first that contained a concept we are finding to be extremely important in chemicals management for public health protection. His study of radiation-induced cancer showed that low dose exposures could do greater damage per unit of dose than high dose exposures (a supralinear dynamic). At a time when accepted truths were derived from high dose Hiroshima and Nagasaki effects, this was a leap forward in thinking about radiation and understanding the hazards of low doses of ionizing radiation. It has only been in the last 5 years that studies have been seen on this same dynamic for some chemical hazards - in lead and mercury induced cognitive damage in children and other areas. The implications for national public health policies are substantial - that for at least some chemicals, our water, food, air, and soil standards may not be sufficient, even when the standards are based on the best available science.

Dr Gofman also lends his name to the satirical Dr. John Gofman Nuclear Pseudoscience Award which is handed out annually to the anti-nuclear person or group that has shown exemplary performance in the areas of statistical fiddling, misrepresentation, bad editing, dimensional inconsistency, crankiness, quotability, misuse or misunderstanding of the scientific method, conspiracy speculation, politicization of science, and general inanity in the relentless pursuit of their cause.

Awards

 * Gold-Headed Cane Award, University of California Medical School, 1946, presented to the graduating senior who most fully personifies the qualities of a "true physician."
 * Modern Medicine Award, 1954, for outstanding contributions to heart disease research.
 * The Lyman Duff Lectureship Award of the American Heart Association in 1965, for research in atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease; lecture published in 1966 as "Ischemic Heart Disease, Atherosclerosis, and Longevity," in Circulation 34: 679-697.
 * The Stouffer Prize (shared) 1972, for outstanding contributions to research in arterioslerosis.
 * American College of Cardiology, 1974; selection as one of twenty-five leading researchers in cardiology of the past quarter-century.
 * University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library, 1988; announcement of the "Gofman Papers" established in the History of Science and Technology Special Collection (October 1988, Bancroftiana, No. 97: 10-11).
 * Right livelihood Award, 1992
 * Honored Speaker for the Meeting of the Arteriosclerosis Section of the American Heart Association, 1993