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Appointments
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Attending Physician
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Attending Radiologist
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Professor of Medicine
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Professor of Radiology
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Becker, David Victor
 (212) 746-4583  (212) 746-8873
Following an internship in Internal Medicine, I was a fellow in the Biophysics Department of the Sloan Kettering Institute from 1950-1952. I then entered the army and was assigned to the Surgical Research Unit at Brooke Army Hospital where I setup a research isotope laboratory and at the same time established the second clinical radioisotope laboratory in the army (at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio). At that time I began the use of tracer technology for in vivo studies of thyroid hormone metabolism and aspects of iodine metabolism as well as studies of the metabolism of labelled thyroid hormones in an isolated liver perfusion apparatus. On leaving the army in 1954, I had a residency in Medicine at the New York Hospital following which I was asked to establish an isotope laboratory at that institution. I have remained there subsequently and to date the laboratory has gradually enlarged to become a major clinical resource.
My interests have been primarily in thyroid physiology, radiation effect upon the thyroid and the management of
clinical thyroid disease. I have been particularly interested in the pathophysiology of thyroid disease in humans and in a variety of animals, including dogs and cats. I have been actice in work in collaboration with veterinarians at the Animal Medical Center in New York in the definition of a new disorder, feline hyperthyroidism. I have also worked to develop and refine primary methods now used routinely for the diagnosis and treatment of hyperthyroidism in cats, now the most common feline endocrine disorder.
Other studies have been directed to iodine and thyroid hormone metabolism in humans in a variety of clinical disorders. Major clinical activities have been focused on the use radioiodine for the management of hyperthyroidism
and thyroid cancer.
Interests in radiation effects and the consequences of radioiodine use have lead to participation in the Brookhaven
Marshall Island studies which included a Brookhaven sponsored 6 weeks Marshall Island visit to evaluate the population exposed in the Bravo nuclear tests. I have been a founding member of the executive committee of the
Thyrotoxicosis Follow-up Study, a USPHS study involving a population of 36,000 hyperthyroid patients, of which 23,000 received radioiodine treatment. Although initiated in 1960, this follow-up study which I now chair, has
continued and represents the largest radioiodine treated hyperthyroid population with careful long-term followup. To date, this study has shown no evidence in significant radiation effects from the radioiodine exposure i.e., no thyroid cancer or leukemia.
From 1983 to the present I have been a participant in the National Cancer Institutes I-131 Risk Assessment Study
Group (mandated by the US Congress to determine the risk factors in radioiodine use). This group evolved into the present Chernobyl Fallout Joint Study Group which I now chair.
I have participated in a number of consultative and policy making committees including the Bureau of Radiological Health of the Food and Drug Administration, AMA Advisory Committee on Radiation, New York City and New
York State Radiation Advisory Committees, NCRP, Environmental Health Committees of the American Thyroid
Association and the New York Academy of Medicine. I have been President of the American Thyroid Association and am presently chair of their Public Health Committee. In recognition of my clinical activities in patient care, I have been cited in the last 3 editions of the Best Physicians in the United States both in the areas of nuclear medicine and thyroid disease.
I am a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and of the American College of Endocrinology and the New York Academy of Medicine. Clinically I consult on patients with complex thyroid disease and diagnosis and management problems.
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M.D., New York University School of Medicine, 1948
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M.A., Columbia University, 1944
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