NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST AND LEADING RESEARCHER ON ENVIRONMENTAL CAUSES OF BREAST CANCER TO SPEAK OCTOBER 24 AS PART OF BARD'S DISTINGUISHED SCIENTIST LECTURE SERIES Devra Lee Davis—Author of When Smoke Ran Like Water, a Finalist for the 2002 National
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—On Friday, October 24, the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series at Bard College will present Dr. Devra Lee Davis, a leading public health expert and research epidemiologist and author of the 2002 National Book Award Finalist When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution. Her work as a renowned epidemiologist and researcher on the environmental causes of breast cancer and chronic disease has made her an internationally known figure. The lecture is free and open to the public and takes place at 3 p.m. in Olin Hall on the Bard College campus. Refreshments will be served after the lecture.
In When Smoke Ran Like Water, Davis confronts both public triumphs and private failures in the battle against environmental pollution. She reports on the deadly London smog of 1952, behind-the-scenes machinations by oil companies and auto manufacturers to keep lead in gasoline, and the pollution that killed many in her own family and forced others—survivors of the 1948 smog emergency in Donora, Pennsylvania—to live out their lives with damaged health.
Dr. Davis is a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School; an honorary professor at London's School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; and an expert adviser to the World Health Organization. Appointed by President Clinton, she served from 1994–99 on the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, an independent executive branch agency that investigates, prevents, and mitigates chemical accidents.As the former senior adviser to the Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services, she has counseled leading officials in the United States and at the United Nations, World Health Organization, and World Bank. A member of both the American Colleges of Toxicology and Epidemiology, Dr. Davis is a visiting professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City and a visiting scientist at the Strang Cornell Cancer Prevention Center of the Rockefeller University. She is the founder of the International Breast Cancer Prevention Collaborative Research Group, an organization dedicated to exploring the causes of breast cancer. She also was a distinguished visiting professor at The Yeshiva University and Stern College for 1996–97, and scholar in residence and executive director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology at the U.S. National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, 1983–93.
Dr. Davis holds a B.S. in physiological psychology and a M.A. in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh. She completed a Ph.D. in science studies at the University of Chicago, as a Danforth Foundation Graduate Fellow and an M.P.H. in epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University, as a Senior National Cancer Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow. She has authored more than 170 articles that have appeared in publications that include Scientific American, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Lancet, and the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, as well as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other mass media outlets.
In a related event being held at Bard on Saturday, October 25, Dr. Davis will be the keynote speaker at the Third Annual Complementary Medicine Conference, presented by Breast Cancer Options and sponsored by River Radiology. She will speak about the environmental connections to cancer. For more information on this conference, please call 845-657-8222 or log onto www.breastcanceroptions.org.
For more information on the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series, call 845-758-7581. For more information on Davis's book, When Smoke Ran Like Water, log onto www.whensmokeranlikewater.com.
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(10.3.03)