Val Beral

Infobox_Scientist
name = Valerie Beral


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birth_date = 1946
birth_place = Australia
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nationality = Australian, British
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field = Epidemiology
work_institution = University of Oxford
alma_mater = University of Sydney
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known_for = Breast cancer epidemiology
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Valerie Beral FRS (born 1946) is a distinguished epidemiologist and Fellow of the Royal Society. She has been the Head of Cancer Epidemiology Unit for Cancer Research UK since 1989.

Education and Training

Val Beral was born in Australia in 1946. She received bachelor degrees in both medicine and surgery (graduated with first class honours) from the University of Sydney in 1969 [ [http://archive.sciencewatch.com/interviews/valerie_beral-1.htm Science Watch, "Valerie Beral hunts for the causative agent of Kaposi's Sarcoma" , Nov/Dec 1991] ] . She then spent six months travelling the "hippy trail" through Asia of which she said "That taught me how much I wanted to work. But I still wanted to leave Australia." She then travelled to England where a friend working at the Hammersmith Hospital told of her of a job that she applied for and got.

Career

At Hammersmith Hospital s worked under Charles Fletcher who recognised that she be suited to epidemiology and therefore propelled her toward the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. There she received epidemiological training completing a combined course in Epidemiology & Statistics between 1971-72 under the tutorship of Donald Reid. Beral felt very comfortable with the move because she had never felt happy in clinical medicine. She says that "she had never been able to understand how her peers could be so certain about making decisions on incomplete evidence. Epidemiology has offered her not an escape from that uncertainty but the opportunity to tackle it head on." She also became a member of the Royal College of Physicians.

One of Beral's first interests as a professional epidemiologist was the contraceptive pill because of work she had previously done in family planning. She felt that epidemiology would give her the tools to begin to answer the questions that people had asked her about safety of the pill. Although Beral has moved on to other projects, this is still one area in which the data have yet to provide support for her initial instinct that the contraceptive pill, like pregnancy, will eventually be shown to protect against breast cancer. Later work included the effects of radiation, breast cancer trials and screening, AIDS, gene therapy, Hiroshima survivors, Chernobyl, food toxins, and much else. The British Medical Journal described her tally of jobs, publications, and committees as reading "like a checklist of the epidemiological causes célebres of the past three decades".

Beral completed her training in 1972 and began working for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for a number of years. From there she moved to direct the Cancer Research UK Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford in 1989. Beral said of being offered the role: "One of the major deterrents when I was offered the ICRF job in 1989 was the thought of being so much in the public eye. It's not my nature.""British Medical Journal", 2000 October 28; 321(7268): 1042.]

Beral has served on various international committees for the World Health Organisation and the United States National Academy of Sciences. She also chairs the Department of Health's Advisory Committee on Breast Cancer Screening.

Million Women Study

This was opened in 1997, and has recruited more than 1.3 million UK women over 50 via the NHS breast screening centres. The study is investigating how a woman’s reproductive history can affect women's health, with a particular focus on the effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT). It is the largest such study in the world with 1 in 4 of UK women in the target age group are participating. [http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerandresearch/ourcurrentresearch/researchbygrantee/beral/ Cancer Research UK] ]

In August 2003 Professor Beral’s group published landmark results showing that taking HRT increases a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer with an estimated 20,000 UK women aged 50-64 having possibly developed the disease between 1993 and 2003 due to HRT use. The study also showed that risk increases the longer a woman uses HRT, but drops to the normal level within 5 years after stopping use.

Honours and Awards

*Donald Reid Medal - in 2006 Beral was recognised by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for her ground-breaking work in cancer epidemiology and women’s health, most notably through the Million Women study, as well as her earlier contributions to the School.
*Fellowship of the Royal Society - for scientific contributions to epidemiology.

Personal life

Beral's work is based in Oxford where she has a flat. She also spends time in her house in north London, shared with her American partner, Paul Fine, who works at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has sons. She has said that she maintains close links with her native Australia but "could not imagine returning to live there". Aside from concerns that Australia would hold little for her partner, Beral has also joked that "The population's too small!" to satisfy her needs as an epidemiologist.

References