William Dewey, PhD, FASTRO
On May 7, 2013, Drs. Theodore Phillips, MD, FASTRO, and Mark Dewhirst, DVM, PhD, FASTRO, interviewed Dr. William Dewey, PhD, FASTRO. Dr. Dewey is viewed as a vital contributor to the field of radiation oncology, as well as an influential member of the Society. He received the ASTRO Gold Medal in 1998. Since his retirement, Dr. Dewey enjoys spending time with his family, as well as tutoring local elementary school students in San Rafael, Calif.
Dr. Phillips: Bill, tell us about where you were born, and where you grew up, and what your parents were doing and how they treated you.
Dr. Dewey: I was born in Omaha, Nebraska, when my father was going to medical school in 1929. We moved around various places during the Second World War, because my dad was called back in after the First World War, and my mother and father wanted to keep the family consisting of me and my sister together. Dad could have remained as a doctor on the Indian reservation in Idaho, but he wanted to serve his country again.
Dr. Phillips: Was your dad a physician while you were moving around the country?
Dr. Dewey: Yes. He was actually with the Army Air Force as a medical doctor. He was in New York for a while and Kansas and Missouri. So, we as a family stayed with him.
Dr. Phillips: So then where did you end up after the war was over?
Dr. Dewey: We ended up in Wichita, Kansas, and then went back to an Indian reservation in Washington where he went back as a doctor again on the Indian reservation.
Dr. Dewhirst: So where did you go to high school, then?
Dr. Dewey: I went to five different high schools and ended up at Coulee Dam High School in the state of Washington.
Dr. Phillips: I notice you went to UW, right? For undergrad?
Dr. Dewey: At the University of Washington, I got a BS degree in physics and graduated in 1951.
Dr. Phillips: Okay, were there any honors attached to that?
Dr. Dewey: Yes, Phi Beta Kappa.
Dr. Dewhirst: That's amazing you did that with all that moving around. You must have established some kind of survivorship skills or something.
Dr. Dewey: Well, I think so. Every time I'd go to a new school I'd meet the principal and he'd say, "Well, you've done well up to now, but our school is tough." So I accepted the challenge and managed to keep a straight-A average.
Dr. Dewhirst: It's incredible. And then how did you get involved in being interested in graduate school?
Dr. Dewey: Well, that actually came from my experience in the Navy. When I was in the Navy, I was assigned to an aircraft carrier, and was designated as the atomic biological and chemical warfare defense officer. At that time, I went to a two-week school at Hunters Point and Treasure Island, where I learned about radiation effects. I thought, that this was interesting and that maybe I should pursue this field in graduate school. So this got me involved in radiation research.
Dr. Phillips: When were you at Hunters Point, Bill?
Dr. Dewey: I was there for about two weeks during the Korean War in about 1952 or '53.
Dr. Phillips: Did you get taken into the Navy, then, right after college?
Dr. Dewey: I was in Naval ROTC, which meant I volunteered to serve three years. So right when I graduated I went into the Navy for three years as a junior officer.
Dr. Phillips: You were, then, in the Navy as a radiation safety officer?
Dr. Dewey: Well, just a regular line officer, but they saw my background in math and physics; so they gave me the job of what they call ABC Officer -- atomic/biologic/chemical warfare officer.
Dr. Phillips: While you were in college, were you involved in any sports or anything like that?
Dr. Dewey: I used to run the 440 yard race in track. I wasn't at all outstanding, but I did compete.
Dr. Phillips: Were you a skier back then?
Dr. Dewey: I didn't start to ski until I moved to Colorado in 1965; so I was a bit older when I started skiing. But then I skied all the time.
Dr. Phillips: Yeah, I know that you were a super skier then later in life. Do you still ski?
Dr. Dewey: Well, I quit skiing about a year ago and mainly because the snowboarders chased me off the hill. They have so much momentum, I didn't want to be hit and break my hip or something; so I quit skiing then.
Dr. Dewhirst: You could get killed out there by those guys.
Dr. Dewey: Yeah, I know.
Dr. Phillips: Well, tell us a little bit about how you decided where to go to graduate school and what to study.
Dr. Dewey: Well, again, it came from my Navy experience. I started looking at various places that would have a program related to radiation effects. I applied to the University of Rochester, Berkeley and other places, and I got a very nice letter back from my -- it turned out to be my advisor at the University of Rochester - telling me about his projects which had to do with utilizing radioactive antibodies. He wanted to destroy tumors with radioactive isotopes attached to antibodies. I thought that was interesting. So I joined him and did my graduate work at the University of Rochester.
Dr. Dewhirst: And who was your PhD advisor?
Dr. Dewey: His name was William Bale. He was interested in antibody immunology, so my job was to figure out how fast the antibody could get to the tumor, if we had a perfect antibody. So I studied the kinetics of vascular extravascular exchange of plasma proteins for my thesis.
Dr. Dewhirst: That's right. I remember having this conversation with you one time.
Dr. Dewey: Oh, really?
Dr. Dewhirst: Yeah. I've done a lot of work in that area, too. And where did you go after your PhD?
Dr. Dewey: I went down to MD Anderson Hospital in Houston with Warren Sinclair, who hired me essentially to run the radioisotope lab. I was in charge of the clinical radioisotope lab. We'd give I-131 labeled colloids gold etc. to patients. It was my job to make sure that we knew what we were doing with the utilization of radioisotopes.
Dr. Phillips: You were really working as a physicist at your first job at Anderson.
Dr. Dewey: Yeah, that's right.
Dr. Dewhirst: Who was your first graduate student?
Dr. Dewey: My first graduate student was Peter Corry. Yeah, he got a masters degree.
Dr. Dewhirst: Wasn't he working on kind of an early version of a PET scanner or a gamma camera?
Dr. Dewey: A gamma camera, that's right. He had the idea for that, and developed that for his masters degree, and actually it was one of the first ideas of using a gamma camera for mapping the localization of radioisotopes.
Dr. Phillips: Well, while you were there at Anderson you must have gotten involved in laboratory research as well as running the isotope lab. What got you started and what did you do?
Dr. Dewey: Well, what happened there --Warren Sinclair had a grant, and he left the grant with Ron Humphrey and me. The grant was awarded to look at the radiosensitivity of tumor cells versus normal cells. So we got involved in carrying out research using his grant, and then later we got our own grant at NIH. I did that when I was also running the radioisotope lab, but that was my research interest.
Dr. Dewhirst: Did this precede the work of Ted Puck or was it at the same time?
Dr. Dewey: Well, about the same time, yeah. His clonogenic survival curves emphasized effects during the cell cycle.
Dr. Dewhirst: So a lot of that work that Warren Sinclair published on cell cycle was stuff you were working on.
Dr. Dewey: Yes, he could have done that at MD Anderson, but he left MD Anderson and went to Argonne where he studied effects during the cell cycle. Ron Humphrey and I followed up on that, but we emphasized chromosomal aberrations and showed that the variation during the cell cycle in chromosomal aberrations correlated with the clonogenic survival or killing of the cells.
Dr. Phillips: But you really didn't do a formal post-doc -- is that right, Bill?
Dr. Dewey: Exactly. Never had a formal post-doc at all. I immediately had the responsibility of the radioisotope lab, and then Ron Humphrey and I started doing our research. I never really had a post-doc.
Dr. Dewhirst: Well, how did you do so well without a post-doc?
Dr. Dewey: Well, I had pretty good experience as a graduate student, doing my own thing with Bill Bale who primariy left it up to me to design and carry out my experiments. However, I did interact with a lot of people. For example, we had Leon Miller there who was a great scientist known for his work utilizing liver perfusions. So, I just started interacting with a lot of people and learning and doing many things.
Dr. Phillips: Okay, Mark. Do you want to go for the next question?
Dr. Dewhirst: Well, I'm just curious. So how many years were you at MD Anderson?
Dr. Dewey: I was actually there for seven years. It was '58 to '65.
Dr. Dewhirst: Okay, and then what -- you went to Colorado after that?
Dr. Dewey: I went to Fort Collins, Colorado, Colorado State in 1965.
Dr. Dewhirst: In '65, so you were there before I got there, because I thought somehow I got the impression you came after I was there. But anyway, how did you get convinced to go there?
Dr. Dewey: Well, again, circumstances. I had an advisor at the University of Rochester, who went to Colorado State. His name was Adrian Dahl. He set up a training program at Colorado State, and he said, "You'd better come up here and be part of our program." I said, "Oh, I don't know about that." I went up there a couple of times and could see they were really doing things up there. So knowing him and other people I met, I decided to go Colorado State.
Dr. Phillips: Was that in the veterinary school?
Dr. Dewey: Yeah, that's part of the College of Veterinary Medicine.
Dr. Dewhirst: It was a very unique department if you could just explain that, because -- and it still is -- but at the time it was quite unique.
Dr. Dewey: Well, it got started by Bill Carlson. I understand he started it probably in 1958 or '60-something like that with himself and one technician in radiology, and then he and Adrian Dahl developed a training program in radiological health and also got a grant to develop a beagle colony for studying radiation effects of radiation on animals during embryological development.
Dr. Phillips: And then who else came along there? You were then the next faculty member added?
Dr. Dewey: Just about as well as Ed Gillette. And then George Angelton came along. Well, he was actually there before I was, I think, but then we started just adding people. We had a good training program, and research programs started to develop.
Dr. Phillips: Maybe both of you would comment, but my impression was that it was by far the best radiation research and radiation therapy department in a veterinary school in the country. Is that true?
Dr. Dewhirst: Oh, that's for sure. But I think it was probably one of the best radiobiology programs in the country -- period.
Dr. Dewey: It was. It was the best program, yeah.
Dr. Dewhirst: And it's amazing it survived because there's hardly any left besides that one. But it was really in the heyday when I was there.
Dr. Phillips: Bill, you stayed there until when?
Dr. Dewey: I stayed there until 1981 when I went out to San Francisco with you.
Dr. Phillips: What got you to leave there and come to San Francisco?
Dr. Dewey: Well, that's a good question. You may remember during negotiations when I decided I was going to go and then I wasn't going to go and went back and forth, and finally I went out on a lake for about a week and meditated and I said, "Well, I'd better do something different. Otherwise I'll end up in Colorado doing the same thing." So I wanted a new experience, and I thought going out there with you would be a good idea and that's what I did.
Dr. Phillips: And who did you bring there with you or who did you add to your radiation research department?
Dr. Dewey: When I went out to San Francisco I just took people who worked for me, some of the students who finished up out there and got their degree from CSU. Also a couple of technical people joined me, including Rosemary Wong as a junior scientist.
Dr. Dewhirst: So it kind of gets us to a question I want to ask, and we have to get to it anyway, and that is how many PhD students did you have in your career?
Dr. Dewey: Well, I've had about 25 or 26 students, PhD students, and I have about the same number of post-docs.
Dr. Dewhirst: And of those prior trainees, how many have been prominent and remained in the field that you would care to mention?
Dr. Dewey: Oh, we've got to mention Leo Gerweck, Mike Freeman, Gary Blackburn, Steve Sapareto, Dennis Leeper, Mike Borrelli, Yong Lee, Pete Raaphorst, and June Carver and Ira Spiro who are deceased.
Dr. Dewhirst: So Peter.
Dr. Dewey: Oh, yeah, Peter Corry. Can't forget him. Yeah.
Dr. Phillips: And, Mark, were you with Bill there at CSU?
Dr. Dewhirst: Well, Bill was on my committee. I kind of thought of Bill as my informal advisor, because the stuff I was doing was so remotely related to anything Ed knew about that I relied more on Bill for advice than I did on Ed. And you could have easily been my mentor, Bill.
Dr. Dewey: I know I'm pretty close to what you're doing, and I had quite a bit to say about what you were doing, I think.
Dr. Phillips: So, Bill, the next question I think is very important. You're famous for your work in hyperthermia. How did you get interested in it and what drew you toward it?
Dr. Dewey: Well, again, it's sort of serendipity. I was contacted by Arthur Westra in Holland, and he said he wanted to come over and do some cell kinetics work in my lab. So, that's fine since we're looking at the effects of radiation on cell cycle progression. And once he came into my lab, he said, "You know, I think we ought to look at the effects of hyperthermia in relation to the cell cycle.” He called it heat and showed me some survival curves he had obtained for his thesis. I encouraged him to write it up. He said, "I think it would really be very interesting to look at effects of hyperthermia during the cell cycle." So I said, "I agree with you. Let's do that." So we did the experiment which showed that when cells were resistant to radiation during the S phase, during DNA synthesis, they are most sensitive to hyperthermia. So Arthur Westra got me involved in hyperthermia research.
Dr. Phillips: Okay, and then did you bring other people in with you? I know, Mark, you got heavily involved with that. Was it while you were still in Colorado or later?
Dr. Dewhirst: I dabbled in it in Colorado. Yeah, one chapter of my thesis was on hyperthermia. Bill and Steve's work in thermal dosimetry was absolutely essential to the field and, Bill, you might describe that a little bit.
Dr. Dewey: Well, Steve Sapareto, one of my graduate students and I thought it would be very important, essential, to be able to quantify the amount of heat delivered, that is, the heat dose. As you probably know, when you start heating you don't just have one temperature. It goes up and down and things like that. So we wanted to be able to integrate over a period of time what was happening in terms of thermal dose. So we observed, as other people had, that if you change the temperature by one degree, you have to change the time by about a factor of two to have the same amount of heat damage. So we had this relationship of time/temperature, and we'd just integrate that over a period of time and get everything in terms of equivalent minutes at 43 degrees. And that was the thermal dose concept that Steve and I worked out.
Dr. Phillips: Do you think that was the most important concept you came up with during your whole career in hyperthermia?
Dr. Dewey: Well, I don't know. That certainly was pretty important, I guess, in quantifying hyperthermia dose, but the effects during the cell cycle, I think, were also fairly important or relevant, at least, to the idea of killing cells and radiosensitizing cells by heat. Thermal dose applies both in terms of hyperthermia toxicity and hyperthermic radiosensitization.
Dr. Phillips: Now why do you think the hyperthermia hasn't succeeded in the clinic?
Dr. Dewey: Well, that's a good question. I've always been concerned about the interaction between the basic scientists and clinicians. It seemed like we sort of lacked the clinical leadership that we needed there to push the concepts through with the trials. I was never very happy about how they went. But I don't know, what do you think? You were in it, Ted.
Dr. Phillips: Well, I think it got commercialized way too early.
Dr. Dewey: Oh, yeah. I agree with that.
Dr. Phillips: With a lot of hype and before the basic biologic and physical structure was there to support it. Mark, what do you think?
Dr. Dewhirst: Oh, I agree. I think it was lack of quality assurance and you had two negative RTOG trials in the very infancy of the field and it just killed it. And we kept it going for 20 years, but it's been slow, kind of a slow death. And it may come back at some point, but it's going to have to come back in a different way. As I was mentioning to Ted earlier that I think one of the other things that really contributed to the demise of the field was a lack of appropriate reimbursement for the effort spent to actually treat patients. And it doesn't pay for itself so it just is really difficult to get people motivated to do it, particularly today.
Dr. Dewey: I think these comments apply to proton therapy as well.
Dr. Dewhirst: Yes, exactly. Works as well, too, but…
Dr. Phillips: Okay, Bill, maybe you could comment a little bit on the work you did with the Radiation Research Society and ASTRO.
Dr. Dewey: Okay. With the Radiation Research Society, I was president of the Society in about 1989, and received the Failla Lecture Award for work I'd done in radiation and hyperthermia. I received the Gold Medal from ASTRO in 1998 and the Mentor Award from RRS in 2004. And I was program chairman for the International Radiation Research meeting in Toronto in 1991. That was quite an effort, and I think we had a good meeting up there. And I was also interested in hyperthermia related to radiation, so as I ran an international hyperthermia conference in Colorado in 1980, I always thought we should have more interaction between hyperthermia and radiation. It bothered me a little bit to see hyperthermia people kind of go off by themselves.
Dr. Phillips: Well, Bill, let's get on to something more fun. Tell us about your hobbies. I know you're famous as a skier and as a sailboarder. Is that true? Are you still doing any of it?
Dr. Dewey: Well, I'm not skiing anymore. I told you about that story with the snow boarders, and I'm not sailboarding anymore, either. I used to do what we call wind surfing or sailboarding, whatever, but my hobby now primarily is hiking and going down to the gym three times a week to try to keep myself agile. And I try to read a lot of interesting things. So I don't have any specific hobbies.
Dr. Phillips: You had that big house that you rebuilt out in the woods. Did you sell that and move?
Dr. Dewey: We sold that house and moved into Sausalito. We rent a place about two blocks up from the water, and we can look down and see all the boats go by. It's a very nice place in Sausalito, nice walking which I do. I walk various places and get my exercise.
Dr. Phillips: Okay. Can you tell us something about your married life, and who you married, and when and then about your children and what they've done?
Dr. Dewey: Okay. Well, I was first married in 1951 to Helen, and we had four kids. And then I got divorced in 1980 right before I came to San Francisco in 1981. I met Gail in 1982 and we got married in '83. And now we have a son born in 1983 who is now a student over in Australia. He's working for his masters degree in sustainable energy. He wants to come back and get involved in that. He wants to do something relevant. He got his mechanical engineering degree at UC Santa Barbara. Now he'll get a masters degree in sustainable energy. I have four kids in Colorado. My oldest son has his own construction company. And I have two daughters involved in accounting and managing, with one in landscape architecture. One daughter is a teacher in elementary school. They're all doing well, as well as my six grandchildren in Colorado whom I enjoy seeing frequently.
Dr. Dewhirst: How old are your grandkids?
Dr. Dewey: Well, my grandkids go from about 28 down to about 18.
Dr. Dewhirst: That's great.
Dr. Dewey: And they come out and visit me every now and then which is nice, and I go back there and see them sometimes.
Dr. Phillips: Bill, could you tell us something about your experience with the grant system and some of the memorable grants that you had in your career?
Dr. Dewey: My own grants, you mean?
Dr. Phillips: Yeah.
Dr. Dewey: Well, my grants initially were related to radiation effects during the cell cycle. That's where we made our mark, Ron Humphrey and I. And then later I shifted more into the mechanistic approach following up on chromosome aberrations and genetic mutations resulting from DNA damage and misrepair. So when I went on sabbatical, I learned some molecular techniques related to assaying for exchanges at the molecular level, in other words studying effects of radiation and hyperthermia at the molecular level.
Dr. Dewhirst: Where did you do your Sabbatical?
Dr. Dewey: I did two sabbaticals. One was 1971 and '72 in Lausanne, Switzerland -- the Cancer Institute in Switzerland. And that's where I learned how to work with chromatin.
Dr. Phillips: Who did you work with there?
Dr. Dewey: A guy by the name of Ron Hancock, and Peter Nobis and I worked together. And that's when we showed that heat led to aggregation of protein on the DNA. The second sabbatical was in 1991 and '92 after I went to San Francisco in 1981. I went to the Gray Laboratory in London and worked with Janet Arrand and her group, learning molecular techniques. That's when I learned to do southern blots and northern blots, and working with Helen Forrester after I returned to San Francisco, we used these techniques to assay DNA damage at the molecular level. That's where I got that background which led to continued funding. I've had grants all the way from 1960 to 2004.
Dr. Phillips: Your last grant was the one on looking at cell death, is that correct?
Dr. Dewey: Well, related to DNA damage that resulted in apoptosis or necrosis.
Dr. Phillips: Right.
Dr. Dewey: Apoptosis, that's right. Apoptosis in the human colon carcinoma cells that we quantified with computerized video microscopy.
Dr. Dewhirst: I still have those movies. I still show them to people.
Dr. Dewey: Yeah, they were very informative. And I had the help of some pretty good people on how to analyze the movies. Norm Albright, in our department, helped us by writing the codes and programs so we could analyze quantitatively what was happening with these cells as we'd follow them in the pedigrees.
Dr. Phillips: You were very successful at grants. What are the secrets to being good at getting funded continuously?
Dr. Dewey: Well, I guess just getting results that's published, and showing you can follow up on things that have been observed. Try to do good science that is relevant, is all I can say.
Dr. Phillips: Do the science and write it up timely-wise, I guess.
Dr. Dewey: Oh, yes. Oh, definitely. You have to do it, and you have to write it up. Definitely, you have to write it up in a timely manner. That was one of the first arguments I had with Arthur Westra when he came over from Holland. He'd done good work over there, but he wouldn't publish it. I said, "Arthur, you have to publish it." He'd say, "Well, I don't know why Bill is so eager to get things published." I said, "You've got to publish. You've got to let people know what you've done. Get it in the literature." It's really important!
Dr. Phillips: Well, Bill, I first met you when you were treasurer of Rad-Res and I was so impressed with your organization and organizing abilities. And I think that probably has paid off in your grant success as well.
Dr. Dewey: Maybe, I don't know. I know that in the job as treasurer, I had to trace the funds and find out what was going on. That was quite a job, an interesting job.
Dr. Phillips: Okay, Mark, do you have some questions?
Dr. Dewhirst: Yeah, I do. So I'm wondering, looking back on your career, can you tell us what was the most interesting or fun thing that you ever did as a scientist? It could have been something at a meeting; it could have been some kind of anecdote. What stands out as being really just a great memory?
Dr. Dewey: Well, as you probably know, I've always enjoyed over the years having the party at the Radiation Research Society with Peter Corry and Doug Spitz. We'd have this party, everybody's invited. Students, anybody is coming. We'd always have those parties and these are great memories, the interaction we had between the people there at these informal parties we'd have in our room until we were thrown out by the hotel.
Dr. Phillips: Yeah, I remember those. They were fabulous. Bill, did you do any visiting professorships? You told us about your sabbaticals, but are there places that you remember that were...
Dr. Dewey: I can’t think of any specific visiting professorships. Nothing formal like that. Just my traveling around visiting people. I can't think of any specific visiting professorships.
Dr. Phillips: Okay. Do you have any favorite sayings?
Dr. Dewey: Well, one thing that comes to mind, I'm always stressing positive entropy. You have to recognize it and thwart it. In other words, you have to continually put in energy to keep the positive disorder as positive entropy from occurring. It happens all the time in life and in science. You've got to be aware of these things. It takes a lot of effort, to put a lot of energy in to prevent too much positive entropy or disorder from occurring.
Dr. Phillips: So you put energy in.
Dr. Dewey: You put energy in, yeah, in order to thwart the disorder that's occurring, which is what they call positive entropy, delta S they call it.
Dr. Phillips: Okay. Mark, do you have any more questions?
Dr. Dewhirst: I don't think so. Is there anything we forgot that you would like to pass along, a memory of your time in ASTRO or science in general?
Dr. Dewey: Not in particular. It's been a great time in all these different scientific interactions -- ASTRO and Radiation Research, in particular, and then the Hyperthermia Society which is still budding. Most importantly, I get so much satisfaction in seeing students succeed. And that is most important of any accomplishment -- students like Mark Dewhirst, Mike Freeman, Peter Corry and others. And now, to follow up on that, you're looking at people who are going up at the top of the ladder into their careers. Now I am a volunteer in the school system here in Marin County in San Rafael in an area having primarily Hispanic kids. I go to the school three days a week, two hours a day helping with arithmetic and things like that. So helping these fifth graders and working with them as they move forward gives me great satisfaction.
Dr. Dewhirst: That's great. What a terrific thing to do.
Dr. Dewey: Well, people said, "Why do you want to do that? You can do more important things." What's more important than working with individual kids? I get a lot of satisfaction out of that and I think they enjoy me, too, some of the stories I have to tell and things like that.
Dr. Phillips: Are they in the high school at San Rafael High?
Dr. Dewey: No, it's actually out in the canal area in San Rafael. Bahia Vista is the name of the school, if you know where that is, Ted, out in the canal area.
Dr. Phillips: But that's a middle school, I think.
Dr. Dewey: No, that's the grammar school, the elementary school up to the sixth grade and then they go to the middle school at Davidson.
Dr. Phillips: I know where it is. Okay.
Dr. Dewey: So I'm working primarily with fifth graders in arithmetic. So I have to go back and learn how to multiply and divide and various things like that.
Dr. Phillips: Are you allowed to use a calculator?
Dr. Dewey: Well, they're learning how to use calculators. But a lot of this they have to do without a calculator. Like when I was over there on Monday a little kid was having trouble with long division and I said, "Well, let's figure out how to do that." So they have to learn things like that without the calculator and then later they can use a calculator. But they have to do it without a calculator, too.
Dr. Dewhirst: First they have to understand exactly what they're doing. That's great.
Dr. Dewey: Exactly.
Dr. Phillips: Okay, Bill. Again, anything we forgot?
Dr. Dewey: No, I don't think so. I think you guys were pretty complete.
Dr. Phillips: Okay, Mark, anything else you want...
Dr. Dewhirst: I can't think of anything else, but this has been really fun.
Dr. Phillips: I'm happy you could join us, Mark.
Dr. Dewey: Good talking to you guys. Keep it up. You're all doing great work. And you, too, Mark. By the way, you've done so well, and you as one of our former students doing so well gives me a great deal of satisfaction.
Dr. Phillips: Well, it's wonderful to have you two guys having gotten Gold Medals. It shows ASTRO has some recognition of the importance of biology, at least.
Dr. Dewhirst: They do and maybe it will continue. We'll see. I hope so.
Dr. Phillips: Bill, tell us about where you were born, and where you grew up, and what your parents were doing and how they treated you.
Dr. Dewey: I was born in Omaha, Nebraska, when my father was going to medical school in 1929. We moved around various places during the Second World War, because my dad was called back in after the First World War, and my mother and father wanted to keep the family consisting of me and my sister together. Dad could have remained as a doctor on the Indian reservation in Idaho, but he wanted to serve his country again.
Dr. Phillips: Was your dad a physician while you were moving around the country?
Dr. Dewey: Yes. He was actually with the Army Air Force as a medical doctor. He was in New York for a while and Kansas and Missouri. So, we as a family stayed with him.
Dr. Phillips: So then where did you end up after the war was over?
Dr. Dewey: We ended up in Wichita, Kansas, and then went back to an Indian reservation in Washington where he went back as a doctor again on the Indian reservation.
Dr. Dewhirst: So where did you go to high school, then?
Dr. Dewey: I went to five different high schools and ended up at Coulee Dam High School in the state of Washington.
Dr. Phillips: I notice you went to UW, right? For undergrad?
Dr. Dewey: At the University of Washington, I got a BS degree in physics and graduated in 1951.
Dr. Phillips: Okay, were there any honors attached to that?
Dr. Dewey: Yes, Phi Beta Kappa.
Dr. Dewhirst: That's amazing you did that with all that moving around. You must have established some kind of survivorship skills or something.
Dr. Dewey: Well, I think so. Every time I'd go to a new school I'd meet the principal and he'd say, "Well, you've done well up to now, but our school is tough." So I accepted the challenge and managed to keep a straight-A average.
Dr. Dewhirst: It's incredible. And then how did you get involved in being interested in graduate school?
Dr. Dewey: Well, that actually came from my experience in the Navy. When I was in the Navy, I was assigned to an aircraft carrier, and was designated as the atomic biological and chemical warfare defense officer. At that time, I went to a two-week school at Hunters Point and Treasure Island, where I learned about radiation effects. I thought, that this was interesting and that maybe I should pursue this field in graduate school. So this got me involved in radiation research.
Dr. Phillips: When were you at Hunters Point, Bill?
Dr. Dewey: I was there for about two weeks during the Korean War in about 1952 or '53.
Dr. Phillips: Did you get taken into the Navy, then, right after college?
Dr. Dewey: I was in Naval ROTC, which meant I volunteered to serve three years. So right when I graduated I went into the Navy for three years as a junior officer.
Dr. Phillips: You were, then, in the Navy as a radiation safety officer?
Dr. Dewey: Well, just a regular line officer, but they saw my background in math and physics; so they gave me the job of what they call ABC Officer -- atomic/biologic/chemical warfare officer.
Dr. Phillips: While you were in college, were you involved in any sports or anything like that?
Dr. Dewey: I used to run the 440 yard race in track. I wasn't at all outstanding, but I did compete.
Dr. Phillips: Were you a skier back then?
Dr. Dewey: I didn't start to ski until I moved to Colorado in 1965; so I was a bit older when I started skiing. But then I skied all the time.
Dr. Phillips: Yeah, I know that you were a super skier then later in life. Do you still ski?
Dr. Dewey: Well, I quit skiing about a year ago and mainly because the snowboarders chased me off the hill. They have so much momentum, I didn't want to be hit and break my hip or something; so I quit skiing then.
Dr. Dewhirst: You could get killed out there by those guys.
Dr. Dewey: Yeah, I know.
Dr. Phillips: Well, tell us a little bit about how you decided where to go to graduate school and what to study.
Dr. Dewey: Well, again, it came from my Navy experience. I started looking at various places that would have a program related to radiation effects. I applied to the University of Rochester, Berkeley and other places, and I got a very nice letter back from my -- it turned out to be my advisor at the University of Rochester - telling me about his projects which had to do with utilizing radioactive antibodies. He wanted to destroy tumors with radioactive isotopes attached to antibodies. I thought that was interesting. So I joined him and did my graduate work at the University of Rochester.
Dr. Dewhirst: And who was your PhD advisor?
Dr. Dewey: His name was William Bale. He was interested in antibody immunology, so my job was to figure out how fast the antibody could get to the tumor, if we had a perfect antibody. So I studied the kinetics of vascular extravascular exchange of plasma proteins for my thesis.
Dr. Dewhirst: That's right. I remember having this conversation with you one time.
Dr. Dewey: Oh, really?
Dr. Dewhirst: Yeah. I've done a lot of work in that area, too. And where did you go after your PhD?
Dr. Dewey: I went down to MD Anderson Hospital in Houston with Warren Sinclair, who hired me essentially to run the radioisotope lab. I was in charge of the clinical radioisotope lab. We'd give I-131 labeled colloids gold etc. to patients. It was my job to make sure that we knew what we were doing with the utilization of radioisotopes.
Dr. Phillips: You were really working as a physicist at your first job at Anderson.
Dr. Dewey: Yeah, that's right.
Dr. Dewhirst: Who was your first graduate student?
Dr. Dewey: My first graduate student was Peter Corry. Yeah, he got a masters degree.
Dr. Dewhirst: Wasn't he working on kind of an early version of a PET scanner or a gamma camera?
Dr. Dewey: A gamma camera, that's right. He had the idea for that, and developed that for his masters degree, and actually it was one of the first ideas of using a gamma camera for mapping the localization of radioisotopes.
Dr. Phillips: Well, while you were there at Anderson you must have gotten involved in laboratory research as well as running the isotope lab. What got you started and what did you do?
Dr. Dewey: Well, what happened there --Warren Sinclair had a grant, and he left the grant with Ron Humphrey and me. The grant was awarded to look at the radiosensitivity of tumor cells versus normal cells. So we got involved in carrying out research using his grant, and then later we got our own grant at NIH. I did that when I was also running the radioisotope lab, but that was my research interest.
Dr. Dewhirst: Did this precede the work of Ted Puck or was it at the same time?
Dr. Dewey: Well, about the same time, yeah. His clonogenic survival curves emphasized effects during the cell cycle.
Dr. Dewhirst: So a lot of that work that Warren Sinclair published on cell cycle was stuff you were working on.
Dr. Dewey: Yes, he could have done that at MD Anderson, but he left MD Anderson and went to Argonne where he studied effects during the cell cycle. Ron Humphrey and I followed up on that, but we emphasized chromosomal aberrations and showed that the variation during the cell cycle in chromosomal aberrations correlated with the clonogenic survival or killing of the cells.
Dr. Phillips: But you really didn't do a formal post-doc -- is that right, Bill?
Dr. Dewey: Exactly. Never had a formal post-doc at all. I immediately had the responsibility of the radioisotope lab, and then Ron Humphrey and I started doing our research. I never really had a post-doc.
Dr. Dewhirst: Well, how did you do so well without a post-doc?
Dr. Dewey: Well, I had pretty good experience as a graduate student, doing my own thing with Bill Bale who primariy left it up to me to design and carry out my experiments. However, I did interact with a lot of people. For example, we had Leon Miller there who was a great scientist known for his work utilizing liver perfusions. So, I just started interacting with a lot of people and learning and doing many things.
Dr. Phillips: Okay, Mark. Do you want to go for the next question?
Dr. Dewhirst: Well, I'm just curious. So how many years were you at MD Anderson?
Dr. Dewey: I was actually there for seven years. It was '58 to '65.
Dr. Dewhirst: Okay, and then what -- you went to Colorado after that?
Dr. Dewey: I went to Fort Collins, Colorado, Colorado State in 1965.
Dr. Dewhirst: In '65, so you were there before I got there, because I thought somehow I got the impression you came after I was there. But anyway, how did you get convinced to go there?
Dr. Dewey: Well, again, circumstances. I had an advisor at the University of Rochester, who went to Colorado State. His name was Adrian Dahl. He set up a training program at Colorado State, and he said, "You'd better come up here and be part of our program." I said, "Oh, I don't know about that." I went up there a couple of times and could see they were really doing things up there. So knowing him and other people I met, I decided to go Colorado State.
Dr. Phillips: Was that in the veterinary school?
Dr. Dewey: Yeah, that's part of the College of Veterinary Medicine.
Dr. Dewhirst: It was a very unique department if you could just explain that, because -- and it still is -- but at the time it was quite unique.
Dr. Dewey: Well, it got started by Bill Carlson. I understand he started it probably in 1958 or '60-something like that with himself and one technician in radiology, and then he and Adrian Dahl developed a training program in radiological health and also got a grant to develop a beagle colony for studying radiation effects of radiation on animals during embryological development.
Dr. Phillips: And then who else came along there? You were then the next faculty member added?
Dr. Dewey: Just about as well as Ed Gillette. And then George Angelton came along. Well, he was actually there before I was, I think, but then we started just adding people. We had a good training program, and research programs started to develop.
Dr. Phillips: Maybe both of you would comment, but my impression was that it was by far the best radiation research and radiation therapy department in a veterinary school in the country. Is that true?
Dr. Dewhirst: Oh, that's for sure. But I think it was probably one of the best radiobiology programs in the country -- period.
Dr. Dewey: It was. It was the best program, yeah.
Dr. Dewhirst: And it's amazing it survived because there's hardly any left besides that one. But it was really in the heyday when I was there.
Dr. Phillips: Bill, you stayed there until when?
Dr. Dewey: I stayed there until 1981 when I went out to San Francisco with you.
Dr. Phillips: What got you to leave there and come to San Francisco?
Dr. Dewey: Well, that's a good question. You may remember during negotiations when I decided I was going to go and then I wasn't going to go and went back and forth, and finally I went out on a lake for about a week and meditated and I said, "Well, I'd better do something different. Otherwise I'll end up in Colorado doing the same thing." So I wanted a new experience, and I thought going out there with you would be a good idea and that's what I did.
Dr. Phillips: And who did you bring there with you or who did you add to your radiation research department?
Dr. Dewey: When I went out to San Francisco I just took people who worked for me, some of the students who finished up out there and got their degree from CSU. Also a couple of technical people joined me, including Rosemary Wong as a junior scientist.
Dr. Dewhirst: So it kind of gets us to a question I want to ask, and we have to get to it anyway, and that is how many PhD students did you have in your career?
Dr. Dewey: Well, I've had about 25 or 26 students, PhD students, and I have about the same number of post-docs.
Dr. Dewhirst: And of those prior trainees, how many have been prominent and remained in the field that you would care to mention?
Dr. Dewey: Oh, we've got to mention Leo Gerweck, Mike Freeman, Gary Blackburn, Steve Sapareto, Dennis Leeper, Mike Borrelli, Yong Lee, Pete Raaphorst, and June Carver and Ira Spiro who are deceased.
Dr. Dewhirst: So Peter.
Dr. Dewey: Oh, yeah, Peter Corry. Can't forget him. Yeah.
Dr. Phillips: And, Mark, were you with Bill there at CSU?
Dr. Dewhirst: Well, Bill was on my committee. I kind of thought of Bill as my informal advisor, because the stuff I was doing was so remotely related to anything Ed knew about that I relied more on Bill for advice than I did on Ed. And you could have easily been my mentor, Bill.
Dr. Dewey: I know I'm pretty close to what you're doing, and I had quite a bit to say about what you were doing, I think.
Dr. Phillips: So, Bill, the next question I think is very important. You're famous for your work in hyperthermia. How did you get interested in it and what drew you toward it?
Dr. Dewey: Well, again, it's sort of serendipity. I was contacted by Arthur Westra in Holland, and he said he wanted to come over and do some cell kinetics work in my lab. So, that's fine since we're looking at the effects of radiation on cell cycle progression. And once he came into my lab, he said, "You know, I think we ought to look at the effects of hyperthermia in relation to the cell cycle.” He called it heat and showed me some survival curves he had obtained for his thesis. I encouraged him to write it up. He said, "I think it would really be very interesting to look at effects of hyperthermia during the cell cycle." So I said, "I agree with you. Let's do that." So we did the experiment which showed that when cells were resistant to radiation during the S phase, during DNA synthesis, they are most sensitive to hyperthermia. So Arthur Westra got me involved in hyperthermia research.
Dr. Phillips: Okay, and then did you bring other people in with you? I know, Mark, you got heavily involved with that. Was it while you were still in Colorado or later?
Dr. Dewhirst: I dabbled in it in Colorado. Yeah, one chapter of my thesis was on hyperthermia. Bill and Steve's work in thermal dosimetry was absolutely essential to the field and, Bill, you might describe that a little bit.
Dr. Dewey: Well, Steve Sapareto, one of my graduate students and I thought it would be very important, essential, to be able to quantify the amount of heat delivered, that is, the heat dose. As you probably know, when you start heating you don't just have one temperature. It goes up and down and things like that. So we wanted to be able to integrate over a period of time what was happening in terms of thermal dose. So we observed, as other people had, that if you change the temperature by one degree, you have to change the time by about a factor of two to have the same amount of heat damage. So we had this relationship of time/temperature, and we'd just integrate that over a period of time and get everything in terms of equivalent minutes at 43 degrees. And that was the thermal dose concept that Steve and I worked out.
Dr. Phillips: Do you think that was the most important concept you came up with during your whole career in hyperthermia?
Dr. Dewey: Well, I don't know. That certainly was pretty important, I guess, in quantifying hyperthermia dose, but the effects during the cell cycle, I think, were also fairly important or relevant, at least, to the idea of killing cells and radiosensitizing cells by heat. Thermal dose applies both in terms of hyperthermia toxicity and hyperthermic radiosensitization.
Dr. Phillips: Now why do you think the hyperthermia hasn't succeeded in the clinic?
Dr. Dewey: Well, that's a good question. I've always been concerned about the interaction between the basic scientists and clinicians. It seemed like we sort of lacked the clinical leadership that we needed there to push the concepts through with the trials. I was never very happy about how they went. But I don't know, what do you think? You were in it, Ted.
Dr. Phillips: Well, I think it got commercialized way too early.
Dr. Dewey: Oh, yeah. I agree with that.
Dr. Phillips: With a lot of hype and before the basic biologic and physical structure was there to support it. Mark, what do you think?
Dr. Dewhirst: Oh, I agree. I think it was lack of quality assurance and you had two negative RTOG trials in the very infancy of the field and it just killed it. And we kept it going for 20 years, but it's been slow, kind of a slow death. And it may come back at some point, but it's going to have to come back in a different way. As I was mentioning to Ted earlier that I think one of the other things that really contributed to the demise of the field was a lack of appropriate reimbursement for the effort spent to actually treat patients. And it doesn't pay for itself so it just is really difficult to get people motivated to do it, particularly today.
Dr. Dewey: I think these comments apply to proton therapy as well.
Dr. Dewhirst: Yes, exactly. Works as well, too, but…
Dr. Phillips: Okay, Bill, maybe you could comment a little bit on the work you did with the Radiation Research Society and ASTRO.
Dr. Dewey: Okay. With the Radiation Research Society, I was president of the Society in about 1989, and received the Failla Lecture Award for work I'd done in radiation and hyperthermia. I received the Gold Medal from ASTRO in 1998 and the Mentor Award from RRS in 2004. And I was program chairman for the International Radiation Research meeting in Toronto in 1991. That was quite an effort, and I think we had a good meeting up there. And I was also interested in hyperthermia related to radiation, so as I ran an international hyperthermia conference in Colorado in 1980, I always thought we should have more interaction between hyperthermia and radiation. It bothered me a little bit to see hyperthermia people kind of go off by themselves.
Dr. Phillips: Well, Bill, let's get on to something more fun. Tell us about your hobbies. I know you're famous as a skier and as a sailboarder. Is that true? Are you still doing any of it?
Dr. Dewey: Well, I'm not skiing anymore. I told you about that story with the snow boarders, and I'm not sailboarding anymore, either. I used to do what we call wind surfing or sailboarding, whatever, but my hobby now primarily is hiking and going down to the gym three times a week to try to keep myself agile. And I try to read a lot of interesting things. So I don't have any specific hobbies.
Dr. Phillips: You had that big house that you rebuilt out in the woods. Did you sell that and move?
Dr. Dewey: We sold that house and moved into Sausalito. We rent a place about two blocks up from the water, and we can look down and see all the boats go by. It's a very nice place in Sausalito, nice walking which I do. I walk various places and get my exercise.
Dr. Phillips: Okay. Can you tell us something about your married life, and who you married, and when and then about your children and what they've done?
Dr. Dewey: Okay. Well, I was first married in 1951 to Helen, and we had four kids. And then I got divorced in 1980 right before I came to San Francisco in 1981. I met Gail in 1982 and we got married in '83. And now we have a son born in 1983 who is now a student over in Australia. He's working for his masters degree in sustainable energy. He wants to come back and get involved in that. He wants to do something relevant. He got his mechanical engineering degree at UC Santa Barbara. Now he'll get a masters degree in sustainable energy. I have four kids in Colorado. My oldest son has his own construction company. And I have two daughters involved in accounting and managing, with one in landscape architecture. One daughter is a teacher in elementary school. They're all doing well, as well as my six grandchildren in Colorado whom I enjoy seeing frequently.
Dr. Dewhirst: How old are your grandkids?
Dr. Dewey: Well, my grandkids go from about 28 down to about 18.
Dr. Dewhirst: That's great.
Dr. Dewey: And they come out and visit me every now and then which is nice, and I go back there and see them sometimes.
Dr. Phillips: Bill, could you tell us something about your experience with the grant system and some of the memorable grants that you had in your career?
Dr. Dewey: My own grants, you mean?
Dr. Phillips: Yeah.
Dr. Dewey: Well, my grants initially were related to radiation effects during the cell cycle. That's where we made our mark, Ron Humphrey and I. And then later I shifted more into the mechanistic approach following up on chromosome aberrations and genetic mutations resulting from DNA damage and misrepair. So when I went on sabbatical, I learned some molecular techniques related to assaying for exchanges at the molecular level, in other words studying effects of radiation and hyperthermia at the molecular level.
Dr. Dewhirst: Where did you do your Sabbatical?
Dr. Dewey: I did two sabbaticals. One was 1971 and '72 in Lausanne, Switzerland -- the Cancer Institute in Switzerland. And that's where I learned how to work with chromatin.
Dr. Phillips: Who did you work with there?
Dr. Dewey: A guy by the name of Ron Hancock, and Peter Nobis and I worked together. And that's when we showed that heat led to aggregation of protein on the DNA. The second sabbatical was in 1991 and '92 after I went to San Francisco in 1981. I went to the Gray Laboratory in London and worked with Janet Arrand and her group, learning molecular techniques. That's when I learned to do southern blots and northern blots, and working with Helen Forrester after I returned to San Francisco, we used these techniques to assay DNA damage at the molecular level. That's where I got that background which led to continued funding. I've had grants all the way from 1960 to 2004.
Dr. Phillips: Your last grant was the one on looking at cell death, is that correct?
Dr. Dewey: Well, related to DNA damage that resulted in apoptosis or necrosis.
Dr. Phillips: Right.
Dr. Dewey: Apoptosis, that's right. Apoptosis in the human colon carcinoma cells that we quantified with computerized video microscopy.
Dr. Dewhirst: I still have those movies. I still show them to people.
Dr. Dewey: Yeah, they were very informative. And I had the help of some pretty good people on how to analyze the movies. Norm Albright, in our department, helped us by writing the codes and programs so we could analyze quantitatively what was happening with these cells as we'd follow them in the pedigrees.
Dr. Phillips: You were very successful at grants. What are the secrets to being good at getting funded continuously?
Dr. Dewey: Well, I guess just getting results that's published, and showing you can follow up on things that have been observed. Try to do good science that is relevant, is all I can say.
Dr. Phillips: Do the science and write it up timely-wise, I guess.
Dr. Dewey: Oh, yes. Oh, definitely. You have to do it, and you have to write it up. Definitely, you have to write it up in a timely manner. That was one of the first arguments I had with Arthur Westra when he came over from Holland. He'd done good work over there, but he wouldn't publish it. I said, "Arthur, you have to publish it." He'd say, "Well, I don't know why Bill is so eager to get things published." I said, "You've got to publish. You've got to let people know what you've done. Get it in the literature." It's really important!
Dr. Phillips: Well, Bill, I first met you when you were treasurer of Rad-Res and I was so impressed with your organization and organizing abilities. And I think that probably has paid off in your grant success as well.
Dr. Dewey: Maybe, I don't know. I know that in the job as treasurer, I had to trace the funds and find out what was going on. That was quite a job, an interesting job.
Dr. Phillips: Okay, Mark, do you have some questions?
Dr. Dewhirst: Yeah, I do. So I'm wondering, looking back on your career, can you tell us what was the most interesting or fun thing that you ever did as a scientist? It could have been something at a meeting; it could have been some kind of anecdote. What stands out as being really just a great memory?
Dr. Dewey: Well, as you probably know, I've always enjoyed over the years having the party at the Radiation Research Society with Peter Corry and Doug Spitz. We'd have this party, everybody's invited. Students, anybody is coming. We'd always have those parties and these are great memories, the interaction we had between the people there at these informal parties we'd have in our room until we were thrown out by the hotel.
Dr. Phillips: Yeah, I remember those. They were fabulous. Bill, did you do any visiting professorships? You told us about your sabbaticals, but are there places that you remember that were...
Dr. Dewey: I can’t think of any specific visiting professorships. Nothing formal like that. Just my traveling around visiting people. I can't think of any specific visiting professorships.
Dr. Phillips: Okay. Do you have any favorite sayings?
Dr. Dewey: Well, one thing that comes to mind, I'm always stressing positive entropy. You have to recognize it and thwart it. In other words, you have to continually put in energy to keep the positive disorder as positive entropy from occurring. It happens all the time in life and in science. You've got to be aware of these things. It takes a lot of effort, to put a lot of energy in to prevent too much positive entropy or disorder from occurring.
Dr. Phillips: So you put energy in.
Dr. Dewey: You put energy in, yeah, in order to thwart the disorder that's occurring, which is what they call positive entropy, delta S they call it.
Dr. Phillips: Okay. Mark, do you have any more questions?
Dr. Dewhirst: I don't think so. Is there anything we forgot that you would like to pass along, a memory of your time in ASTRO or science in general?
Dr. Dewey: Not in particular. It's been a great time in all these different scientific interactions -- ASTRO and Radiation Research, in particular, and then the Hyperthermia Society which is still budding. Most importantly, I get so much satisfaction in seeing students succeed. And that is most important of any accomplishment -- students like Mark Dewhirst, Mike Freeman, Peter Corry and others. And now, to follow up on that, you're looking at people who are going up at the top of the ladder into their careers. Now I am a volunteer in the school system here in Marin County in San Rafael in an area having primarily Hispanic kids. I go to the school three days a week, two hours a day helping with arithmetic and things like that. So helping these fifth graders and working with them as they move forward gives me great satisfaction.
Dr. Dewhirst: That's great. What a terrific thing to do.
Dr. Dewey: Well, people said, "Why do you want to do that? You can do more important things." What's more important than working with individual kids? I get a lot of satisfaction out of that and I think they enjoy me, too, some of the stories I have to tell and things like that.
Dr. Phillips: Are they in the high school at San Rafael High?
Dr. Dewey: No, it's actually out in the canal area in San Rafael. Bahia Vista is the name of the school, if you know where that is, Ted, out in the canal area.
Dr. Phillips: But that's a middle school, I think.
Dr. Dewey: No, that's the grammar school, the elementary school up to the sixth grade and then they go to the middle school at Davidson.
Dr. Phillips: I know where it is. Okay.
Dr. Dewey: So I'm working primarily with fifth graders in arithmetic. So I have to go back and learn how to multiply and divide and various things like that.
Dr. Phillips: Are you allowed to use a calculator?
Dr. Dewey: Well, they're learning how to use calculators. But a lot of this they have to do without a calculator. Like when I was over there on Monday a little kid was having trouble with long division and I said, "Well, let's figure out how to do that." So they have to learn things like that without the calculator and then later they can use a calculator. But they have to do it without a calculator, too.
Dr. Dewhirst: First they have to understand exactly what they're doing. That's great.
Dr. Dewey: Exactly.
Dr. Phillips: Okay, Bill. Again, anything we forgot?
Dr. Dewey: No, I don't think so. I think you guys were pretty complete.
Dr. Phillips: Okay, Mark, anything else you want...
Dr. Dewhirst: I can't think of anything else, but this has been really fun.
Dr. Phillips: I'm happy you could join us, Mark.
Dr. Dewey: Good talking to you guys. Keep it up. You're all doing great work. And you, too, Mark. By the way, you've done so well, and you as one of our former students doing so well gives me a great deal of satisfaction.
Dr. Phillips: Well, it's wonderful to have you two guys having gotten Gold Medals. It shows ASTRO has some recognition of the importance of biology, at least.
Dr. Dewhirst: They do and maybe it will continue. We'll see. I hope so.
