Gale Says More Chernobyl Victims Will Die of Exposure to Radiation

An American doctor treating victims of the Chernobyl disaster said today that more of them will die because they received lethal doses of radiation released by the nuclear power plant.

Dr. Robert P. Gale, a UCLA bone marrow expert, told a packed news conference that Soviet and foreign specialists have identified 35 people who suffered severe radiation exposure after the April 26 accident at the Ukrainian plant.

Despite round-the-clock efforts by doctors in a Moscow clinic, Gale said, seven of those people exposed to radiation have died and more deaths are expected.

Soviet officials, including Communist Party leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, have said two other people were killed in the explosion and fire at the plant’s No. 4 reactor. The accident caused the release of a cloud of radiation that contaminated the area around the nuclear plant and gradually spread around the world.

Summoned by Gorbachev

Both Gale and American industrialist Armand Hammer, who organized the doctor’s visit to Moscow, were received by Gorbachev in the Kremlin later today.

Chatting with the American visitors before reporters were ushered out of the room, Gorbachev remarked that “the last days have given us much food for thought.” It was not clear if he referred to the Chernobyl disaster.

Speaking today of the attempts to save those who absorbed large doses of radiation, Gale said: “Predictably, our efforts have not been successful in all cases. But 28 of these 35 individuals are alive.”

“Although we know that additional deaths are unavoidable, we hope that a substantial number of these patients will survive,” he said.

Gale said 19 patients have received bone marrow transplants. Heavy doses of radiation destroy bone marrow.

Not all patients who were severely exposed to radiation have received bone marrow transplants, Gale said. In some cases, he explained, transplants were considered unnecessary; in others, the patient suffered too much radiation damage to vital organs, such as kidneys, to make a transplant worthwhile.

He did not specify how many patients did not receive transplants for those reasons.

Gale said 299 people remained hospitalized because of the accident, the same number given Wednesday night by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in a televised address.

Gale and a Soviet colleague, Dr. Andrei I. Vorobyev, were asked repeatedly during the 80-minute news conference to assess the health hazards posed by the accident to residents of Kiev, a city of 2.4 million people 80 miles south of the Chernobyl plant, as well as to people closer to the site.

Vorobyev said it was impossible for anyone who had been more than 18 miles from the accident site to be suffering from acute radiation sickness as a result.

Asked to comment, Gale said, “It is extremely unlikely that anybody at considerable distance from the radiation source could suffer acute radiation sickness.” He did not define what he meant by a considerable distance.

Vorobyev said none of the residents of the town of Chernobyl, about 11 miles from the plant, had required hospitalization unless they went to the site to help battle the accident.

He was less precise about whether any residents of Pripyat, another town near the nuclear facility, were hospitalized for radiation exposure.

Vorobyev said he personally supervised examination of some people, and that radiation levels detected suggested they had been exposed to a dose of 50 rad, an exposure he said was not thought to be immediately harmful to health.

Gale said it was impossible to estimate long-term consequences of the accident, or to gauge the effects of radiation on those patients estimated to have been exposed to heavy doses, which he said were from 800 to 900 rad.