‘This is a new era in medicine, global medicine in a nuclear age.’

When UCLA’s Dr. Robert P. Gale established a medical “swat team” in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident to treat the victims of radiation injuries, he knew it was only a matter of time before the international group would be called into action.

Two weeks ago, as Gale was attending a medical meeting in West Germany, the call came--from Brazil. Within hours Gale and colleagues from the United States and the Soviet Union were on the way to Rio de Janeiro with millions of dollars in donated drugs and medical equipment.

Gale credits the coordinated international response with helping to save the lives of eight of the most seriously injured victims of cesium-137 contamination after Brazil’s worst radiation accident.

Two of the eight lives, in particular, appear to have been saved by using an experimental genetically engineered hormone that some physicians consider a revolutionary development in the treatment of severe infections.

The hormone, known as GM-CSF, stimulates diseased bone marrow to produce large numbers of infection-fighting white blood cells.

“This kind of treatment should be started as soon as possible in (victims of radiation accidents) who are anticipated to develop bone marrow failure,” Gale said in an interview Monday.

The Brazilian accident, which has caused four deaths, occurred in late September after scavengers dismantled a piece of radiation therapy equipment from an abandoned clinic in Goiania, about 600 miles northwest of Rio, and liberated the radioactive cesium. Dozens of curious family members, friends and neighbors handled the glowing powder before symptoms of burns, infections and bleeding heralded the serious harm that was being done.

“This was a very complex accident,” Gale said. Unlike Chernobyl, which killed 31 people, there was no fire and no one, with one possible exception, was exposed to so much radiation that their bone marrow was destroyed entirely. But in Brazil, many victims had repeated exposure to radiation over many days. Some even ate cesium powder or smeared it on their bodies to ease arthritic pains.

It was not until about 30 days after the accident that the Brazilian government asked the Los Angeles-based Armand Hammer Center for Advanced Studies in Nuclear Energy and Health, of which Gale is president, for help in treating the 12 most seriously ill victims, who had been evacuated to a navy hospital in Rio.

By then it was too late for four of the victims, who died of bleeding and severe infections, despite the GM-CSF treatments, Gale said.

But the GM-CSF helped two of the victims fight off devastating bacterial infections, until their own bone marrow recovered.

Since last week, Gale said, an additional four patients have been started on the GM-CSF, or granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor, therapy.

Gale is to return to Brazil tonight. “This is a new era in medicine, global medicine in a nuclear age,” he said.