UW News

May 29, 2003

David Thomas to give Public Health faculty lecture on contraceptives and cancer

Dr. David B. Thomas will speak on “Assessing Risk of Cancer in Users of Steroid Contraceptives: A 30-Year Experience” for the School of Public Health and Community Medicine’s spring quarter Distinguished Faculty Lecture at 3:30 p.m., Tuesday, June 3, in room T-435 of the Health Sciences Center. The lecture is open to everyone.

Thomas is a professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine and member of the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

He is a former head of both the epidemiology and breast cancer programs at FHCRC, and a former director of the Cancer Surveillance System of Western Washington. He earned his M.D. from the UW School of Medicine in 1963 and a doctorate in public health from Johns Hopkins University in 1972. From 1978 to 1992, he coordinated a collaborative study for the World Health Organization in 11 countries to study the effects of steroid contraceptives and other factors on risks of cancers of reproductive organs and the liver.

He was also the leader for a study begun in 1988 in Shanghai, China, to determine the value of breast self-examination over more than a decade.