Chernobyl: The Final Warning is a moving eyewitness portrait that takes readers from the inner sanctums of Soviet hospitals to the devastated reactor itself. It recreates the drama of international diplomacy - in the limelight and behind the scenes - in a dramatic struggle against death.
In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, Dr. Gale, an expert on bone marrow transplantation, was summoned to Moscow by Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to help by leading a team of international and local physicians in treating the victims.
Despite volunteering to travel to the other side of the world to help aide victims and the team, Gale and the other members of the US-Israeli team had to work under the severe restrictions placed upon them.
In Chernobyl: the Final Warning, the doctor discusses the tragedy, the diseases it would ultimately trigger, the environmental damage caused on a global scale and hope for a safer world.
Dr. Robert Gale gives an eye-opening account of the intrigue and competition between the United States and Soviet Union. Written with Thomas Hauser, this book tells the full story of his historic journey and offers a penetrating analysis of the nature of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, their development, and the role they will play in our future.
Chernobyl: The Final Warning has been adapted into a much-admired movie starring Jon Voight and Jason Robards. Its message is cold, bleak and urgent, but also one of hope.
NEW! Afterward written in 2020, 34 years after the Chernobyl disaster.
Robert Peter Gale, MD, is an American physician and medical researcher. He is known for research in leukemia and other bone marrow disorders. From 1986-1993, Gale was President of the Armand Hammer Center for Advanced Studies in Nuclear Energy and Health, a foundation supporting research on medical aspects of nuclear issues, and from 1985-1990 Gale was the Wald Scholar in Biomedical Communications at UCLA. It was during this time that Gale volunteered his expertise in bone marrow transplants to the USSR, for the victims of radiation poisoning incurred during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Since then he has volunteered his expertise at other disasters including Fukushima after the earthquake and tsunami of 2011. His many awards for his scientific achievements include the Presidential Award from the New York Academy of Sciences. He has also received several awards for his humanitarian activities around the world including his work with victims of Chernobyl. Dr. Gale retired from the UCLA faculty in 1993 but remained on Medical Staff until 2019. He's currently a Visiting Professor of Haematology at the Haematology Research Centre, Division of Experimental Medicine, Department of Medicine, Imperial College London and an Honorary Professor of Hematology at the Institute of Hematology at Peking Union Medical College. He is an editor of several medical journals and recently retired as Executive Director of Clinical Research and Development at Celgene Corp. less
Thomas C. Hauser is an attorney and well-known author with over 50 published fiction and nonfiction books. His ability to explain and bring to life events of complexity and importance has secured his reputation as a responsible and reliable social critic. His first published book, The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice, was adapted as Costa-Gavras's highly regarded film Missing, starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. In recent years he has written extensively about boxing - he was recently selected for boxing's highest honor, induction into the International Boxing Hall Fame. less
