Healthcare
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Dr. Ritsuko Komaki was living with her family near Osaka when the atomic bomb exploded on her native Hiroshima in 1945. But the family returned to the devastated city when she was four, and Komaki grew up a witness to the long-term effects, which likely contributed heavily to the deaths of about half her relatives, including her father. Like many Japanese, she developed both a fascination with and fear of radiation. When her close friend Sadako Sasaki died at age 11 of radiation-related leukemia, Komaki vowed to become a cancer doctor.
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Dr. James D. Cox, head of the department of radiation oncology at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston since 1995, knows a good new thing when he sees it. Still, it took the urging of his wife and fellow UT M. D. Anderson oncologist/professor Ritsuko Komaki to overcome his initial skepticism of proton therapy. Both were sold on the emerging radiation therapy after visiting the then-new Proton Treatment Center at Loma Linda University Medical Center in Southern California in 1990, and once he became head of radiation oncology at UTMDA Cox was in a position to do something about it. He was instrumental in getting the Proton Therapy Center at M. D. Anderson funded — half by the university, half by private investors — and opened in 1995.
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