Wladimir Wertelecki
Geneticist and pediatrician
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Medical Biology
Wladimir Wertelecki's Degrees
- Masters Epidemiology University of California, Berkeley
Why Is Wladimir Wertelecki Influential?
(Suggest an Edit or Addition)According to Wikipedia, Wladimir Wertelecki is a Pediatrician and Medical Geneticist who in 1974 established one of the first free-standing Departments of Medical Genetics at the new South Alabama University College of Medicine in Mobile, Alabama, U.S.A. Since 1996 and following his retirement as Chairman and Emeritus Professor of Medical Genetics, Pediatrics, and Pathology, he has continued his investigations of developmental anomalies and their prevention as a Project Scientist at the Department of Pediatrics, University of California San Diego. Since 1996, his research has focused mainly on alcohol and ionizing radiation impacts on congenital anomalies. He is the author over 135 scientific reports. In 2000, he established the OMNI-Net Ukraine Programs to investigate reproductive risks posed by exposures to alcohol and Chornobyl ionizing radiation. OMNI-Net Ukraine established a population-based registry for the epidemiological surveillance of congenital anomalies. It qualified to become full member of EUROCAT, a network of over 38 such registries across Europe. OMNI-Net Ukraine is the sole full member of EUROCAT conducting such investigations in regions formerly ruled by the USSR. OMNI-Net Ukraine also implements a variety of collaborative investigations with experts from UCSD, Emory, and other Universities sponsored by the Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders funded by then National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism . Many components of the OMNI-Net Ukraine programs introduced by Wertelecki were previously implemented in Alabama. He established a regional network of clinics across southern Alabama and West Florida and in 1978 organized the Southern Genetic Group, which expanded into the South-Eastern Regional Genetics Group, enhancing genetic services in six states. Wertelecki also contributed to the efforts by local Native-Americans to gain Federal Recognition as Native-Americans in Alabama. In 1992, he made a presentation to the US Senate regarding the reproductive risks posed by the Chornobyl radiation. Following an initial sponsorship by USAID, he established OMNI-Net programs in Ukraine, a not-for-profit network to provide training and to engage Ukrainian professionals to conduct monitoring of the frequency of birth defects. OMNI-Net teams promptly detected an epidemic of spina bifida and associated malformations collectively known as neural tube defects . The frequency of these malformations and the associated child mortality are persistently the highest in Europe. From the start, OMNI-Net advocates for Ukrainian authorities to introduce folic acid fortification programs, a measure that will significantly reduce the epidemic and related mortality. Flour fortification with folic acid is safe, effective and affordable as shown by implementations adopted by 80 countries. Currently , a legislative initiative to establish an NTD prevention program is under consideration by the Ukrainian National Parliament. OMNI-Net has also documented that thousands of pregnant women continue to accumulate in their bodies through eating, drinking, and inhaling radioactive elements . Whole body counts of incorporated Cs-137 by pregnant women are much higher than in women residing away from Chornobyl radiation impacted regions. OMNI-Net teams seek national and international partners to elucidate the inherent risks of such facts. Although some reports state that Chornobyl radiation is not biologically harmful, OMNI-Net researchers note that such studies did not include pregnant women with known levels of incorporated nuclides. The association of incorporated levels of Cs-137 with prevalence of birth defects remains to be clarified. Another frequent known cause of birth defects in Ukraine is alcohol consumption by pregnant women. Since 2006, OMNI-Net has implemented an international initiative focused on fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. In summary, OMNI-Net is effectively a catalist for joint scientific collaborations of Ukrainian and International investigations.
Wladimir Wertelecki's Published Works
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