Radiation Scientist Doody Retires from NCI

Michele Morin Doody retires from NCI

Michele Morin Doody, a staff scientist in NCI’s Radiation Epidemiology Branch (REB), retired at the end of December.

Doody joined the Environmental Epidemiology Branch in the Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention in 1980 as a commissioned officer in the Public Health Service. She had received an M.S. in epidemiology from the University of Massachusetts.  She transferred to the REB shortly after its inception in 1984, and coordinated several major branch studies.

Doody managed a case-control study of diagnostic x-ray procedures and risk of leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma in the Kaiser HMO setting. She also investigated the risk of breast cancer in young women with scoliosis who underwent multiple x-ray procedures to monitor their spinal curvature and found a borderline excess risk of breast cancer incidence according to estimated radiation breast dose from diagnostic x-rays.

Doody was project manager of cancer mortality among a large cohort of adult patients treated for hyperthyroidism with an initial follow-up through 1990, and additional follow-up through 2014. She managed the field work for the United States Radiologic Technologists study cohort of 146,000 U.S. radiologic technologists, in which she oversaw four cycles of questionnaires, a major dosimetry effort to reconstruct occupational radiation doses and collection of biological samples.

Doody helped expand the study in new directions to assess cancer and cataract risks in technologists conducting nuclear medicine and/or fluoroscopically guided procedures and these outcomes in technologists according to their estimated ultraviolet radiation exposure. In 2018, she received an NCI group award for this landmark occupational radiation study.