William Beierwaltes, Nuclear Medicine Pioneer, Dies at 88
 William Henry Beierwaltes (M.D. 1941, Residency 1945) — who founded one
of the nation’s first hospital programs for the use of radioactivity in
medicine, co-developed several nuclear medicine agents still in use today, wrote
the first textbook on the topic, and conducted radiopharmaceutical research
over five decades — died of natural causes on August 14 at his home in
Petoskey, Michigan. He was 88 years old.
At the dawn of the atomic age, and the very beginning of his career, Beierwaltes
attended the first training course for physicians on the medical use of radioactive
iodine. From then on, he devoted his career to finding new ways to detect and
treat cancer and other conditions using short-lived radioactive elements.
A native of Saginaw, Michigan, Beierwaltes spent nearly his entire career at
the University of Michigan, where he received his bachelor’s degree in
1938, then his medical degree and his resident training as an endocrinologist.
He was encouraged to pursue the new field of nuclear medicine soon after joining
the Medical School faculty in 1945.
As a young assistant professor, he began a clinic for patients with hyperthyroid
disease and thyroid cancer, using radioactive iodine to detect abnormal activity
in the thyroid gland and locate tumors. He later became a national champion
of the use of radioiodine together with surgery — now the standard of
thyroid diagnosis and care.
Appointed to lead the University’s new Clinical Radioisotope Service in
1952, Beierwaltes rose to chief of the Nuclear Medicine Division when it was
formed in the early 1960s. With no books available to guide clinicians on the
use of radioactive elements, he led the writing of the first, Clinical Use of
Radioisotopes, published in 1957. He helped form the U-M nuclear medicine fellowship
training program for young and mid-career physicians, one of the first in the
nation.
Beierwaltes is credited with the original idea to bind radioactive iodine, I-131,
to the hormone-like substance called meta-iodobenzylguanadine (MIBG), as a way
of carrying detectable radioactivity directly to cells in the center of the
adrenal gland and related tissues. Beierwaltes was the co-holder of a patent
on MIBG, which was originally developed at the U-M in the 1970s to allow the
adrenal gland to be seen on medical images.
—KEG
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