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Dr. Victor E. Archer was born in Montana in 1922 and studied medicine at the University of Montana and Northwestern University Medical School, specializing in the effect of radon and uranium on human health. After working as radiation safety officer at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland in the early 1950s, in 1956 Dr. Archer took a leadership position in the long-term federal study on the health of uranium miners in the American West. This study was jointly conducted by the United States Public Health Service, the Atomic Energy Commission, the uranium mining industry, and the state health departments of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. He worked on this study for over a decade before transitioning to United States Public Health Service’s Ford Douglas field station as an epidemiologist. Dr. Archer retired from public health in 1979 and took a job at the University of Utah as a Clinical Professor at the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Utah Medical Center, where he contributed to research on the health impacts of smoking and air pollution on lungs.

The link between uranium and radon mining and lung cancer had been identified by medical professionals as early as the 1930s. Throughout his career, Dr. Archer served as an expert witness, testifying that the United States government and the uranium industries had foreknowledge of the health impacts of uranium, radiation, and radon and had done little to protect citizens and laborers in the mining industry in the American southwest from exposure. Dr. Archer’s testimonies included the 1967 United States Congress hearings about radiation exposure in uranium miners and the 1990 Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources in support of Senator Orrin Hatch’s efforts to compensate people whose health had been impacted by radiation exposure, whether by working in mines or exposure to atomic tests.

Sources: “New Doctor to Continue Study of Uranium Miners’ Health,” Deseret News, August 1, 1956; “Colorado Referee Hears Tie of U-Mine, Cancer,” The Salt Lake Tribune, November 17, 196;, “U.S. Knew Risks to Miners, Physician Says,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 9, 1990.