Dame Valerie Beral (28 July 1946 – 26 August 2022) was an Australian-born British epidemiologist, academic and a specialist in breast cancer epidemiology.
[citation needed] At Hammersmith Hospital, she worked under Charles Fletcher, who recognised that she was suited to epidemiology and so propelled her towards the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Beral moved on to other projects but this is an area in which the data have yet to provide support for her initial instinct that the contraceptive pill, like pregnancy, will eventually be shown to protect against breast cancer.
[9] Later work included the effects of radiation, breast cancer trials and screening, AIDS, gene therapy, Hiroshima survivors, Chernobyl, food toxins, and much else.
The British Medical Journal described her tally of jobs, publications, and committees as reading "like a checklist of the epidemiological causes célebres of the past three decades".
The study is investigating how a woman's reproductive history can affect her health, with a particular focus on the effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
[13] Beral lived in Oxford with her American husband, Paul Fine, who worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.