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Medical Radiology & Nuclear Medicine

Isotopes and Innovation

MDS Nordion's First Fifty Years, 1946-1996

by (author) Paul Litt

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Jun 2000
Category
Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, Nuclear Physics
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773568624
    Publish Date
    Jun 2000
    List Price
    $110.00

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Description

When radium began to be used as a cancer treatment, Eldorado quickly became familiar with the medical marketplace and adept at developing products that could solve clinical problems and, more important, save lives. When Canadian nuclear reactors at Chalk River began producing radioisotopes that outperformed radium, Eldorado's radium sales department was transferred to a new crown corporation, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, created to manage Canada's nuclear research establishment. The new company developed many useful applications for radioisotopes, including cobalt-60 cancer therapy machines and industrial sterilization plants. Bought by Medical Data Services Inc. in the early 1990s, MDS Nordion was a runaway success, creator and sole proprietor of several market-leading products. Isotopes and Innovation describes how a company capitalized on the byproducts of Canada's unique nuclear research program to attain a commanding international position in extremely specialized and demanding high-tech markets, a saga in which innovative research and enterprising global marketing have brought commercial success and saved countless lives around the world.

About the author

Paul Litt is a historian at Carleton University in Ottawa. His account of John Turner’s political career is based on extensive research in the Turner papers and other archival collections, contemporary journalism, and scores of interviews with friends, family, and colleagues of John Turner. He also spent considerable time with Turner himself, talking with him about his early career in politics, his relationship with Trudeau, his decision to leave politics for nearly a decade, what prompted him to come back, and the challenge of rebuilding a Liberal party that pundits declared was finished as a political force in Canada.

Paul Litt's profile page