Miklós Kásler

Miklós Kásler (1 March 1950 – 5 September 2025) was a Hungarian oncologist, academic, director of the National Institute of Oncology and Minister of Human Resources from 2018 to 2022.

Background

His father, István Kásler (born 1918, Déva) was a jurist and his mother, Aranka Boda (born 1923, Sárvár) was a pedagogue. On his father's side he has Bukovina German and Bukovina Székely ancestors from Andrásfalva .

He was born in Budapest, but the family moved to Sárvár, so he attended the primary and secondary schools there. Later he studied medicine at the University of Szeged and graduated in 1974. Then he took exams in surgery (1978), oral surgery (1988), plastic and reconstructional surgery (1998) and oncology (2009).

From 1969, he worked in the Institute of Medical Chemistry of the University of Szeged as demonstrator and from 1971 in the Microbiology Institute as a TDK member. He became a clinical physician in 1974 at the No. 2 Surgeon Clinic and from 1978 an instructor.

He came to the National Oncological Institute in 1981 where he became lecturer in 1984 and chief medical officer of the head-neck surgery department in 1986. He was nominated to director of the institute. He established the National Cancer Control Program for the heterogeneous medical care of cancer patients in 1993.

From 1994, he was professor at the Semmelweis University and head of department at three universities (Semmelweis University, University of Pécs, University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Târgu Mureș) from 1998. From 2007 he was director of the oncological department of the University of Pécs. His scientific degrees were doctoral candidate (1984),

Public activity Kásler always showed great interest in Hungarian history and historical fate questions. His opinion is that the human of today has lost his way and his values. A kind of moral interregnum is formed when a part of the old classical, through century defecated values is lost by the humans and is now looking for a way to the solution.

He appeared in a talk show on M1, a government-controlled national television channel with similarly-thinking guests (writers, scientists, and philosophers) on a series of interviews about national fate with the title Nemzeti nagyvizit .

Kásler was a special guest of the 777blog.hu Christian public portal interview series in March 2018, when he explained how the scientists serve God and science at the same time, so serving God through science. He also gave his point of view detailed on the issue:

Kásler was a member of an international research group which came up with a result on the controversial prehistory of Hungarians which confirmed the fact that the members of the Árpád dynasty are certainly from the Eurasian blood line, as genetic markers can be used to map the pharynx genetic history. Researchers determined Béla III's genetic profile on his father's line. The research team concluded that Béla III's DNA fragment extracted from his bone belongs to the typically co-inherited R1a haplotype. This "finding" neither falls within his area of medical expertise (genetic analysis is not part of cancer medicine), nor does it have anything with the "origin of Hungarians," which is an "interpretation" Kásler and his fan base attribute to it.

In April 2018, Kásler was appointed Minister of Human Resources.

Awards