Fallon expects aid from hearing

Wednesday, April 11, 2001 | 10:42 a.m.

A U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing Thursday into a dozen childhood leukemia cases could lead to more aid for Fallon.

The hearing, led by Senate Democrats Harry Reid of Nevada and Hillary Clinton of New York, will focus on efforts to learn more about the acute lymphocytic leukemia that has affected a dozen children up to 19 years of age who were born or lived in the Northern Nevada city.

There is no common environmental link, except they all have lived in Fallon, about 60 miles east of Reno, for all or part of their lives, state epidemiologist Dr. Randall Todd said.

Todd and state health officer Dr. Mary Guinan are to testify at Thursday's hearing at the Fallon Convention Center.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta plan to visit Fallon next week for a preliminary screening visit, Todd said.

The congressional hearing will bring medical experts, state officials, federal agencies and the community together, Reid said.

"When cancer strikes a community in Nevada or anywhere else, we have a duty to focus every available resource on that danger," Reid said.

Other resources are being offered at the hearing to accelerate the leukemia investigation.

Drs. Vera Byers, Alan Levin, James Forsythe and Gary Ridenour have offered to work without charge to identify the cause of the Fallon leukemias within seven months in a manner similar to their work on a leukemia outbreak in Woburn, Mass.

Byers and Levin led the team that pinpointed trichloroethylene contamination in Woburn's drinking water. The medical detective story was described in the film, "A Civil Action."

Forsythe is an oncologist in Reno who has tracked cancers in Northern Nevada for more than 25 years. Ridenour is one of the physicians who helped identify the Fallon leukemias.

Byers and Levin are the physicians who worked on the Woburn leukemias.