Fallon leukemia victim, 10, dies

Monday, June 4, 2001 | 10:53 a.m.

Adam Jernee, one of 14 children diagnosed with childhood leukemia linked to Fallon, died Sunday.

Jernee, 10, died at 3:30 p.m. in a Southern California hospital, with his father, Richard Jernee, and his mother, Pilar Jernee, at the child's bedside.

The father, a truck driver, said he plans to return to Fallon and help track down the cause of the children's leukemias. Adam is survived by a sister, Emily, 8.

Jernee had been in a drug-induced coma and on a ventilator for weeks after two bone marrow transplants. Doctors gave him a 1 percent chance of survival after his lungs were badly damaged by radiation treatment.

He is the first fatality among the leukemia patients who are living in Fallon or who had lived in the farming and Navy community 60 miles east of Reno.

Adam had moved to Fallon in May 1999 to live with his father and grandparents. He was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia, or ALL, in May 2000 after doctors discovered a fist-sized tumor in his chest.

Since 1997, 13 children who lived in the Fallon area for varying lengths of time have been diagnosed with ALL, the most common form of the cancer that destroys blood cells.

Another child was diagnosed last month with acute myelogenous leukemia, or AML, a less common form of the disease.

State and federal health officials are intensifying their efforts to find a cause of the outbreak. There is no common link among the children, except they all have lived in Fallon at some time in their lives. Tests of drinking water and the 22 homes where the children and their families lived indicated no environmental thread linking the leukemia cases.

This summer scientists will begin extensive testing on air, soils, water and the victims' tissues to check for chemicals or viruses. Suspected exposures include military fuels, viruses, high levels of naturally occurring arsenic in the drinking water, industrial contamination or pesticides used on nearby farms.

The Lahontan Valley News and Fallon Eagle Standard

contributed to this report.