CDC halts funding of fallout study

Tuesday, March 29, 2005 | 11:16 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has halted funding for a study on the connection between radioactive fallout and thyroid disease among people living downwind of aboveground atomic testing in Nevada during the 1950s and early 1960s.

The study, which already had cost $8 million, has rechecked about 1,300 of 4,000 former students who lived in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada, plus a control group of Arizona residents.

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that no further funding is available for this study," Michael McGeehin, director of the centers' Division of Environmental Hazards Health Effects, said in a March 21 letter sent to Dr. Joseph L. Lyon, a University of Utah researcher who has been studying the fallout issue for decades. "CDC does not have the resources to extend funding for this study beyond the current budget period."

Lyon, who headed the investigation, said he was loath to call it a cover-up, but it seemed the federal government does not want to know about health effects of fallout on American citizens. "That's the only interpretation I can place on it," he said.

McGeehin advised Lyon to close out the study by Aug. 31.

David Cherry, spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the lack of funding comes from an administration that has discussed new nuclear weapons.

Cherry said there is more than an academic aspect to the study. He called it a "preventative medicine element" and said the government should be obligated to check up on affected people.

"They should be screened regularly," he said.

Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, who as a UNLV political science professor has studied the politics and polices surrounding nuclear weapons testing, said this shows the government "is willing to cut funds because this is a low priority and it might reveal something they don't want to hear.

"It's terrible and their (the victims') families are affected," she said. "The federal government is cutting everything and there are not many of these people left. There are not a lot of votes in Utah and those people already voted for this administration."

For decades, there has been debate over how the more than 900 atomic tests at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, affected downwind residents in Nevada, Utah and Arizona. Past studies produced conflicting conclusions as to whether the fallout caused increased numbers of cases of particular types of cancer.

The first studies began in the 1960s and ended with the federal researchers concluding that fallout had not increased disease among the downwinders.

Lyon's studies, beginning in 1977, concluded that fallout did cause increased incidence of cancer downwind.

After the trial of a lawsuit filed on behalf of possible victims, a federal judge in Utah concluded that fallout was to blame for some of the illnesses. But his ruling was overturned on appeal on grounds of government immunity.

Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990 to provide for payments to downwinders who contracted certain cancers and other serious diseases.

In 1993 a new study by Lyon and colleagues found radioactivity from the detonations increased the incidence of thyroid tumors 3.4 times over the expected rate among schoolchildren who were exposed to the highest doses.

The latest study was an attempt to re-examine the residents. Some scientists suspect health effects may develop slowly for thyroid disease and that there may be lifelong risk.

Lyon said the study is incomplete and analysis has not been carried out yet, so he is hesitant to talk about results.

McGeehin said a special emphasis panel -- a board of scientific experts from outside the CDC -- reviewed Lyon's protocol and recommended that the study not be funded beyond the 2004 grant award.

"I've been working on this now since 1977," Lyon said. "I'm about ready to retire, and I'm sort of saying, 'I'd like to finish up this thyroid study and get more definitive information.' "