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CDC Halts Thyroid Study Funding

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By Associated Press

March 29, 2005, 9:53 AM EST

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.

" CDC does not have the financial resources available to continue the project

" agency spokesman Florence told the Deseret Morning News. " It's a

funding issue. " Florence was quoted in a copyright story in the newspaper

Tuesday.

Dr. ph L. Lyon, a University of Utah researcher who has been studying

the fallout issue for decades and headed the investigation, received

notification of the CDC decision in a March 21 letter from A.

McGeehin, director of the CDC Division of Environmental Hazards and Health

Effects.

Lyon 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.

For decades, there has been debate over how the more than 900 atomic tests

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 downwind residents.

Lyon's studies, beginning in 1977, concluded that fallout did cause

increased incidence of cancer downwind.

After the trial of lawsuit filed in 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 the ground of government immunity

Congress then passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990 to

provide for compassionate payments to downwind residents 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.' "

Jay Truman, founder and director of the group downwind residents and one of

the former students, said the government was wrong to halt funding. This was

supposed to be a definitive study, he said.

" All of us downwind are still -- as we were at the time the heaviest fallout

fell -- expendable, " he said.

* __

Information from: The Deseret News, http://www.deseretnews.com

Copyright © 2005, The Associated Press

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