Missouri town has cluster of brain tumor cases

This is an interesting and scary article.

http://www.kmbc.com/health/16330197/detail.html

snip

Town Sees Cluster Of Brain Tumor Cases
More Than 12 Brain Tumor Cases Diagnosed In 7 Months

snip

Doctors are only required to report cancerous brain tumors to the Health Department. Most of the tumors in Cameron are large, but benign. So there is no official agency collecting the data.
Drinking water is one thing all of those diagnosed have in common. That is why a local reservoir, a source of the drinking water, will likely be one focus of the investigation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it will look at any possible runoff near the reservoir and any possibility of contamination from a nearby hog farm. The CDC asked about manufacturing in the area past and present. Insulation used to be produced at a plant on the outskirts of town. Investigators will also look at pesticide use and the combination of chemicals that might be present, and anything those diagnosed with brain tumors have in common.

Cameron's city manager said the city is not jumping to any conclusions, saying maybe it is just an anomaly or an unexplained cluster. But he said the city is fully aware of what he called the recent "flurry" of brain-tumor cases. He said the city clerk is one of those diagnosed.

In the last few days, the Department of Natural Resources had a crew out collecting air, water and soil samples.

Eckerman said that she has been in contact with the majority of people who have come forward with a brain tumor in Cameron or their loved ones. Some are still recovering from brain surgery. Some have had setbacks. Two residents who wanted to tell their stories on camera are back in the hospital and were not able to talk.

***
OK, I have a few reactions to this incident and suggestions to make or things to highlight. The first is that you should notice that it is citizens themselves who tend to notice these things. Public health and government or medical officials tend to do squat about noticing odd and concerning clusters of illness. For example, notice the state Health Department does not track benign tumors, only the cancerous ones, even though a benign tumor is obviously a serious condition too. People who get benign tumors are ill, need surgery etc just as much as those whose tumors end up being cancerous, yet their numbers are not reported or tracked at all. The point I want to make is that US citizens have grown up with some sort of assumption that officials are looking out for the public health and welfare while in fact they are not since they don't even collect many of the basic statistics.

It reminds me of the huge controversy about thirty years ago when the first statistics for cancer were really collected and discussed and clusters of breast cancer were discovered in parts of Long Island, New York. It seems to me that as a country we have not really progressed much from those days when citizens themselves are the ones to notice clusters of concern and then it gets in the media, but there are few answers and many questions. I think that if anything public health is less a priority these days than it was several decades ago in this country. People need to start asking questions and become self empowered and informed on a grassroots level. (I feel so old typing this. "Grassroots" level advocacy was so much the catch word thirty to forty years ago.) However, it seems that we really need to once again have a grassroots movement toward self and community monitoring of health issues.

Another point I want to make is to have you notice the variety of things the officials will explore that are environmental factors. This shows that there are many things that may or may not be significant and it is very hard to find a "smoking gun" when one is studying cancer. I may have mentioned this before in my blogging but it is worth repeating. Around thirty years ago when people really turned their attention toward the proliferation of breast cancer (First Lady Betty Ford being such a ground breaker in this topic) there were studies that showed that Japanese women had very little breast cancer, while American women had high rates of breast cancer. Some studies showed, however, that as Japanese women moved to the United States their rate of breast cancer started to increase. This set off a lot of speculation about the impact of diet. Years later researchers in general look toward genetic influences too. It is very likely that cancer has a component that is genetic tendency and a component that is environmental trigger. So the people in this town of Cameron have a really complicated situation to analyze. Often the researchers never really reach a single factor or conclusion, to the pain and frustration of those who are suffering from an illness.

Larry King had an interesting show tonight about whether cell phones have an influence on the anecdotal increases in brain cancers that many are observing (for example this show had the widow of the attorney Johnny Cochran). I've been very uncomfortable for many years with the proliferation of cell phones and also wireless devices. I noticed that doctors on the Larry King show danced around saying "yes" or "no," but admitted to using earpieces and so forth to mitigate possible effects. Rural and small town people need to look at this too as they explore possible causes of clusters of brain tumors.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it is difficult for pollutants and organisms to get into the brain. This is why antibiotics usually do not work for infections above the neck region, since the body has a strenuous barrier against chemicals, organisms and pollutants from getting into the brain. If you think about this, it ought to make you cautious about engaging in behavior that can stimulate overcoming the brain and head area's natural defenses. For example, smokers and those who use marijuana or other substances are basically stamping down a pathway between your body and your brain via the substance abuse. Same with alcohol. When researchers look at the causes of brain tumors they need to keep that in mind. Something as harmless as having once been a cigarette smoker may have weakened the natural protective barriers that exist in the brain and head region since the smoke is basically forcing a way into the body and through the bloodstream to the brain. For lack of a better word, think of certain substances as being "abrasive." They roughen up and overcome a body's natural balance and defenses. These must be really soberly considered in any thorough research. So as everyone is, correctly, speaking more about brain tumors, especially in the light of the Ted Kennedy revelation of his condition, people need to also think back over diet and behavior patterns, not in a blaming way, but to have a complete picture of the dynamics that may have caused an individual case or more importantly what might be behind a clustering of cases.

I've offered a number of pointers about how to analyze a problem like this, and the article lists a number of environmental factors that will, correctly, be explored. So you can see there is no shortage of potential causes and triggers of cancers in general, and specifically brain tumors, both benign and cancerous. There is no need to bark up the wrong tree by thinking about "mystical" and "magical" or "karma" causes. It is sad to say that many research dollars toward cancer research have been wasted because there are often secret beliefs of even those who seem the most scholarly on the surface about ridiculous "causes" of cancer, including "astrology" and "past lives." It sounds insane and I agree, and I would never have guessed it until I overheard that I was actually accused of "causing" people to get cancer. People are so much more ignorant, primitive, deluded and sorcery obsessed than any time in their history, and that includes Colonial times. I can't really explain it except to say that it is true that "nature abhors a vacuum." When there is an empty space, such as the space that has been created by the rejection of organized religion and God's role in the public square, other things rush into the vacuum to fill the space. Superstition and sorcery return, sucked into the vacuum in the human spirit caused by their pushing away of God. Then the boundaries between delusion and fact break down. Religion and faith in God used to occupy a well understood component of human life. One could be, and often was, for example, a very faithful and believing man or woman and simultaneously a well educated doctor or researcher. But when one rejects God and organized religion, one soon contaminates the rational and scholarly part of your life with superstition and magical thinking. ("Magical thinking" is the belief that non factual influences cause real events. For example, children go through a magical thinking phase as part of their growing up until they learn how the world around them actually works. Like they will see something impossible in a cartoon and believe it until a certain age when they realize it can't be done but is simply there to be funny.) Many adults in this generation have fallen into magical thinking and it has infested even the scholarly circles that humans rely on for protection in public health matters. Don't waste your time, money and your lives or your loved ones' lives any further with supporting maniacs who think "cancer" can be "determined" to be in someone's astrology sign, for example. I wish I was joking or expressing hyperbole how common this magical thinking epidemic has become. But I'm not.

Hope you found this blogging posting helpful.