Cancer cluster still baffles farming community
Copyright 1998 Associated Press
November 2, 1998
It's been 24 years since scientists flocked to this tiny farming town 20 miles
west of Saginaw to try to determine the
cause of what was called a
"cancer cluster." At least five deaths later, Breckenridge still waits for answers.
The small Gratiot County farming community
made national news in 1974, after a 25-year-old mother diagnosed with Hodgkin's
disease told University of Michigan doctors about the dozen or so other people
in town known to have unusual
cancers.
The doctors checked thousands of county medical records and interviewed scores
of residents. Soon, they had a list of 14 people who had contracted Hodgkin's
or related lymphomas during the previous 20 years. That put townspeople at a
cancer rate 9.4 times above the national average.
The mother,
Carolyn S. Gillespie, has been free of Hodgkin's since 1978.
"Many of us lived close together, and Breckenridge is a small town to begin
with. How couldn't you take notice?" she told The Detroit News for a story Monday.
Scientists descended upon the town of 1,300, branding it
a
"cancer cluster."
Epidemiologists from the University of Michigan, state health department and
National Centers for Disease Control scoured the town in search of the cancer's
source. Breckenridge made a dubious debut in Newsweek magazine as one of the
country's most notorious clusters.
But after
looking at local water, blood transfusions, jobs and other points of possible
cancer exposure, scientists failed to pinpoint a source. Farm pesticides were
ruled out after investigators couldn't determine whether all of the victims had
contact with the chemicals.
Michigan's most famous cluster now shares the
fate of similar studies nationwide - a cabinet of closed files bearing only
question marks.
State and federal officials dropped their studies in the late 1970s, saying too
many variables kept them from drawing solid conclusions.
The failure of cluster studies marks a frustrating path in the
50-year chronicle of cancer research. For residents and scientists alike,
Breckenridge has become a watchword of caution in the slippery quest for
environmental sources of cancer.
"We had our speculations, we had hypotheses, but no final answers," said Dr. Joseph Silva Jr., co-author of a
study of Breckenridge published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 1978.
At the time, Silva was a University of Michigan researcher. He is now dean of
the medical school at the University of California in Davis.
"We spent a lot of time and did succeed in proving the people had higher rates
for these cancers, but we ultimately didn't know why," he said.
"We still don't."
Since the 1970s, only one new case of Hodgkin's disease and one new lymphoma
have been reported. Robert Gallagher, 71, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's in 1993.
Five years and nearly 50 radiation treatments later, he is
largely cured.
Gallagher thinks the pesticides and herbicides applied to the fields near
Breckenridge could be a culprit.
"Everybody started with the chemicals, and three days afterward you could taste
that stuff in your mouth," Gallagher said.
"Is spraying the cause of the cancers? I don't know. I don't know how
you'd ever prove it. But something went wrong in Breckenridge. We do know that."
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