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Mesothelioma: A Killer
Lurks in the Lungs |
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Panel Studies Effects of Nuclear Tests
IDAHO FALLS , Idaho (AP) -- Idaho residents who believe Cold War nuclear testing harmed their health will testify before a National Academy of Sciences panel to say they should be included in a federal compensation program.
About 150 Idaho residents have written to the board to argue that radioactive fallout from atmospheric testing in Nevada in the 1950s and 1960s also affected Idaho.
The academy's Board on Radiation Effects Research scheduled the hearing for Nov. 6. It already has held meetings in Utah and Arizona.
The board will release a report in March that will recommend whether the government should expand the compensation program. Currently, residents with certain kinds of cancers who lived in any of 21 counties in southern Utah, Nevada and Arizona during testing qualify for a $50,000 payment under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
"I'm very pleased that they've decided to hold a hearing in Idaho," said Preston Truman, a cancer survivor who has been fighting for more than 30 years to get compensation for residents exposed to radiation from the bomb tests.
Four Idaho counties - Blaine, Gem, Custer and Lemhi - received some of the highest levels of iodine-131, one of the radioactive elements released by the tests, according to a 1997 National Cancer Institute study.
High levels of iodine-131 typically cause cancer by falling on grass, which is eaten by cows and goats, which then produce radioactive milk.
Residents in Gem County have begun sending a form letter to officials, demanding compensation as part of a campaign being led by Tona Henderson, a bakery owner whose extended family has had about 32 cases of cancer.
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Experimental Cancer Treatments for Kids Set |
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September 27, 2004 11:03:05 AM PDT , HealthDay |
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MONDAY, Sept. 27 (HealthDayNews) -- A national coalition of nine academic medical centers has been created to test new cancer treatments in children who don't respond to traditional therapies.
The Pediatric Oncology Experimental Therapeutics Investigators Consortium (POETIC) began its first clinical trial on Sept. 20. An investigational drug called 17-AAG was given to an 11-year-old Florida boy who has been fighting bone cancer for three years. This trial will include about two dozen children with various forms of recurrent cancer who have not responded to other treatments.
"The importance of the consortium is that there haven't been a lot of opportunities for children with cancer to access drugs in the earliest stages of development," Dr. Stephen P. Hunger, chief of the division of pediatric hematology/oncology at the University of Florida's College of Medicine, said in a prepared statement.
The University of Florida is one of the POETIC members.
"There is nowhere else in the state of Florida where such trials are available. This gives patients throughout Florida and elsewhere in the Southeast opportunities that didn't exist otherwise. This particular trial is the first in a number of trials the consortium will conduct," Hunger said.
POETIC is currently developing half a dozen other clinical trials scheduled to begin over the coming year. The group plans to have four trials open at any given moment. That will offer a number of experimental therapy options to parents of children with cancer that hasn't responded to treatment.
Each year in the United States, about 12,000 people under the age of 20 are diagnosed with cancer. An estimated 20 percent of them don't respond to first- and second-line cancer therapies.
More information
The Nemours Foundation has more about childhood cancer. |
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