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Re: Apparent anti-correlations between geographic radiation and cancerare no...



Ruth,
 
If migration of retirees is responsible for excess cancer mortality, then a map of retiree migration should match the cancer map. I kind of doubt that it will. Lots of old people move to Arizona, but cancer incidence seems low throughout the sate.
 
You think the reason the cancer map looks like it does is because of migration, John thinks its because of population density, someone else thinks its because of diet or a combination of factors. All I'm saying is that it is worthwhile to figure out what it is. We are looking at tens of millions of excess cancers here. 
 
We are at least 3 orders of magnitude larger than what would be expected from statistical fluctuations. Therefore, something causes the map to look like it does. It should be possible to map a causal factor, or a mathematical function of factors, to reproduce the features of the map. Otherwise, we have to admit to ourselves that we are pretty clueless.
 
Regards,
Kai
 
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: Apparent anti-correlations between geographic radiation and cancer are no...

In a message dated 1/2/03 8:36:00 AM Mountain Standard Time, eic@shaw.ca writes:

The map http://www.dceg.cancer.gov/cgi-bin/atlas/mapview2?direct=acccwm70 doesn't seem to support that conclusion. It may also be that "cancer clusters" are usually considered a few incidences of very rare forms of cancer. I think the biggest leukemia cluster has about a dozen or two cases. These "clusters" would not show up on a cancer map that deals with millions of cases. I don't know what the New Yorker article meant by clusters. (Us healthy prairie folk only read fishing magazines, if we read at all.)
 


The map is a map of cancer mortality, not incidence.  While it is age-adjusted, it does not provide the fraction of deaths that are cancer deaths, and generally seems to follow both population and total mortality (e.g., Las Vegas, NV has a growing population of retirees, so the number of people who die there increases, and thus, as anticipated, cancer mortality would increase).  I don't think one can draw any conclusion about the cause of cancer from such a map.

Ruth


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.
ruthweiner@aol.com