Government Urged To Warn on Radium

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Monday April 26 1:53 AM ET 

Government Urged To Warn on Radium

By MELISSA B. ROBINSON Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Steve Culpepper had endured blinding 
headaches, double vision, brain surgery and the violent nausea of 
chemotherapy. Then a doctor connected his cancer to nasal 
radium treatments he received as a boy.  

Culpepper remembered that small amounts had been inserted 
through his nose to treat chronic ear infections, but he never 
worried about it as he grew older.  

Culpepper, who rarely got so much as a cold, had not had a 
physical in years, much less a consultation about an obscure Cold 
War-era medical procedure no longer used.  

``If someone had said anyone having these treatments in the '50s 
or '60s ought to immediately go see an ENT (ear, nose and throat) 
doctor, he would have gone,'' said Culpepper's widow, Patti, of 
Newport Beach, Calif. ``I know he would have gone.''  

Culpepper, 55, died in January after 16 months of treatment for 
nasopharyngeal cancer, which affects the nose and upper throat 
area.  

The government sees no need to warn former radium patients, a 
stand that enrages public health advocates.

``They're doing a great disservice to the population at risk and not 
meeting any of their responsibilities,'' says Stewart Farber, a 
Rhode Island public health scientist who has spent years 
researching the medical use of radium.