Town Sees 15th Leukemia Case

Tests have confirmed a 3-year-old boy is the 15th victim of a childhood leukemia epidemic in Fallon, a small Navy and farming town in northern Nevada.

“The devastating news of an additional case during the holiday season breaks my heart,” Gov. Kenny Guinn said Thursday, adding that the state Health Division is using “every resource to find answers for the families coping with this health crisis.”

Dr. Randall Todd, the division’s state epidemiologist, said the boy was flown last week to a California hospital for bone-marrow testing, and the child’s doctor in Fallon relayed the results--acute lymphocytic leukemia--to the state late Wednesday.

Todd said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been notified and an interview with the boy’s family is planned to see whether there are any links to 13 other such cases or one case of acute myelocytic leukemia.

“This is terribly unfortunate, and our hearts go out to the family and to the community,” Todd said. “This is another blow to Fallon.”

The town had gone about seven months without any new childhood leukemia reports, and residents and health officials were hopeful that the epidemic had ended in this town of about 7,500 people.

“We were all hoping there wouldn’t be any other cases. This is the worst kind of Christmas present you could get,” Todd said.

But Todd said the latest case is one of just three reported in 2001, compared with 10 in 2000, “so 2001 ends up looking much better statistically than 2000.”

“It still leaves us with a rate that is by no means back to the baseline,” Todd said. “But it’s consistent with things beginning to wind down. This is consistent with a pattern of a diminishing cancer cluster.”

Of the 15 confirmed childhood leukemia victims linked to Fallon since 1997, two have died.

The cancer cluster was identified a year ago, and state health officials suspect an environmental cause in the town.