Letters to the Editor: 03.05.98

Disturbing Findings

East Hampton

February 28, 1998

Dear Helen Rattray,

Leon Jaroff's latest letter of Feb. 23 asks, "Why is STAR silent on the issue" raised by Dr. Roger Grimson that the recent updated findings that the East End has the highest age-adjusted breast and prostate cancer rates in the county mean that Brookhaven could not be responsible.

He is evidently unaware that I dealt with this issue in some detail at the Guild Hall meeting held on Dec. 5 to discuss the significance of these disturbing new findings for residents of the East End, which apparently are of little concern to Jaroff.

He is not even disturbed by the latest official report that young women on the South Fork have breast cancer rates that are 60 percent higher than the Suffolk County average, in his eagerness to defend Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Last year, with the help of Suffolk County Legislator George Guldi, Dr. Helen Caldicott and I had been asking the New York State Health Department to update the age-adjusted breast cancer incidence rates previously published for each town for the period 1978-87. We described our unsuccessful efforts in an op-ed piece that was printed last summer in all regional editions of Suffolk Life, after being rejected by Newsday, another passionate B.N.L. supporter.

We were especially interested in getting the new data for the years 1988-93 for the nine census tracts that define the adjoining towns of Brookhaven, Bellport, Shirley, Yaphank, and Medford, because the combined rate for these towns had been 30 percent higher than the county average.

Residents of these towns include most of the nine families with children who have been diagnosed (since 1993) with the extremely rare form of soft tissue cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma, and include many families now suing B.N.L. after B.N.L. admitted that groundwater flows from the lab may have contaminated private wells in those towns.

Also, this is the area where we are getting most of Suffolk County baby teeth from concerned families eager to have them tested in our Canadian laboratory for their radioactivity levels.

We had calculated that the updated age-adjusted breast cancer incidence rate for these five towns would probably exceed 140 cases per 100,000 women if we had been able to secure the data for the nine census tracts in question.

Since the data given to the task force included the one unpopulated census tract in which the lab itself was located, it suggests that officials appear reluctant to release detailed census tract data that may prove embarrassing to B.N.L.

However, I must admit that I found the newly released East End breast cancer rate of 129 cases per 100,000 shockingly high, and it is no consolation that it may be lower than other areas in Suffolk County, which has itself registered the greatest single county increases in breast cancer mortality since the lab began operating in 1950.

It should force us to rethink our strategy in establishing the true local levels of radioactivity, and I would welcome hearing from Star readers on this important issue.

JAY M. GOULD

On The Alert

East Hampton

February 26, 1998

Dear Helen,

It reminds me of a children's book. See Jay Gould make pronouncements about Brookhaven. See Jay Gould bristle when his oddball views are challenged. See Jay Gould squirm out of answering direct questions. That's precisely what Gould did in his rambling Feb. 20 letter.

Let's go again to the subject of AIDS, one of the many unfortunate human maladies that Gould blatantly, and without documentation, attributes to low-level radiation. He cites 1980 as a year when he says that homosexuals "aged 35" began dying of AIDS, and he blames fallout from earlier nuclear bomb tests for compromising their immune systems "at birth." That, he says, made them vulnerable to diseases like AIDS, "where rapid mutation rates made them increasingly resistant to traditional antibiotics."

Gotta hand it to Gould. He can pack more misinformation into a paragraph than Saddam Hussein's best spokesman. In the first place, it's not diseases that have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics, it's the bacteria causing the disease that have become resistant. And the bacteria have become resistant largely because of ordinary Darwinian selection and the overuse of antibiotics, not because of low-level radiation.

Next, as any high school biology student - but apparently not Jay Gould - also knows, antibiotics have no effect on viruses, which after all are the cause of AIDS.

I can predict Gould's response: "Well, harrumpf, low-level radiation also mutated the AIDS virus and made it lethal." Let me shoot that one down. The AIDS virus seems to have mutated and become lethal to humans in Africa, and claimed some victims there as early as the 1960s. Fallout from bomb tests, largely conducted in the Northern Hemisphere, was negligible in Africa and almost certainly was not responsible for that mutation.

Now, about statistician Gould's fixation on 1980: Haitians visiting their ancestral African homelands in the 1960s and 1970s contracted AIDS, came home and, in turn, infected members of the large American community in Haiti.

And these Americans, returning home, brought the disease to these shores, where doctors first identified it in late 1979 or 1980. Air travel, not low-level radiation, was involved. Furthermore, most victims of the disease have healthy immune systems when they're infected. It's the AIDS virus, not low-level radiation or Brookhaven, that wrecks immune systems and make its victims vulnerable to the diseases that eventually kill them. Ask your doctor, Jay Gould.

Gould goes on to boast that he "predicted" that the AIDS epidemic would taper off in 1998, "when men reaching the age of 35 would be born after the cessation of above ground tests in 1963." Gosh, Jay, that's really impressive. I hate to mention it, but do you think that better knowledge of the disease and the "safe sex" campaign just might have something to do with any decline?

I'm sure that Jay Gould is a nice man, and I regret having to attack his credibility. But Jay, Helen Caldicott, Karl Grossman, and other STAR activists will no longer have a monopoly on columns and letters in The Star and on local TV shows.

Several of us in East Hampton (none connected in any way with Brookhaven) are now on the alert for any disingenuous and ill-informed STAR charges and will promptly respond with the facts. Keep tuned.

Sincerely yours,

LEON JAROFF

'Damn Yankees'

East Hampton

March 2, 1998

Dear Helen:

I write to compliment the astounding performance of East Hampton High School students in their tremendous performance last weekend of "Damn Yankees."

Accolades to all the fine actors and actresses and techies. Also deserving of praise are the faculty, staff, and friends who assisted the students in this fine production. The music and singing were great, as were the production values. The theater at the high school has certainly come a long way since I was a student there 25 years ago. Special congratulations to my niece, Annabel Raebeck. The East Hampton community can take pride in the hard work and artistic success of our high school students.

Sincerely,

CHRISTOPHER KELLEY

Please address correspondence to [email protected]

Please include your full name, address and daytime telephone number for purposes of verification.