THE official body set up to investigate the cluster of childhood cancer cases
around the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria has been accused of making a
fundamental statistical error.
Leo Kinlen, a statistician at the Cancer Research Campaign鈥檚 Cancer
Epidemiology Research Group in Oxford, claims the error caused the Committee on
Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) to wrongly dismiss his
explanation for the cluster: the triggering of cancers by infections brought
into the area by an influx of construction workers.
In a report last year, COMARE could find no good explanation for the cluster,
noting that Kinlen鈥檚 theory 鈥渨ould at best seem to offer only a partial
explanation鈥�. The committee centred its investigation on the town of Seascale,
near Sellafield, where the rate of childhood cancers is 11 times the national
average.
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In the latest issue of the Journal of Radiological Protection (vol
17, p 63), Kinlen argues that this focus was wrong. 鈥淭he mistake can be likened
to a sharpshooter who first fires a gun, then draws the target around the bullet
hole,鈥� he says. 鈥淐OMARE should have looked at the whole vicinity around
厂别濒濒补蹿颈别濒诲.鈥�
Eleven studies which have taken the approach Kinlen suggests, many from his
own group, have backed the theory that influxes of people into isolated areas
bring a range of new infections, some of which can trigger cancers. Thousands of
construction workers have converged on Sellafield.
Bryn Bridges of the Medical Research Council鈥檚 Cell Mutation Unit at the
University of Sussex, who chairs COMARE, defends the decision to concentrate on
Seascale. A wider study, he says, was beyond the committee鈥檚 remit.
However, Richard Doll of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund鈥檚 Epidemiology
Unit in Oxford, one of the world鈥檚 leading cancer epidemiologists, says: 鈥淚
think it鈥檚 extraordinary that COMARE just concentrates on Seascale.鈥�