Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

JOHN L. SMITH: All Nevadans share heartache of Fallon's 'childhood cancer cluster'

Downshift as you reach the outskirts of Fallon and the scent of fresh-cut alfalfa permeates the air.

Suddenly, farm country. It's as if the foreboding desert has been fenced out by thin strands of barbed wire.

At twilight, with the magpies chattering and the blackbirds moving across a sky turning crimson, you'd swear you'd found a patch of agrarian heaven at the crossroads of U.S. Highways 95 and 50, approximately 380 miles north of Las Vegas.

Fallon seems so idyllic on first glance that it's difficult to imagine anything going wrong there, much less something as nightmarish as a childhood cancer cluster. Just looking at the words on the page will take parents' breaths away.

But that is Fallon's great collective heartache. Since 1999, at least 16 children have been diagnosed with leukemia in the town with a population of less than 8,000. Locals and experts have their theories -- farm pesticides, atomic fallout, jet fuel from the nearby air base, and more. But to date, all evidence has been inconclusive, since the Centers for Disease Control determined the leukemia diagnoses were too close to be called coincidence.

Fallon's heartache and its medical mystery should touch all Nevadans.

Trouble is, outside some news coverage, the Fallon cluster case has received relatively little national recognition.

Imagine the international alarm that would sound if a childhood cancer cluster had been discovered in Manhattan or Los Angeles? But Fallon is a long way from the national media eye.

That's part of what makes Amie Williams' "Fallon, NV: Deadly Oasis" so important. (The hour-long documentary is scheduled to air at 9 p.m. Thursday on KLVX-TV, Channel 10.) Fallon's plight is as compelling as its community is diminutive.

There's something about the town's size and relatively remote locale that makes its story all the more wrenching. It will surely make you angry to watch those working people attempt to solve the pharaoh-sized riddle of state and federal bureaucracies while their sick children gradually fail.

At one point, state epidemiologist Randall Todd addresses a roomful of residents, including some of the parents who had come seeking the slightest sign of hope.

"As I've said from Day 1, we may never have some meaningful answers on this," he reports.

Todd was right, of course. The experts may never arrive at a single cause of the cancer cluster. But it's hard to imagine that such an awful malady discovered in a larger community with better political connections wouldn't have been treated with a greater sense of urgency.

Williams, a former Las Vegan, started on the road to Fallon after reading about the cancer cluster in the Review-Journal. She was especially touched by a photograph of a father and his sick son. The boy was about the same age as her own son.

Although initially she didn't see the story as a possible documentary, she was curious enough to travel nearly 400 miles to see the town for herself.

As she arrived in Fallon, it hit her.

"You just don't think that a nightmare of this magnitude could happen in a community that's so bucolic," Williams says.

You expect something called "childhood cancer cluster" to bubble up from Three Mile Island or seep from the edge of a defunct chemical factory.

But Fallon is literally and metaphorically at a crossroads. It's intersected by two federal highways and is the site of the Fallon Naval Air Station. Farms that use insecticides help give the town its pastoral look and feel, and there's a long history of mining in the area. Cancer-causing benzene might be at the dark heart of the leukemia cluster. It could be jet fuel seepage or insecticide runoff. Or something else entirely.

Those hoping for a happy ending and some authoritative conclusions won't find them here. The mystery of the cluster still bothers Williams.

"I never dreamt that there wouldn't be an answer," she says. "I don't think any of the families did, either. I believed they would find a smoking gun. I guess I was naive."

Nevada is a big state, but not so vast we can ignore the cries of our neighbors' children.

John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.