Targeted Therapies Take Aim Against Lung Cancer and Melanoma

Abstract

More than 300 staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry (ATSDR) are monitoring health threats from the oil spill in five Gulf states through the National Poison Data System, which has taken 651 calls related to exposure to the oil spill as of July 8, and BioSense, which reports that there have been no increases in specific syndromes at 86 coastal health care facilities. The CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is providing technical assistance in training clean-up workers, creating rosters of workers to track them for illnesses later if necessary, and coordinating the collection of analysis of injury and illness data BP is required to report. CDC is also reviewing the results of the EPA’s daily environmental samples to determine whether the level of detected pollutants constitutes a health hazard. BP has pledged $500 million to the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to study the impact of the spill on the environment and public health. And the National Institutes of Health announced it will devote $10 million to support research on potential human health effects. Research and surveillance can’t start soon enough, stressed John C. Bailar III, MD, PhD, professor emeritus in the Department of Health Studies at the University of Chicago. “Every day matters. People will move away, memories will fade or change, and environmental samples will be altered with the passage of time.” Also crucial, Bailar said, is for a single organization to direct the research efforts “so that all the data can be assembled to tell a convincing story.” And research needs to be coordinated locally, said Maureen Y. Lichtveld, MD, MPH, professor and chair of the department of environmental health sciences at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. “What we don’t need, frankly, is a repeat of Hurricane Katrina where researchers descended on New Orleans and did all sorts of studies, but the community was left without the answers it needed. We need meaningful data that will let communities take the next steps.”