Illinois Supreme Court Rule to Allow Access to Cancer Cluster Information
February 07, 2006
Recently, in a unanimous decision, The Illinois Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Carbondale Illinois newspaper, The Southern Illinoisan. The newspaper has been battling the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) for the past eight years. The Southern Illinoisan has been trying to gain access to information regarding cancer diagnosis and a potential cancer cluster. A cancer cluster occurs when there is a greater than expected number of cases of a particular cancer within a group of people, a geographic area or a period of time. The IDPH refused to release the information stating that the paper may take the statistic a step further and actually track down the patient’s identity.
The newspaper requested data from IDPH showing types of cancer, date of diagnosis, and zip code of every cancer diagnosis from 1985 to the present. The original request was made under the Freedom of Information Act in October 1997. Judge William Schwartz ruled in favor of the newspaper in June of 2002 and ordered IDPH to release the records and pay the newspaper’s legal fees. Seeking an appeal, IDPH took the case to the Illinois Supreme Court. The court upheld the lower-court rulings in favor of The Southern Illinoisan.
Concerns of cancer clusters in Illinois have made news in the past. In Taylorsville, a town of about 11,000, a civil suit was filed against AmerenCIPS by parents of four children with cancer. The children were all diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer of the nervous system, in the early 1990’s. One in every 330 people will be diagnosed with cancer before their 20th birthday, but of these only about one in every 100,000 children will be diagnosed with neuroblastoma. Although environmental connections have not been proven, the parents sued for a possible cancer link. AmereCIPS owns a local former coal-gasification plant where carcinogenic coal tar was present. Denying any blame, AmerenCIPS agreed to pay the families $3.2 million dollars. Although the majority of childhood cancers are of unknown causes; there is continuous research about possible environmental contributors.
Related website:
National Cancer Institute
<< Back
February 07, 2006
Recently, in a unanimous decision, The Illinois Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Carbondale Illinois newspaper, The Southern Illinoisan. The newspaper has been battling the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) for the past eight years. The Southern Illinoisan has been trying to gain access to information regarding cancer diagnosis and a potential cancer cluster. A cancer cluster occurs when there is a greater than expected number of cases of a particular cancer within a group of people, a geographic area or a period of time. The IDPH refused to release the information stating that the paper may take the statistic a step further and actually track down the patient’s identity. The newspaper requested data from IDPH showing types of cancer, date of diagnosis, and zip code of every cancer diagnosis from 1985 to the present. The original request was made under the Freedom of Information Act in October 1997. Judge William Schwartz ruled in favor of the newspaper in June of 2002 and ordered IDPH to release the records and pay the newspaper’s legal fees. Seeking an appeal, IDPH took the case to the Illinois Supreme Court. The court upheld the lower-court rulings in favor of The Southern Illinoisan.
Concerns of cancer clusters in Illinois have made news in the past. In Taylorsville, a town of about 11,000, a civil suit was filed against AmerenCIPS by parents of four children with cancer. The children were all diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer of the nervous system, in the early 1990’s. One in every 330 people will be diagnosed with cancer before their 20th birthday, but of these only about one in every 100,000 children will be diagnosed with neuroblastoma. Although environmental connections have not been proven, the parents sued for a possible cancer link. AmereCIPS owns a local former coal-gasification plant where carcinogenic coal tar was present. Denying any blame, AmerenCIPS agreed to pay the families $3.2 million dollars. Although the majority of childhood cancers are of unknown causes; there is continuous research about possible environmental contributors.
Related website:
National Cancer Institute
<< Back
