What I Want To Do For Wenatchee (with assistance of some medical professionals)

Ask not what your town can do for you, but what you can do for your town.

Well, that's certaintly not the mindset I had coming back here, but I starting thinking today, as I was thinking about cancer rates and thyroid issues and Hanford...I thought I could use the help of some doctors and medical professionals in this town.

Then I realized, doing an article which may be investigative and could actually help some people in this area, or improve their lives, or understanding of what has caused some medical issues, would be a good service. It is intellectually appealing to me, and yet it would also be helpful to others.

And, I have to face it...I like science. I like learning about scientific things and I don't have to be near NIH to meet mad scientists necessarily, or develop some relationships with doctors who would also be interested in doing something for the public.

I once did a massive survey thing about STDs, for a school project at Portland State University, and I was told by many that it was informative and something they didn't even know. It was about HPV, before it became more well-known that this is a virus which can be passed even through skin contact and nothing more. So, it took a lot of work. I had the idea and was good at brainstorming and putting together what we "needed" and I wrote the surveys, but my partner was invaluable as the statistics guy who crunched numbers and did graphs. I couldn't do what he did, and he didn't want to do what I did.

I would like to form some liasons in the community. I think I am probably of most use, as a writer here, breaking down complicated scientific problems into an easy-to-understand and interesting way.

I think there are many talented science-and-health oriented individuals who can do things I'll never be able to do, and then there are things I can do, which maybe others can do but just don't have time to do.

I'm interested in Hanford health problems because I think perhaps even my own mother and first child was affected by fall out, according to research I've done. But I'd like to broaden my scope and then bring it back in. I like to go very broad and big picture and then parse away and get down to a narrow line and follow it through.

So my broader question, is whether some of the health issues in the Wenatchee area are because of genetics, pesticides and normal hazards of being in an orchard area, or whether some of the health issues are better accounted for by radioactive spill and spread.

I think I'm interested in the rate of thyroid issues in the area. But then I'm also interested to find out if there is another health issue that is really popping up ahead of normal stats. Then, of course, I'd like to know why. I would also like to find out whether there is a database for all the health issues in the area, or where the information gets sent.

I'm interested in thyroid issues for obvious reasons. I'm also interested in rates of infant deaths, stillbirths, and miscarriage in the area within a certain timeframe.

I'm really looking at what is coming up and what may contribute to its cause. I'm not wanting to look at cures, but at figuring out what's going on and then possibly from there, steps torwards prevention can be made.

This kind of investigation really doesn't put any pressure on doctors and medical professionals in the area, because it's not looking at how they did surgery or attempted to cure or fix an issue and what their success was. I need medical professionals who are simply interested in causal relationships who can help me figure out where to look for information. If I need to develop a survey protocol, I can do that. If there is a database to access, I can do that. I'm hoping there is a database but if so, maybe there are a bunch where the information just needs to be consolidated so it can be analyzed. If not, I need to know so I can develop a plan of where to start looking.

When I first came into town I did call and request a large packet of information on cancer rates in the area and in the state. I was going through it and then got busy with other things, among them my idea of botox for migraine which I thought was novel and didn't realize had already been patented a couple of years earlier.