Albany - In April, Gov. George Pataki vetoed $1 million that was intended to map cancer cases statewide. Less than 24 hours later, after breast cancer activists protested, his administration vowed to pay for the maps another way.
The health commissioner at the time, Dr. Barbara DeBuono, said she would create the maps, which are color-coded and designed to spotlight potential cancer causes, out of her own budget. And in a May 5 letter to a supporter, she said they'd be ready "within the next several months."
The maps are to be one of the most ambitious efforts by a state to help scientists track the disease, but they are yet to become reality. Six months after DeBuono's pledge, the state appointed an advisory committee on preparing the cancer maps. The committee did not meet until December, and it is now telling the state to withhold the maps until they have been fine-tuned. State officials cannot say when the maps will be released.
Health Department officials say the delay reflects the complexity of the project - the largest attempt by a state to link cancer-case sites with drinking-water sources and suspected carcinogens - and they say they are still committed to releasing the maps.
But groups eager to see the data in graphic form are questioning whether politics is preventing New York from taking what they call a major step in the war against cancer.
"These maps have been promised, and we expect to see them," said Elsa Ford, president of the Brentwood / Bay Shore Breast Cancer Coalition, one of about 10 Long Island groups doing smaller-scale cancer-mapping projects. "I certainly don't understand why it needs to be such a lengthy process."
Judith Enck of the New York Public Interest Research Group, which lobbies on environmental issues, said, "We think the governor's office does not want these maps public because it would panic people."
State officials vehemently deny any effort to hinder the maps, which are most avidly sought by women concerned about the causes of breast cancer, a group Pataki has courted.
"This is silly. We are going to release the maps, but we are going to do it right and not to satisfy anyone's political agenda," said Michael McKeon, a Pataki spokesman. He said Pataki vetoed the $1 million approved by the Legislature because the project could be completed with existing funds, not because he opposed it.
But Bob Hinckley, who was the Health Department's chief spokesman at the time and is now an aide to Pataki, said in an interview last month, "If the data is misleading, it could unnecessarily scare people."
Several members of the advisory committee, which includes national cancer experts, voice similar concerns, reflecting a broader debate in the scientific community about cancer maps. Many experts consider the maps - which were first made in the 1970s and are now prepared by everyone from national cancer organizations to local breast-cancer activists - of limited use, helpful to spotlight potential cancer causes but having scant scientific value by themselves.
"If you're a county commissioner, and this map comes out in the paper, and it shows your county being excessively high in breast cancer, what information do you have to respond to that?" said Jay Nuckols, a committee member who directs an environmental laboratory at Colorado State University. "That puts people in a political hot seat. Some would argue that's great, but it could just be an anomaly."
Still, committee members said the maps should merely be refined before being released. "People have a right to know if they are living in a cancer hot spot, but why rush something and have it be imperfect when you can get a better map with a little more time?" said West Islip resident Lorraine Pace, a longtime breast-cancer activist on Long Island, where the rate of breast cancer is higher than the statewide average. "The maps are absolutely not being buried. I would have been all over the media if I thought they were."
Those who favor the maps say the public attention they draw forces officials to confront possible causes they might otherwise dismiss and investigate whether a group of cancer cases are somehow related. They also say the maps identify potential carcinogens for scientists to study. "When you take data and map it, things just leap right out at you that are really hard to see in other forms," said Audrey Thier of Environmental Advocates, a nonprofit lobbying group.
New York's initial maps likely will depict cancer incidence and death rates broken down by county, said Kristine Smith, a Health Department spokeswoman. County maps are already regarded by some committee members with skepticism, because counties are political boundaries that have nothing to do with health.
The committee has not decided whether to recommend breaking subsequent maps down further, perhaps by zip code or census tract. Data will be drawn from the state's cancer registry, which has published cancer rates since the 1940s in book form.
Translating that data into maps, however, is complicated by staffing shortages in the Health Department, which has been without a commissioner since DeBuono left late last year, according to Art Levin of the Center for Medical Consumers, a nonprofit group that tracks medical issues.
Whether politics is also playing a role is uncertain, said others who have observed the debate. "I see both sides. I would think the governor would not be pushing for maps because they are a sticky issue - they could cause panic. But these things take time," said Sandi Kafenbaum, coordinator of clinical services for the New York Statewide Breast Cancer Hotline at Adelphi University. "The consumer in me says if you have this information, let me see it soon, and I will deal with it. The professional in me says you have to do it right."
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