Dr. STEPHEN S. FRANCIS, of the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Leukemia and the Environment at the University of California Berkeley, discusses whether infectious agents may have contributed to a possible cluster of childhood leukemia cases in Fallon Nevada. A role for an infectious agent, in this case a virus, is suggested because there was a spike in cases of childhood leukemia in US military dependent populations at around the same time; Fallon had a naval air station that brought military personnel into the town; and the locations where children with the disease lived tended to be in areas where transmission by mosquitoes might occur. This was part of a symposium organized by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment http://oehha.ca.gov/index.html, the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit at UCSF http://coeh.berkeley.edu/ucpehsu, and the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Leukemia and the Environment at the University of California Berkeley http://circle.berkeley.edu. Research funding is from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and US EPA. Views expressed are not those of these agencies.

Statistical Analysis of Categorical Data