Re: incidence of glioma?


alarmclockin@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
hi,

i'm wondering if anyone has seen any information related to the
incidence of glioma, particularly whether or not rates have increased
in the past several years.

You can find this information at the usual places, including
cancer.gov, abta.org, and braintumor.org. There has been
an increased incidence over the past 20 years or so, but
there is some controversy as to whether this is due to better
detection, an increased elderly population (who are the most
likely to develop brain tumors or cancer of any sort), or whether
there is some environmental cause.

so does anyone have any insight, comments, references to statistics?
i'm not looking to open an x-file or talking conspiracy theory here...
i am just concerned about potential factors in our environment. maybe
it's just a weird pattern in randomness though.

The existence of clusters of cases or people with
several friends/acquaintances with brain tumors is a statistical
certainty.
Think about it this way: If there were no clusters, then the fact that
some
person somewhere develops a brain tumor would imply that everyone else
within a nearby area would somehow be protected against developing
a brain tumor. Likewise, just because you learn that one friend has a
brain tumor, your knowledge does not make the other people you know
more or less likely to have a brain tumor.

That's not to say no brain tumor cluster can have an environmental
cause,
but unless your friends have all worked or lived in the same building
(or
otherwise had some common environmental exposure) for a long period,
it's probably a statistical fluke.

--Eric

.