Don’t Believe Everything You Read or Hear

Recent news stories (The Advocate and WWNO) and the newest unpublished (and not peer reviewed) cancer study by the community outreach director at the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic continue to disingenuously portray the Louisiana Tumor Registry and obfuscate its mission.

A number of groups have used the Louisiana Tumor Registry as a foil to advance their agendas. This includes deliberately sowing mistrust of the Registry in the minds of the public, particularly those whose lives have been horribly affected by cancer – the very people the Louisiana Tumor Registry works so hard to help. Some reporters have chosen to go along with these groups by writing unbalanced stories, excluding facts and context about the Registry’s function. Not one of them has accepted the offer to do an in-depth story on the Registry to educate the public.

Though what the Registry is actually responsible for, as well as what does not fall under its purview, have been explained and corroborated, inappropriate allegations and the omission of facts that mischaracterize the Registry continue to be fed to the public.

The community outreach director’s study linking air pollution to cancer rates, which by the way could not have been done without Louisiana Tumor Registry data, said in a press release, “The reports published by the Louisiana Tumor Registry don’t include information about pollution or poverty, so it’s not surprising that they failed to document this link.”

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