The Empiricist

Whenever you hear someone say the words “cancer cluster,” turn and run. If that might be considered rude, just smile politely, make your phone ring, and sidle away never to return.

Cancer clusters are the mental plaything of the ignorant.
You don’t hear people talking in suspicous tones about “green shirt” clusters, do you? Yet I have often seen three, four, even five people with green shirts in the same place at the same time.

The unpredictable nature of cancer means that it will often cluster. Random events are not distributed smoothly, they are patchy. But whenever a few incidents of cancer happen in proximity to each other, the locals start talking in low, furtive tones about any corporation that is unlucky enough to be nearby.

If there’s no corporation, it’s a secretive government organisation or just economic activity in general, like fertilisers or power lines. And if there’s a lawyer in the neighbourhood, you might be able to sell your paranoid fantasies to a jury and make everyone rich.

Anyway, health experts are on to the scam, which is why the Western Australian Department of Health has rejected claims of a fertiliser-induced cancer cluster.

A strike against ignorance.

Not that the locals will believe it of course. They’ll go and watch re-runs of “Erin Brockovich” and wish they could be so lucky.

update: I should add that cancer is a serious and terrible thing. I have seen first hand what it can do to people and their families and friends.
That said, there is no sense in blaming people who are not to blame. Seeing or detecting spurious “cancer clusters” is a common event that derails real health management and does nothing except create scapegoats for tragedy.