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Former Medford boy dies amid strange rash of cancer Wire and staff reports ORANGE, Calif. - Richard Jernee cradled his son's head in his hands, whispering in his ear: "I love you. Everybody loves you." He said it over and over after doctors stopped the machine that was breathing for 10-year-old Adam Jernee. He said it until Adam died. Adam, a former Medford resident, became the first victim to die in a mysterious childhood-cancer cluster in Nevada. Fourteen children have been diagnosed with cancer - all but one with acute lymphocytic leukemia - since 1997 in Churchill County, with 25,000 residents. Health officials have said acute lymphocytic leukemia normally occurs in about three out of every 100,000 children. The cases are centered in and around Fallon, a Navy and farming community of 8,300 about 60 miles east of Reno. "The focus now should be on these other children. It should be on what's causing it. That should be Adam's legacy. Not this. Not death," Adam's father said June 4. The boy died June 3 at a Southern California hospital. State and federal health officials have investigated a variety of conceivable causes in recent months, including the possibility that the cluster is simply a chance occurrence. They stepped up their investigation after Jernee took his son's story public several months ago. The state has mapped the homes of the leukemia victims but found no clues. Investigators have begun inspecting the pipeline carrying fuel through the city to the Fallon Naval Air Station. Base officials have denied any link between jet fuel and the leukemia cases. Some families have turned their attention to the water, where arsenic levels are higher than the federal standard. The city has been ordered to clean it up. Arsenic is a naturally occurring chemical that in high concentrations is poisonous. But it has never been linked to leukemia. Still others believe government testing of nuclear weapons near Fallon in the 1950s may play a role. Radiation is a risk factor for leukemia, but tests for radioactive substances in the area proved negative. "There's something there. There's something they're missing," Jernee said. In recent days, Nevada's governor and members of the Legislature have pledged continued support to find the source of the cancer cluster. Jernee moved to Fallon in 1999. Before that, he and his son lived in Medford, where Adam attended second grade at Howard Elementary School. Teacher Cheryl Lashley remembers him as "just a regular kid," with all the potential that entails. "He will never have that chance to realize his potential," Lashley said. When Richard Jernee moved to Nevada, it seemed like a good place to raise a family - little crime, good schools. As a newly divorced father, he spent time with his son exploring parks, riding bikes and cooking. "I look back at it now and it was the happiest time in my life, in our lives," said Jernee, 33. But by early 2000, Adam was fighting flu-like symptoms and coughing a lot. He began to have problems breathing. Jernee took his son to the hospital several times before someone told him it might be a little more serious. Then came the telephone call: a fist-size tumor in the lung. The survival rate of this type of childhood leukemia is 80 percent. And at first, chemotherapy reduced the tumor. It was around then that Jernee ran into the mother of another victim and learned of a cancer cluster in Fallon. He attended a support meeting and began to talk to doctors. But then Adam's cancer started to grow again. In the months that followed, Adam underwent another course of chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant and radiation. As his son's prognosis worsened, Jernee moved Adam to Southern California to be closer to his mother. In April, Adam underwent a second bone marrow transplant, a last effort to save the boy. Weeks later he slipped into a coma and then died. "Even in the end, I hoped for a miracle," Jernee said. "I love Adam so much I didn't want him to suffer. But I didn't want to let him go either." Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.