State Cancer Registry May Face Severe Cuts : Health care: Scientists say research could be crippled if budget woes force a loss of funding.

Cancer researchers who run California’s pioneering tumor registry say they have been warned to be prepared for major budget cuts, which they contend will cripple the system’s capacity to monitor and track cancer patterns statewide.

Researchers and administrators say state health officials have told them they are considering cutting the registry’s $7.5-million budget by 25%, 50% or nearly 100%, depending on what cuts are made to public health services under the state’s new budget.

While a spokeswoman for the Health and Welfare Agency insisted this week that those figures came from a “working document” exploring hypothetical scenarios, researchers said they had been told to be ready to make cuts.

“(Someone) said this is like tearing up part of Interstate 405,” said Joseph Hafey of the California Public Health Foundation, which runs the registry under contract to the state. “You can’t do that and continue to run a significant public health program.”

The American Cancer Society has described the statewide registry as the only means of tracking the 120,000 cancer cases diagnosed here each year, and the only efficient means of identifying and investigating suspected cancer clusters.

Relying on abstracts of all newly diagnosed cancer cases from hospitals and clinics statewide, the system has collected a wealth of data that has helped attract $40 million in federal funding for California-based research over the past three years.

The data is being used to explore scientific questions such as whether electromagnetic fields contribute to childhood cancers, why prostate cancer rates are especially high among blacks, and whether certain cancers come from workplace exposures.

“I think that the California Tumor Registry provides the single most critical resource available not only to scientists but to citizens in understanding the causes of and strategies for preventing cancer,” said Dr. Ronald Ross, a cancer researcher at USC.

In a state health department document obtained by The Times that examines the consequences of various possible, department-wide cuts, officials have explored the ramifications of cutting the registry’s budget by $2 million, $3.5 million and $7 million.

Even under the smallest cut, of 25%, the document states that “the department’s capability to analyze data would be severely impaired.” Though cancer data would still be collected statewide, the registry’s ability to work with communities would be curtailed.

The department would be less able to respond quickly to cancer cluster investigations; it could no longer detect regional, racial and ethnic variations in cancer rates, and quality control would deteriorate, damaging credibility, the document states.

If the cut is $3.5 million, five of the 10 regional registries would be eliminated. The system would be less able to participate in scientific studies of the causes and treatment of cancers and federal research funding would be lost.

If the cut is $7 million, the department “could not investigate occupational and environmental causes of cancer,” the document states. The department “would face increased public alarm that cancer risk factors are of little or no concern to the Administration.”

Kassy Perry, associate secretary for public affairs for the California Health and Welfare Agency, said this week that the calculations were “part of many pages of working documents” and that the scenarios being explored were “hypothetical.”

“The Department of Health Services has plans depending on the level of cuts” that might be required under a new state budget, she said. “We tried to hold no program harmless and to spread the pain as evenly as possible.

“What we’re doing is looking at competing priorities and trying to strike a balance,” Perry said. “The tumor registry and a number of other programs over there are very important to this Administration and will be protected as much as possible.”

Dr. Hoda Anton-Culver, director of the cancer surveillance program of Orange County and an associate professor in the UC Irvine College of Medicine, said she was told this week that her program should be prepared for one of two sets of cuts.

“It’s not even whether or not we’re going to be cut,” she said. “They gave me two scenarios.”

Meanwhile, the chairman and president of the American Cancer Society’s California division have written to Health and Welfare Secretary Russell S. Gould protesting the contemplated cuts and pointing out that the registry’s budget was cut last year by $311,000.

“Our program is a nuisance because we raise questions,” said a source close to the registry.