[单项选择]Community cancer clusters are viewed quite differently by citizen activists than by epidemiologists. Environmentalists and concerned local residents, for instance, might immediately suspect environmental radiation as the culprit when a high incidence of cancer cases occurs near a nuclear facility. Epidemiologists, in contrast, would be more likely to say that the incidences were "inconclusive" or the result of pure chance. And when a breast cancer survivor, Lorraine Pace, mapped 20 breast cancer cases occurring in her West Islip, Long Island, community, her rudimentary research efforts were guided more by hope that a specific environmental agent could be correlated with the cancers than by scientific method.
When epidemiologists study clusters of cancer cases and other noncontagious conditions such as birth defects or miscarriage, they take several variables into account, such as background rate (the number of people affected in the general population), cluster size, and specific
A. help reduce the incidence of breast cancer in future generations
B. improve her chances of surviving breast cancer
C. determine the cause responsible for her own breast cancer case
D. identify a particular cause for the breast cancer cases in West Islip