A spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has defended the CDC's refusal to continue funding a study of possible connections between fallout and thyroid abnormalities among Utahns downwind from the Nevada Test Site.

Kathy Harbin, based at the CDC in Atlanta, says researchers can still finish the project by the mandated cutoff date, Aug. 31.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, now secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says he is comfortable with the end of funding. The CDC is part of Leavitt's department.

However, researchers who have been working on the study for years say they are only about one-third finished with interviews and health examinations. They say they cannot possibly complete the project by September.

On March 21, Michael A. McGeehin, director of the CDC's Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects, wrote to Dr. Joseph L. Lyon of the University of Utah, saying the funding would end as of Aug. 31. The study so far has cost $8 million.

Lyon said the federal government seemed not to want to see the study's results. Research that Lyon and colleagues performed of the same group in 1994 found 3.4 times the number of thyroid abnormalities that would be expected.

The subjects were students who were in grades six through 12 in the Washington County schools in 1965. Residents of the area were exposed to fallout sweeping in from open-air atomic testing at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s and '60s. (The study is also examining an Arizona control group.)

The follow-up study is important because health risks may develop slowly in the thyroid and damage may pose a lifelong danger, according to scientists.

More than $8 million has been spent on the latest study since its inception in 1998.

"In 1998, we started providing funds to the University of Utah for this five-year project," Harbin said.

In 2003, the study was extended for a year. The following year, it was continued for an additional year, she said.

From the start, CDC has "continually advised" the U. about the study's time-frame and expectations about its completion, she said.

"There was a required review by a board of scientific experts right before the funding was awarded in September (2004)," she said. "So in August 2004, Dr. Lyon was advised that this board of scientific experts recommended not funding the project beyond the 2004 funding period."

Asked how often the CDC pulls the plug on projects before they are finished, Harbin responded, "We're in the middle of fiscal year 2005. He has funds to complete the study. There are several months left."