MIDDLEBOROUGH
HEALTH TRACKING PROPOSAL - Suzanne Dube, chairwoman of the Middleborough Citizens Environmental Health Impact Committee, hopes federal legislators will support a bill cosponsored by US Representative Barney Frank to create a nationwide health network, that will expand on federal and state public health surveillance data collection. Such a network would allow for better tracking of chronic diseases such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also called ALS and Lou Gehrig's Disease. That disease is of interest to Middleborough residents because the rate of incidence of ALS in Middleborough is 72 percent higher than it is nationwide. State health officials have been looking at possible links to two hazardous waste sites in town. In January, Massachusetts became the first state in the country to establish an ALS registry. - Christine Legere

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