Gil Lederman, M. D. Groups of Americans are being tracked and followed over years without necessarily knowing about it. It is generally the product of epidemiologists.
Epidemiologists are scientists who track trends in diseases.
These epidemiologic studies for health matters are called SEER which stands for Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results program. The areas in the United States covered by this program are widely dispersed including the states of Iowa, Utah, New Mexico, Hawaii and Connecticut as well as the cities of Seattle, San Francisco, Detroit and Atlanta. This program commenced in 1973. Recently data was reported covering its first fifteen years for a variety of malignancies. In this decade and a half study, more than 1.2 million cancers were registered in the residents of SEER area.