Mesothelioma scientist wins Premier's award

A scientist who has developed a blood test to help diagnose mesothelioma has won the top prize at this year's Premier's Science Awards in Western Australia.

October 23, 2004
Professor Bruce Robinson won the $10,000 prize which honours the most outstanding achievement by a Western Australian scientist in scientific research and leadership.

The awards were presented by WA Premier Geoff Gallop last night.

Professor Robinson says he started researching the disease because he wanted something good to come out of the disaster of Wittenoom, which has seen hundreds of people affected by the asbestos-related cancer.

He says the blood test works with other tests to diagnose the disease, and he hopes it can be developed to provide early detection.

"It does provide a very strong piece of evidence that you've got mesothelioma," he said.

"In the future, yes, it might be used for, along with these other tests that we're developing, for screening people who are at risk, particularly people who've had a lot of exposure."

Maximum sought for asbestos crooks
Long sentences, large fines sought for cleanup business principals

By MATT PACENZA, Staff writer
First published: Thursday, October 28, 2004

SYRACUSE -- At least 100 people are likely to get sick and could die from asbestos exposure suffered in cleanup jobs rushed by their Latham employer convicted in a massive scam, a doctor testified Wednesday.

During a sentencing hearing for Loudonville resident Alex Salvagno and his father, Raul, who were convicted in March for directing the asbestos cleanup scam, federal attorneys offered expert testimony to convince U.S. District Judge Howard Munson that the pair deserve the maximum sentence.

Alex Salvagno, the owner of AAR Contractor of Latham, faces 79 years in prison, plus a $3.25 million fine, while his father, Raul, could get up to 35 years and a $750,000 fine, in what federal officials have called the largest environmental prosecution in U.S. history.

During a four-month trial, Salvagno employees testified they were ordered to clean up as quickly as possible, often by ripping out the insulating material from ceilings, boiler rooms and around pipes without first wetting it. That sent clouds of the dangerous material floating into the air.

In addition, workers testified they were discouraged from wearing respiratory equipment. The Salvagnos were not immediately caught because Alex Salvagno secretly co-owned the laboratory, Analytical Laboratories of Albany, that was supposed to be testing the job sites, the jury found. Prosecutors estimate the lab faked up to 75,000 air samples.

The workers at the greatest risk are an estimated 100 who worked for more than four years for the Salvagnos, according to Dr. Stephen Levin, an associate professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

"Not to find significant asbestos-related injuries among them 15, 20 or 25 years down the road would be a great surprise," Levin told Judge Munson.

Many of those workers were Korean immigrants, prosecutors said.

The doctor's estimation of the risk of working for the Salvagnos is based on speculative science, defense attorneys argued during a lengthy cross-examination of Levin.

Levin is well-known in the field of environmental medicine. He was recently named to direct a federal project to study the health of 12,000 World Trade Center rescue workers who may have inhaled dangerous toxins at ground zero in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001.

The Salvagnos were convicted of racketeering and conspiracy to violate environmental laws for doing rushed cleanup jobs at 1,555 buildings, most of them in the Capital Region, including 14 cleanups at 12 churches, 63 cleanups in 54 area schools and and least 130 cleanups at eight area colleges.

Testing at many of those locations, to see if any asbestos remains, are under way since prosecutors notified building owners of the potential hazard in May.

Because much of the work was done in boiler rooms, attics and crawl spaces not open to the public, users of those buildings, such as school children, are unlikely to face significant health risks, Levin testified.

Asbestos, a carcinogen, scars the tissue between the lung's airways and nearby blood vessels, leading to a breathing disorder called asbestosis. It also leads to lung cancers, including mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the lung linings nearly always linked to asbestos exposure.

Each of these diseases, usually fatal, takes at least 15 years to develop and can take 30 years or more, Levin said.

Levin carefully laid out a formula during his testimony to show how he arrived at the conclusion that nearly all of the company's asbestos workers will get sick.

Because most studies on asbestos illness have been on workers who are exposed for 20 or 30 years at their jobs, his analysis relied in large part on a single study of 800 workers who toiled for a year or two during World War II at an asbestos factory in New Jersey.

That study, done by Levin's mentor, Dr. Irving Selikoff, showed that even workers who were at the factory less than one month had a lung cancer rate twice that of the general population.

By extrapolating from that study of short-term exposure, and by coming up with a conservative estimate of how much asbestos the Salvagnos' workers inhaled, Levin reached his conclusion that the 100 workers will almost certainly get sick.

"I would be very surprised to find a single normal X-ray after 20 years," Levin told the judge.

That conclusion was hotly disputed by the Salvagnos' attorney, Russell Gioiella, who pushed Levin to acknowledge the limitations of the New Jersey factory study. It looked at factory workers, not cleanup employees, and studied men who were exposed 40 years earlier, in a different location, eating different foods, factors that Gioiella argued made it a bad study to extrapolate from.

The defense attorney also attacked Levin's estimate of how much asbestos was inhaled by the Salvagnos workers, which the doctor acknowledged was an educated guess.

"That's a pretty vague set of data to draw conclusions from, isn't it?" Gioiella asked Levin.

The doctor replied that he would have preferred actual data about air quality during the cleanups -- but unfortunately the Salvagnos lab had faked those tests.

Testimony in the sentencing hearing continues today. Munson is likely to issue his sentencing ruling in November.

Company to appeal $20.5 million asbestos verdict

ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES Oct. 28, 2004- A company that makes gaskets will appeal a jury verdict calling for it and another company to pay $20.5 million to a former nuclear submarine machinist who contracted a fatal form of lung cancer after exposure to asbestos from their products.

The jury found on Oct. 20 that Garlock Sealing Technologies, of Palmyra, N.Y., and Kelly-Moore Paint Co., of San Carlos, are jointly liable for Robert Treggett's mesothelioma, a rare form of malignant lung cancer caused by asbestos exposure.

Treggett, 60, allegedly contracted the disease on a U.S. Navy submarine and while remodeling a home.

Garlock plans to appeal the verdict, attorney Robert Baronian said Wednesday.

"We believe it's a runaway verdict," he said. "The jury disregarded all the scientific studies, none of them showing a connection between gasket exposure and disease."

Treggett worked from 1965 to 1972 aboard the USS Marshall submarine repairing propulsion equipment. He was exposed to "enormous amounts" of asbestos dust from various sources, including Garlock gaskets on valves and pumps, his lawyers argued.

In 1975, Treggett used a compound manufactured by Kelly-Moore that contained asbestos in the remodeling of his father's home, according to the lawsuit.

Fed Gov promises investigation into polio vaccine virus SV40

Monday, 25 October , 2004
Reporter: Hamish Fitzsimmons

TONY EASTLEY: The Federal Government has promised an inquiry into reports that the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories knowingly released batches of the polio vaccine contaminated with a virus linked to cancer.

Newspaper reports say that between 1956 and 1962 at least 700,000 doses of the vaccine were released, by the now privatised CSL, which contained a simian virus called SV40 which has been proven to cause cancers in small animals.

Traces of SV40 are usually found in mesothelioma sufferers but there's no proof yet that the virus causes cancer in humans.

But as Hamish Fitzsimmons reports there are calls for more research into the effects of SV40.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Stories published in The Age say the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories released 4 batches of polio vaccine it knew were contaminated with a virus that's found in cancers like mesothelioma.

SV40 is known to cause cancers in small animals and it's also been linked to some blood and brain cancers.

In Australia experts on SV40 say more research is needed before polio vaccines contaminated by the virus can be linked to cancer in humans. One of those experts is Professor Bruce Robinson is from the University of Western Australia's School of Medicine.

BRUCE ROBINSON: SV40 can certainly cause cancer in the test tube and in animals. What it does is it… one of the reasons we don't get cancer is that each of our cells has a kind of break in there that stops it happening and the main thing that the SV40 virus does is it finds that break and takes the break off, so then the cancer can just keep careering further ahead.

But there's no certainty that it does in humans. I mean, it is found in cancer cells, and we've published that, in Australian mesothelioma tissue. But just because it's found, doesn't mean to say it's causing it.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: The Federal Government is promising an investigation into the reports and was referring calls on the matter to polio experts.

David Isaacs is professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Children's Hospital at Westmead in New South Wales and he advises the Federal Government on vaccinations.

DAVID ISAACS: What must be said is that if you got the vaccine after 1962, then there was no SV40 in the vaccine. And for children nowadays, there is no SV40 in the vaccine.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: What about those people who received the vaccine prior to that?

DAVID ISAACS: I don't think there's too much to worry about. Had there been a major problem with SV40, which is a potential cancer causing virus, monkey virus, had there been a really big problem we would have known about it by now.

A support group for victims of contaminated medical products says there needs to be a judicial inquiry into the claims.

Charles MacKenzie is the President of the Independent Blood Council.

CHARLES MACKENZIE: The Commonwealth Serum Laboratories have been linked with a number of problems with their medical products. We know that the core users of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory products in Australia are people with the blood disorder hemophilia.

Over 90 per cent of them are infected with the potentially deadly virus Hepatitis C. We now find out there could be a link between the monkey virus and cancer and that at least 700,000 vials of polio vaccine were knowingly released to the public, even though the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories knew that they were contaminated with this monkey virus.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Experts in the field say there have been no links as yet to cancer in humans and the SV40.

CHARLES MACKENZIE: The most terrifying thing about those experts is the same thing was said to hemophiliacs in the 1980s about hepatitis C and the HIV/AIDS virus. They were told all of those things and some of them are now terminally ill.

TONY EASTLEY: Charles MacKenzie from the Independent Blood Network, speaking to AM's Hamish Fitzsimmons.

Monkey virus link to cancer

By Gary Hughes
October 23, 2004

Australian researchers have found a link between the deadly mesothelioma lung disease and a monkey virus that contaminated polio vaccines.

Professor Bruce Robinson, head of the University of Western Australia's school of medicine, examined samples of tumours from seven mesothelioma patients as well as testing other human mesothelioma cells kept in his laboratory.

At least one sample from each patient and all the laboratory cells tested positive to the presence of the monkey virus SV40, according to the results published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Medicine in 2000.

Australia has the world's highest rate of mesothelioma.

Similar evidence of SV40 in rare lung, brain and blood cancers has been found in a range of overseas studies.

The annual American Association for Cancer Research conference was told this year that SV40 was found in half the tumours in newly diagnosed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cases. Researchers from the University of Texas cancer centre told the conference that there was no known cause for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which has doubled in incidence in the past 30 years.

But medical experts globally are still divided over the threat posed by SV40 and its possible links to cancer in humans.

Professor Robinson said more research was needed in Australia into the extent of SV40 infections in humans and its possible role in cancer. "A lot's been done in the US. We haven't actually done a lot in Australia in this area. But given that Australia has the highest incidence (of mesothelioma) in the world, it would be a quite central thing to do," he said.

Professor Robinson said it was known that SV40 was able to spread in some way from one person to another and evidence of it had been found in people who had not received polio vaccinations. But the method of transmission was not known.

One possible path was believed to be mothers passing the virus to their unborn children.

Roger Reddel, head of the cancer research unit at the Children's Medical Research Institute at Westmead Hospital in NSW, is an acknowledged world expert on SV40.

His team has helped test samples for international researcher Michele Carbone, who has spent more than a decade trying to prove the links between SV40 and human cancer.

Research published by Dr Carbone's team at Loyola University Medical Centre in Chicago has shown that lung cells infected with SV40 could be more prone to turning cancerous after coming in contact with asbestos fibres.

Dr Reddel said he tested mesothelioma samples sent to him by Dr Carbone for the "signature" of SV40 that might have indicated the virus had a role in causing the cancers. "We were unable to find it," he said.

"That's by no means evidence against it. But it is one more negative avenue we and other people have gone up.

"I really still think there is a case to be answered and it needs a lot more research and it is something I certainly have an interest in. It's very early days yet."

Dr Reddel said one difficulty in assessing the threat posed by SV40 was not knowing how widespread it was within the community.

There was still no easy and reliable test for detecting SV40 infections in people.

"In order to get really serious about this whole issue that is one technological barrier that would need to be overcome," he said. "It's not for want of trying."

Asbestos bill unresolved as thousands endure painful, fatal disease

BY ANDREW SCHNEIDER

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

SANDPOINT, Idaho Oct. 20, 2004 - (KRT) - Mick Mills endures the agony of full-blown asbestosis.

The 72-year-old former safety manager for a lumber company, part-time helicopter medic and passionate photographer of Glacier National Park is shackled to an oxygen tube, which helps him breathe. He needs the oxygen to live. Scarring caused by asbestos fibers has made his supple lung tissue rough and leathery, like the covering of a football.

He shuttles between home and hospital, often having four, five or six quarts of suffocating fluid drained from his abdomen each visit.

Congress has spent four years struggling through often rancorous debate to get federal legislation that would help people like Mills and those with asbestos-caused cancers that kill far more quickly. The legislation proposed is called the Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act.

The 108th Congress wrapped up most business last week without resolving the asbestos legislation, leaving it for the next session's lawmakers to tackle.

The act was meant to help Americans sickened by asbestos exposure without their having to sue the companies responsible for the exposure. Under the legislation proposed, these people would be compensated from a trust fund.

Much of the discord around the Resolution Act was over the size of the trust fund, and how much was going to be contributed by corporations that used asbestos, their insurance companies and the government. But to those suffering with the disease and to the physicians treating them, the most important deficiency in the act was the medical criteria that controlled who got helped and who didn't.

There has been a compromise on the table between the Republican and Democratic Senate leaders on the size of the fund - $140 billion. Specialists in chest diseases say the bill would still leave many people as sick as Mills - and there are thousands like him - out of luck. They would be on their own, scrambling for the $400,000 to $800,000 usually spent on oxygen, drugs and pain medication before they die. Mills is paying his own medical bills with a combination of insurance and personal funds.

The argument that thousands of asbestos victims are wrongly excluded from being eligible for help has flared again with the publication of the American Thoracic Society guidelines for identifying and treating people like Mills.

The ATS guidelines, released last month in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, differ dramatically from the Senate criteria.

The Senate's criteria were developed in part by a committee of the American Bar Association, and then were presented to Sen. Orin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who had sponsored the bill. Hatch first embraced the ABA offering but modified it after many union officials and public health specialists denounced it as "pro-industry" and unfair to victims who would be prevented from suing.

Many believe Hatch's plan is still too exclusionary.

"On the basis of the current science and medicine, the diagnostic criteria in Sen. Hatch's bill are outdated, incorrect and incomplete, and if enacted into law, will harm untold numbers of patients," said Dr. Michael Harbut, a co-author of the ATS study and chief of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Wayne State University in Royal Oak, Mich.

The differences in the two criteria are vivid.

For example, in two of the most easily explained differences, Hatch's bill says people must have been exposed to asbestos for at least five years to qualify for compensation by the trust. ATS says that studies have shown that as little as two months of exposure can cause the disease. Hatch's legislation says that only people exposed to asbestos on the job would qualify. ATS criteria say spouses and children of workers and those who lived near plants using asbestos must be considered.

Hatch's bill centers predominately on malignant asbestos-caused cancers, including the fast-killing mesothelioma.

The ATS guidelines examine the much more prevalent asbestosis, which is a scarring of the lungs that leads to breathing problems and heart failure, and pleural plaque, a fibrous thickening of the lining of the chest cavity.

"None of this makes sense. Why should workers with asbestosis but less than five years' exposure be left without any recourse?" questioned Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a non-profit training and advocacy group with a membership of some 250 union organizations. "Under the Hatch bill, someone who gets asbestosis from non-occupational exposure will lose all right to compensation, even though the ATS criteria states, as we know perfectly well, that children and spouses of workers exposed to asbestos can, and do, get asbestosis from the fibers that get tracked into homes and cars."

The trust fund was offered up as a way to unclog courts across the nation that have had to deal with tens of thousands of asbestos claims.

For vastly different reasons, people on both sides of the issue believe that the court process must be streamlined. About 70 corporations have filed for bankruptcy protection, with protection against a flood of asbestos claims often being the stated concern. From the perspective of the victims, their claims often languish for years, and many people die before they get their day in court.

Last spring, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican and physician, threw his influence behind the Republican-favored legislation, which had stalled for the third time. Frist said it must be passed.

All summer, Frist and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, made offers and counteroffers, and finally agreed that $140 billion would be the size of the trust fund. But the insurance lobby and several unions, including the AFL-CIO, balked, saying the fund was too small to cover existing cases, let alone any new ones.

When the legislation was introduced in the House in 2000 by Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. as the "Fairness in Asbestos Compensation Act," the logic was that the tsunami of asbestos cases was over and all that had to be dealt with were the thousands of survivors whose cases were overloading court dockets.

Now, more than four years later, government health researchers are reporting that a new rush of asbestos victims are expected to surface over the next two decades. The ATS study said that "asbestos is still a hazard for 1.3 million workers in the construction industry and for workers involved in maintenance of buildings and equipment."

In addition, the study warned of "new products that may contain (asbestos)," and listed brake pads, roofing material, vinyl tiles and imported cement pipe and sheeting.

"It is absurd to say that asbestos is not a continuing threat in this country," said Shufro.

"Sen. Frist, who is a medical doctor, is ignoring best and latest science on the subject."

Last month, about 40 miles from where Mills lives, some of the nation's best asbestos specialists gathered in a remote timbered lodge in western Montana. Their goal was to develop a research center for better identifying and treating asbestos disease, especially illness from the type of particularly toxic asbestos that came from a vermiculite mine in nearby Libby, Mont.

None of these participants - from major medical centers, federal agencies and universities - said they believe the asbestos epidemic is over.

"The scope of the asbestos problems is really not known. We need more information on how far the asbestos from Libby has spread and how pervasive it is. But there is significant reason for concern," said Dr. Stephen Levin, co-director for the World Trade Center Workers Medical Screening Program and one of the research group's founders.

X-rays and lung function tests taken in Libby by the federal government have shown that thousands of people in that tiny logging community have signs of asbestos-related disease from the world's largest vermiculite mine, last owned by W.R. Grace & Co.

The federal health agency, ATSDR, also is evaluating former workers and neighbors of some of the hundreds of plants across the country that processed Libby's vermiculite.

Some in the group were highly critical of the medical criteria proposed by Hatch.

"I am treating about 1,500 patients and two-thirds of them will not be covered by the Senate criteria," said Dr. Alan Whitehouse, a board-certified pulmonologist who first identified the disease in Libby, which has killed more than 200 miners, family members and neighbors.

"You can't make disease disappear by outlawing it. The government has its head in the sand. They made the criteria so rigid that it excludes far too many people," said the chest specialist, who treats asbestos patients from both Libby and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State.

Harbut, also a member of the Montana group, saying he was not speaking for ATS, said it's "senseless" for Congress to pass any legislation that didn't consider all sources of asbestos exposure.

"The ATS paper also recognizes that persons exposed to vermiculite mined in Libby and used as housing insulation all over America, are at risk of exposure to asbestos and the development of asbestosis and asbestos cancers, if improperly exposed," said Harbut. He is co-director of the National Center for Vermiculite and Asbestos-Related Cancers.

In Washington about two weeks ago, Frist's spokeswoman, Amy Call, said that the senator had not seen the ATS study. Daschle's staff said the minority leader had the new medical criteria and "if the legislation is reintroduced next year" the ATS material will be examined with other new information.

Mick Mills doesn't think he'll live long enough to see the legislation passed.

"I'm not sure anyone will," he says. "They're trying to pass that bill without knowing what this disease is all about."

He stops for a moment, tugs on the oxygen tube and tries to find a comfortable position for his skinny frame to sit on the dining room chair.

"I wouldn't wish asbestosis on anyone, but just for a brief moment, I wish those senators creating the asbestos legislation could know what it feels like to be drowning in your own fluids," Mills said last month.

"Some type of legislation is probably needed but the decision of who gets help and who doesn't must be left up to the doctors who treat people like me and not the politicians who just can't understand the pain."

Asbestos widow's legal victory

October 18, 2004

A SIX-FIGURE compensation award to the widow of a city electricity worker, who died after coming into contact with asbestos, could open the floodgates for others to make claims, legal experts said today.

John King, 59, died in February this year after he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an asbestos-related cancer.

In the 1960s Mr King, who went on to become a very well-known figure in the heating industry, worked for the Eastern Electricity Board in Norwich where he was constantly exposed to asbestos.

This week his widow Christine was awarded undisclosed damages, although the Evening News understands the pay-out runs into six figures.

Simon Davis, of lawyers Kester Cunningham John, which led the case, said the award meant similar cases in the future would be nearly

assured of success.

He said: "There is certainly a worn path for others to go along now, though at present I don't know of anyone with a claim in against EDF Energy, the successors to the Eastern Electricity Board. Hundreds went through the same apprenticeship scheme as John, but the incubation period for the cancer can be from 35 to 40 years, as it was with John. It proves that the grim legacy of asbestos lingers on 35 years after John left those conditions behind."

Mr Davis said he had spoken to many of Mr King's former workmates during preparations for the case. Most had worked in similar conditions to Mr King and recalled vividly what we now know were terrible dangers, he said.

"It's a tragedy which is still being played out after all this time. We were able to assure John that his widow would be compensated prior to his death, but it has taken this time to determine the level of damages appropriate."

Mr Davis added: "It would be proper for me to make clear that, although the case was brought against EDF Energy, it only had responsibility because it is the statutory successor to Eastern Electricity. Its prompt recognition of the claim has at least saved Christine King from further distress, and we are grateful for its action."

Mr Davis said most of the complaints he dealt with concerned workers in the construction industry in the decades after the Second World War, including those involved in building new housing estates in Norwich and Yarmouth. Others involved former employees of Caleys Mackintosh, Heatrae Sadia and Laurence Scott and Electromotors, he said.

Mr King was just 15 in 1959 when he started an apprenticeship with the old Eastern Electricity Board in Norwich at its Duke Street premises, later working as an electrician at the company's Mile Cross depot until 1968, when he moved away.

During this time he often worked in boiler rooms where pipes were lagged with asbestos and which often crumbled while being dismantled. He was never given any form of protection nor warned of the dangers to which he was being exposed.

Mr King began the action against EDF Energy in January this year as his health deteriorated. After his death, his widow continued the action, leading to an out of court settlement last week.

Mrs King, now of Dunton, Biggleswade, did not wish to comment.

An EDF Energy spokesman said: "We would like to express our sympathy to Mrs King. At the time the alleged asbestos exposure took place industry in general did not appreciate the long-term health effects of this material. As these effects have become known both the legal requirements and company practices have become more stringent as we seek to better protect people."

"EDF Energy is fully committed to ensuring a safe and healthy working environment for all our employees. To this end we have an extremely comprehensive control of asbestos policy which goes well beyond the legal requirements to minimise the risk to our staff and others."

EDF Energy could not comment on the possibility that more former employees would now come forward following its award for damages.

Gordon Dean, a partner in Godfrey Morgan solicitors in Norwich, said what was unusual about this case was that the exposure took place so long ago.

He said the major regulations came into force in 1970, and that it was harder to bring any cases from before then.

The two most recent cases in law were Fairchild House of Lords in 2002 and Barker versus Saint Gobain this year, he said.

The first case ruled that victims of mesothelioma should receive compensation from insurance companies. And in the second a widow whose daughter died of asbestos related cancer fought off an Appeal court bid to strip her of her compensation payment.

People knew about the dangers of asbestos before the Second World War, Mr Dean said.

But it was still very common to use asbestos to lag pipes after the war.

He said asbestos had been found in the ceiling of the old St Augustine's swimming pool, and it had also been used at the old Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.

Cancer Vaccines 2000, a Report from the World

Publish Date : 10/16/2004
Onlypunjab.com Team

Harnessing the exquisite specificity of the immune system to detect and attack cancer cells has long been a dream of cancer immunologists. Cancer vaccines are getting ever closer to becoming reality as they are shown to consistently and reproducibly stimulate the immune system to attack cancer-specific targets. Now early-phase clinical trials are beginning to show hints of the promise of immunotherapy.

WHAT: New findings in the development of cancer vaccines from the USA, Australia, Europe and Japan will be presented as part of the International Cancer Immunotherapy Symposia Series.

WHEN: October 4-6, 2004

WHERE: Manhattan Conference Center at the Millenium Broadway Hotel 145 West 45th Street, New York.

WHO: Organized by the Cancer Research Institute, New York. Speakers are drawn from the international Cancer Vaccine Collaborative, leading US academic groups, and industry efforts. Over 250 scientists and physicians registered so far.

ONLINE: Registration and more information at: http://www.cancerresearch.org. Registration not required for journalists/writers with press accreditation.

TOPICS:

* Identification and characterization of cancer-specific immunological targets (antigens) for different tumor types.

* Analysis and clinical monitoring of immune response to cancer antigens. * Vaccine formulation and development in academia and industry, including the use of heat-shock proteins and pox viruses.

* Early-phase clinical trials results in melanoma and ovarian cancer.

Since its inception in 1953, the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) has had a singular mission—to foster research that will yield an understanding of the immune system and its response to cancer, with the ultimate goal of developing immunological methods for the control and prevention of the disease. To accomplish these goals, CRI supports scientists at all stages of their careers and funds every step of the research process, from basic laboratory studies to clinical trials testing novel immunotherapies. Guided by a Scientific Advisory Council, which includes four Nobel Prize winners and 26 members of the National Academy of Sciences, CRI awards fellowships and grants to scientists around the world. Additionally, the Institute has more recently taken on a new leadership role in the areas of preclinical and clinical research by serving as the integrating force and facilitator of collaborations among leading experts. CRI has thus become a catalyst for accelerating the development of cancer vaccines and antibody therapies.

Asbestos Mapping Fails to Prevent Unpleasant Surprises

The state of California chose western El Dorado County for its first and only attempt to locally map naturally-occuring asbestos.

In March 2000, the state Department of Conservation published its study to help local planners and developers anticipate rock and soil formations most likely to contain asbestos.

"It was an educational experience for us because a map like this has never been made before," map author Ron Churchill told News 10. However, development in the four years since the map was published demonstrates the hit-and-miss nature of trying to predict what lies underground.

The 2000 map correctly anticipated the asbestos later discovered under the campus of Oak Ridge High School in El Dorado Hills. It also came reasonably close to identifying the asbestos found under the new Hollow Oak subdivision near Bass Lake Road and US-50. Because it lies so close to an identified asbestos vein, the Hollow Oak project is under strict orders to reduce dust during construction with monitors placed on the property to test for airborne asbestos.

Asbestos wasn't even an issue when El Dorado County approved the massive Promontory housing development near the Sacramento County line. A 1999 staff report dismissed the possibility of finding asbestos under the Promontory project, based on information from environmental consultant Youngdahl and Associates. That view was supported a year later in the map published by the state.

Despite the assurances of the experts, construction in the Promontory uncovered some unpleasant surprises. In April 2003, the local school district discovered naturally-occuring asbestos in the soil and rock beneath the site of a new elementary school. Then this past summer asbestos turned up in a section of the Promontory being developed by Christopherson Homes. On July 12 Christopherson adopted strict dust-control measures and air monitoring. By then, however, blasting and heavy excavation had already been going on for months.

At roughly the same time, asbestos was discovered across the county line in Folsom's Empire Ranch development. For the first time, naturally-occurring asbestos became a worry for Sacramento County residents.

Despite the obvious holes in the asbestos map, local planners still use it to shape public policy. A proposed El Dorado County ordinance would require home sellers to disclose the likelihood of finding naturally-occurring asbestos on their property based on the 2000 Department of Conservation map. That came as a surprise to the map's author, who said it was never meant to be anything more than a general guide. "You cannot put your finger on a place on this map and say this has asbestos or this does not have asbestos," cautions Ron Churchill. "It just physically cannot show every occurrence of asbestos."

Geologists say the only way to know for sure whether there's asbestos on a particular property is to test for it. The National Institute of Standards and Technology publishes a list of accredited labs that can test soil samples for asbestos. News10 gathered several samples from the yard of a homeowner directly adjacent to the Promontory development. The results from a southern California lab show how concentrations of asbestos can vary widely even across short distances.

One sample from the surface of Laurie Lindley-Muender's backyard contained more than 1.5 percent tremolite, an especially dangerous form of asbestos. Just six inches underground, however, a second sample showed less than half that amount. Lindley-Muender called the discovery "distressing."

As alarming as the discovery of abestos can be, the experience at Oak Ridge High School shows it doesn't have to be devastating. The federal Environmental Protection Agency and the local school district spent the summer and nearly $3 million covering exposed soil on the 49-acre campus. Two feet of clean fill from Sacramento County covers the high school's soccer and baseball fields. A bare hillside where excavation uncovered a vein of asbestos is now covered with concrete. Blacktop covers the dirt track around the football field. "Kids always take shortcuts, and we have to allow for that," said El Dorado Union High School District Facilities Director Patty McClellan. Shortcuts through planted areas popular with students are now covered with bark and concrete.

In a booming area like El Dorado Hills, the EPA concedes there's probably no way to avoid naturally-occurring asbestos entirely. "It's kind of up to each individual to decide what their personal comfort level is with that," said a manager from the EPA's superfund division.

Directory of Accredited Laboratories
Asbestos Fiber Analysis (PLM Test Method)

The purpose of the Bulk Asbestos Program is to accredit testing laboratories to assure that they are competent to analyze bulk samples for asbestos using polarized light microscopy (PLM).
Public Law 99-519, 'Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act of 1986,' referred to as AHERA, requires that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (formerly the National Bureau of Standards) develop an accreditation program for laboratories conducting analyses of bulk samples of asbestos-containing material.

For more information, see NIST Handbook 150-3.
Listed below are all laboratories accredited within this program as of October 26, 2004. For additional information, contact NVLAP at (301) 975-4016.
Send E-Mail to NVLAP at: NVLAP@nist.gov

--------------------------------------------

AK
Solar Environmental Services, Inc., Anchorage, AK [200602- 0]
White Environmental Consultants Inc., Anchorage, AK [200124- 0]

AL
University of Alabama Asbestos Laboratory, Tuscaloosa, AL [102005- 0]
Weston Solutions, Inc., Auburn, AL [101254- 0]

AR
Environmental Enterprise Group(EEG), Inc., Russellville, AR [101587- 0]

AZ
A.E.S.L. Environmental Laboratory, Tempe, AZ [200303- 0]
AMEC Earth & Environmental, Inc., PLM LAB, Tempe, AZ [200444- 0]
Continental Envirotech, Inc., Mesa, AZ [200080- 0]
EMC Labs, Inc., Phoenix, AZ [101926- 0]
Fiberquant, Inc., Phoenix, AZ [101031- 0]
Global Industrial Corp., Mesa, AZ [200670- 0]

CA
ASBESTECH, Carmichael, CA [101442- 0]
AmeriSci Los Angeles, Carson, CA [200346- 0]
American Analytical Laboratory Services, Garden Grove, CA [200642- 0]
Analytical Labs San Francisco, Inc., San Francisco, CA [101909- 0]
Asbestos TEM Laboratories, Inc., Berkeley, CA [101891- 0]
Bay Area Air Quality Management District, San Francisco, CA [102090- 0]
EMS Laboratories, Inc., Pasadena, CA [101218- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Milpitas, CA [101048- 3]
ENCORP, El Segundo, CA [200013- 0]
Envirocheck, Inc., Garden Grove, CA [200548- 0]
Forensic Analytical Specialties, Inc., Hayward, CA [101459- 0]
Forensic Analytical Specialties, Inc., Rancho Dominguez, CA [101459- 1]
Health Science Associates, Los Alamitos, CA [101384- 0]
Hygeia Laboratories Inc., Sierra Madre, CA [102116- 0]
JMR Environmental Services Inc., San Diego, CA [200067- 0]
KSL, Jackson, CA [200442- 0]
Kellco Services, Inc., Hayward, CA [101331- 0]
LA Testing, S. Pasadena, CA [200232- 0]
Los Angeles Unified School District, Los Angeles, CA [101505- 0]
MACS Lab, Inc., Santa Clara, CA [101948- 0]
Micro Analytical Laboratories, Inc., Emeryville, CA [101872- 0]
Micron Environmental Labs, Arcadia, CA [200294- 0]
Patriot Environmental Laboratory Services, Inc., Garden Grove, CA [200358- 0]
RJ Lee Group, Inc., San Leandro, CA [101208- 2]
South Coast Air Quality Management District, Diamond Bar, CA [101567- 0]
H.M. Pitt Labs Inc., National City, CA [200591- 0]
Western Analytical Laboratory, Inc., Arleta, CA [200037- 0]

CO
ATC Associates, Inc., Centennial, CO [102031- 0]
Alpine Consulting, Inc., Colorado Springs, CO [102089- 0]
Analytica Solutions, Inc., Thornton, CO [101086- 0]
DCM Science Laboratory, Inc., Wheat Ridge, CO [101258- 0]
FRS Geotech, Inc., Denver, CO [102078- 0]
Family Analytical Laboratory Services, Inc., Denver, CO [200448- 0]
Reservoirs Environmental, Inc., Denver, CO [101896- 0]
Strom Environmental, Denver, CO [200450- 0]
U.S. EPA - National Enforcement Investigations Center, Denver, CO [101703- 0]

CT
ChemScope, Inc., North Haven, CT [101061- 0]
Eastern Analytical Services, Inc., Newington, CT [200665- 0]
EnviroMed Services, Inc., Meriden, CT [101514- 0]
Mystic Air Quality Consultants, Inc., Groton, CT [101282- 0]
Connecticut Department of Public Health Laboratory, Hartford, CT [101237- 0]
TRC Environmental Corporation, Windsor, CT [101424- 0]

DE
Batta Laboratories, Inc., Newark, DE [101032- 0]
Environmental Testing, Inc., Middletown, DE [101848- 0]

FL
Advanced Industrial Hygiene Services, Inc., Miami, FL [101006- 0]
American Asbestos Laboratories, Inc., Miami Lakes, FL [101775- 0]
Apollo Environmental, Inc., Gibsonton, FL [101871- 0]
Comprehensive Health Services-Environmental Health PLM Laboratory, Kennedy Space Center, FL [101759- 0]
Dove Environmental Corporation, Miami, FL [102053- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., N. Miami Beach, FL [200204- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Orlando, FL [101151- 0]
GLE Associates, Inc., Tampa, FL [102003- 0]
Hygeia Laboratories, Inc., Miami, FL [200335- 0]
OHC Environmental Engineering, Inc., Jacksonville, FL [102050- 0]
RH Analytics, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL [102077- 0]

GA
Analytical Environmental Services, Inc., Atlanta, GA [102082- 0]
Call Analytical Laboratories, Inc., Dallas, GA [200685- 0]
Clayton Group Services, Kennesaw, GA [101125- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Atlanta, GA [101048- 1]
Hygeia Laboratories, Inc., Marietta, GA [102087- 0]
MACTEC Engineering and Consulting, Inc., Atlanta, GA [101066- 0]
Materials Analytical Services, Inc., Suwanee, GA [101235- 0]

HI
EnvironMETeo Services Inc., Waipahu, HI [101807- 0]
INALAB, Inc., Honolulu, HI [200655- 0]
White Environmental Consultants, Inc., Honolulu, HI [200350- 0]

IA
Iowa Environmental Services, Inc., Des Moines, IA [101990- 0]
University (State) Hygienic Laboratory, Iowa City, IA [101288- 0]

IL
Aires Consulting Group, Inc., Batavia, IL [101014- 0]
AnalyticaLab, Willow Springs, IL [101727- 0]
Bella Donna Labs Inc., Chicago, IL [101868- 0]
Davis Environmental Labs, Inc., Evanston, IL [101039- 0]
EMSL Analytical Inc., Chicago, IL [200399- 0]
JMS Environmental Associates, Ltd., Westmont, IL [102012- 0]
Midwest Laboratories, Inc., Countryside, IL [101894- 0]
Philip Environmental Services Corp., Columbia, IL [101192- 0]
RCM Laboratories, Inc., Countryside, IL [101853- 0]
STAT Analysis Corporation, Chicago, IL [101202- 0]
TEM, Incorporated, Glen Ellyn, IL [101130- 0]
United Analytical Services, Inc., Downers Grove, IL [101732- 0]

IN
ACM Environmental, Inc., South Bend, IN [101977- 0]
ESG Laboratories, Indianapolis, IN [102029- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Indianapolis, IN [200188- 0]
Micro Air, Inc., Indianapolis, IN [101221- 0]
NCG Labs, Muncie, IN [101545- 0]

KS
Asbestos Consulting & Testing (ACT), Lenexa, KS [101649- 0]

KY
McCall and Spero Environmental, Inc., Louisville, KY [101895- 0]

LA
CA Laboratories, L.L.C., Baton Rouge, LA [200452- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Baton Rouge, LA [200375- 0]
Fort Polk Environmental Laboratory, Fort Polk, LA [200523- 0]

MA
AmeriSci Boston, East Weymouth, MA [102079- 0]
Covino Environmental Associates, Inc., Woburn, MA [101781- 0]
Hygienetics Laboratory Services, Cambridge, MA [101147- 0]
ProScience Analytical Services, Inc., Woburn, MA [200090- 0]

MD
AMA Analytical Services, Inc., Lanham, MD [101143- 0]
DHMH-Air Quality Laboratory, Baltimore, MD [101523- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Beltsville, MD [200293- 0]

MI
Apex Research, Inc., Whitmore Lake, MI [102118- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI [101048- 4]
Fibertec Industrial Hygiene Service, Inc., Holt, MI [101510- 0]

MN
Braun Intertec Corporation, Minneapolis, MN [101234- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Minneapolis, MN [200019- 0]
Institute for Environmental Assessment, Brooklyn Park, MN [101249- 0]
Legend Technical Services, Inc., St. Paul, MN [102081- 0]

MO
EnviroHealth Technologies, Inc., St. Louis, MO [200374- 0]
Environmental Health Laboratories, Clayton, MO [101506- 0]
Kingston Environmental Laboratory, Kansas City, MO [200041- 0]
Larron Laboratory, Cape Girardeau, MO [101415- 0]
Missouri Department of Transportation, Chemical Laboratory, Jefferson City, MO [200544- 0]

MT
Northern Analytical Laboratories, Inc., Billings, MT [101292- 0]

NC
Asbestos Analysis and Information Service, Inc., Four Oaks, NC [101261- 0]
Carolina Environmental, Inc., Cary, NC [101768- 0]
Duke Power Company Asbestos Laboratory, Huntersville, NC [200539- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Morrisville, NC [200671- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Kernersville, NC [102104- 0]
S&ME, Inc., Charlotte, NC [102075- 0]
Scientific Analytical Institute, Greensboro, NC [200664- 0]

NH
The Scott Lawson Group, Ltd., Concord, NH [101228- 0]
URS Corporation, Salem, NH [101433- 0]

NJ
EAI, Inc., Jersey City, NJ [102114- 0]
EMSL Analytical Inc. Mobile Laboratory, Westmont, NJ [200481- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Piscataway, NJ [101048- 2]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Westmont, NJ [101048- 0]
Enviro Techniques, Inc., Paterson, NJ [200568- 0]
Hillmann Environmental Group, L.L.C., Union, NJ [101421- 0]
International Asbestos Testing Laboratory, Mt. Laurel, NJ [101165- 0]
Omega Environmental Services, Hackensack, NJ [101289- 0]
PMK Group, Inc., Cranford, NJ [101301- 0]

NM
Assaigai Analytical Laboratories, Inc., Albuquerque, NM [101457- 0]

NV
Asbestos TEM Laboratories, Inc., Sparks, NV [200104- 0]
Converse Consultants, Reno, NV [102091- 0]

NY
ATC Associates Inc., New York, NY [101187- 0]
Adirondack Environmental Services Inc., Albany, NY [200552- 0]
Airtek Environmental Corp., New York, NY [102011- 0]
Ambient Group, Inc., Glen Cove, NY [101618- 0]
AmeriSci New York, New York, NY [200546- 0]
Athenica Environmental Services, Inc., Long Island City, NY [101958- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Carle Place, NY [101048-10]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Depew, NY [200056- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., New York, NY [101048- 9]
Eastern Analytical Services, Inc., Elmsford, NY [101646- 0]
Enviro-Probe, Inc., Bronx, NY [101222- 0]
Environmental Laboratory Services, North Syracuse, NY [200674- 0]
Enviroscience Consultants, Inc., Ronkonkoma, NY [200531- 0]
Galson Laboratories, East Syracuse, NY [101375- 0]
JLC Environmental Consultants, Inc., New York, NY [101953- 0]
KAM Consultants, Long Island City, NY [102047- 0]
NY Environmental & Analytical Labs, Inc., Port Washington, NY [101967- 0]
Paradigm Environmental Services, Inc., Rochester, NY [200530- 0]
Precision Environmental Inc., Long Island City, NY [200640- 0]
Taylor Environmental Group, Inc., Floral Park, NY [102101- 0]
Testwell Laboratories, Inc./Testwell Industries, Inc., Ossining, NY [200083- 0]
WKP Laboratories, Inc., New York City, NY [101950- 0]

OH
ATC Associates Inc., Cincinnati, OH [200471- 0]
American Electric Power (AEP), Dolan Chemical Laboratory, Groveport, OH [102102- 0]
DataChem Laboratories, Cincinnati, OH [101917- 0]
EA Group, Mentor, OH [101019- 0]
Gelles Laboratories, Division, CC Technologies, Dublin, OH [101170- 0]
NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, Brookpark, OH [200130- 0]
Pinnacle Environmental Consultants Inc., Cincinnati, OH [200614- 0]
TTL Associates, Inc., Toledo, OH [101594- 0]
Tremco, Inc. - Roofing Division, An RPM Company, Beachwood, OH [101188- 0]
m.a.c. Paran Consulting Services, Inc., Amelia, OH [102108- 0]

OK
QuanTEM Laboratories, LLC, Oklahoma City, OK [101959- 0]
TEC-AN, Inc., Oklahoma City, OK [200325- 0]

OR
White Environmental Consultants, Inc., Tigard, OR [200509- 0]

PA
AGX, Inc., Wexford, PA [101578- 0]
Accredited Environmental Technologies, Inc., Media, PA [101051- 0]
Criterion Laboratories, Inc., Bensalem, PA [102046- 0]
Kevco Services, Inc., Butler, PA [101941- 0]
PA DEP Bureau of Laboratories, Harrisburg, PA [101323- 0]
PSI, Pittsburgh, PA [101350- 0]
RJ Lee Group, Inc., Monroeville, PA [101208- 0]

PR
AES International, Santurce, PR [200051- 0]

RI
RI Analytical Laboratories, Inc., Warwick, RI [101440- 0]

SC
Davis & Floyd, Inc., Greenwood, SC [101410- 0]

TN
National Econ Corporation, Memphis, TN [200047- 0]

TX
A & B Environmental Services, Inc., Houston, TX [101793- 0]
Apex Enviro Services, Alvin, TX [200683- 0]
CAM Environmental Services, Pasadena, TX [200240- 0]
Cates Laboratories, Inc., Forney, TX [200569- 0]
Crisp Analytical Laboratories LLC, Houston, TX [200592- 0]
Crisp Analytical Laboratory, Carrollton, TX [200349- 0]
EMSL Analytical Inc., San Antonio, TX [200610- 0]
EMSL Analytical, Inc., Houston, TX [102106- 0]
ERI Consulting, Inc., Tyler, TX [101232- 0]
EcoSystems Environmental, Inc., Carrollton, TX [101162- 0]
Envirotest, Limited, Houston, TX [101595- 0]
Grimes & Associates, Consulting Engineers, LP, Midlothian, TX [200622- 0]
HIH Laboratory, Inc., Webster, TX [101233- 0]
J3 Resources, Inc., Houston, TX [200525- 0]
Loflin Environmental Services,Inc., Houston, TX [102044- 0]
Micro Air of Texas, Inc., Houston, TX [102008- 0]
Micro Analytical Services, Inc., Houston, TX [200618- 0]
Moldlab, Ltd., Addison, TX [200643- 0]
Omni Environmental, Inc., Austin, TX [102061- 0]
Precision Analytical Laboratory, Inc., Friendswood, TX [200633- 0]
Quest MicroAnalytics, Dallas, TX [200249- 0]
Steve Moody Micro Services, Inc., Carrollton, TX [102056- 0]
Sun City Analytical, Inc., El Paso, TX [101870- 0]
Houston Analytical Laboratory, Houston, TX [200473- 0]

UT
Dixon Information Inc., South Salt Lake, UT [101012- 0]

VA
AmeriSci Richmond, Midlothian, VA [101904- 0]
Analytics Corporation, Richmond, VA [101004- 0]
Applied Environmental, Inc., Reston, VA [101611- 0]
Applied Laboratory Services, LLC, Norfolk, VA [200515- 0]
Eastern Virginia Environmental, LLC, Virginia Beach, VA [200131- 0]
Environmental Hazards Services, L.L.C., Richmond, VA [101882- 0]
Industrial Laboratory, Portsmouth, VA [102115- 0]
Marine Chemist Service, Inc., Newport News, VA [200628- 0]
RJ Lee Group, Inc., Manassas, VA [101208- 3]
Schneider Laboratories, Inc., Richmond, VA [101150- 0]

WA
Clayton Group Services, Seattle, WA [101106- 0]
Mountain Laboratories, Spokane, WA [101890- 0]
NVL Laboratories, Inc., Seattle, WA [102063- 0]
Northern Industrial Hygiene, Inc., Burien, WA [200511- 0]
Pacific Rim Environmental, Inc., Tukwila, WA [101631- 0]
Prezant Associates Laboratory, Seattle, WA [200613- 0]
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, WA [101539- 0]
Safe Environment of America, Inc., Auburn, WA [102021- 0]

WI
Micro Analytical, Inc., Milwaukee, WI [101247- 0]
Wisconsin Occupational Health Laboratory, Madison, WI [101109- 0]

WV
Triad Environmental Consulting, Inc., Huntington, WV [102073- 0]

Payout for asbestos worker's fear of dying
October 14, 2004

A former asbestos worker has won his battle for compensation - not because he has asbestosis or mesothelioma, but because he has a fear of dying from the diseases.

Arturo Della Maddalena has a psychiatric condition related to his fear of dying from a disease related to his work. He has neither asbestosis nor mesothelioma.

But yesterday, Western Australia's highest court found that his psychiatric injuries were caused by his severe exposure to the insidious blue fibre during a five-year stint at the Wittenoom mine.

CSR and its subsidiary Midalco, formerly known as Australian Blue Asbestos, were responsible, the full court found.

Mr Della Maddalena, 61, worked as part of a crew of 42 immigrants at Australian Blue Asbestos's mine site in 1961. Only three of those men are alive today.

It is that morbid equation that has caused Mr Della Maddalena the anxiety and depression that has rendered him unfit for work for the past nine years.

Mr Della Maddalena and 14 of the dead were from the Italian village of Montagna. His mental problem has caused symptoms similar to those he would have suffered if he had mesothelioma or asbestosis, including shortness of breath and disturbed sleep.

Yesterday, Mr Della Maddalena sat in the office of Asbestos Diseases Foundation of Australia president Robert Vojakovic with his head in his hand.

In his soft Italian accent, he said he was pleased that justices Anthony Templeman, Christopher Steytler and Christine Wheeler had overturned the District Court judgment of Judge Michael O'Sullivan. He also praised his lawyer Tim Hammond. He could not muster enough strength to say more.

But Mr Vojakovic hailed the decision as a big win, claiming he had another 10 claimants ready to take similar court action.

The judgment reveals that Mr Della Maddalena, known as Arthur, worked for Australian Blue Asbestos from 1961 until the mine closed in 1966.

He had been introduced to the company by his brother Walter, who arrived in Australia in the 1950s and died of mesothelioma in 1988.

Mr Della Maddalena told the court his brother's long and painful death had been terrifying.

"[I was] always thinking about the way I'm going to end up, like my friends, also in hospital, dying of mesothelioma," he said.

"It's the worst thing you can see a person die, not even a dog you would see dying like that. It's very, very painful."

The judgment also revealed Mr Della Maddalena twice won a Wittenoom shovelling competition by being the first man to fill a 44-gallon drum with raw asbestos tailings.

In handing down the ruling, Justice Templeman said Judge O'Sullivan was wrong to have found Mr Della Maddalena was not a credible witness.

That ruling was based, in part, on video footage of Mr Della Maddalena doing minor chores while he was off work.

The case will be referred back to Judge O'Sullivan to decide the size of the payout. Mr Hammond said he would claim 13 years of wages lost. He would also claim damages for pain and suffering.

Worker bets $20,000 on future

Andrew McGarry
October 11, 2004
GEOFF Arbon worked for more than a decade in the poisonous atmosphere of the old Whyalla Shipyards, exposed to asbestos on a daily basis.

Now facing health problems, Mr Arbon is having to gamble on his life – either ignore a compensation offer from his old employers BHP Billiton, or take the money and hope he never has to claim for anything more serious.

"We didn't know anything (about asbestos)," he said of his time as a boilermaker and welder in the shipyards, which were closed in the mid-70s. "I just used to get itchy".

At last count, 69 former workers associated with asbestos exposure at the shipyards have died of mesothelioma or related diseases. Up to 20,000 employees worked in the shipyards over 37 years when they were a central part of South Australia's economy.

"The ships caused all the problems," he said. "We used to see this stuff floating around (us) all the time. They sprayed limpet, which was pure asbestos; it was mixed with water and it looked a bit like papier-mache. This was put on the ceilings and walls as insulation."

He left the shipyards in the 70s, later working for BHP in other capacities. Then, three years ago, he developed a cough he couldn't shake. He got it checked out last year and found he had pleural plaques on his lungs, non life-threatening indicators of exposure to asbestos. They are not dangerous in themselves, but people who get them sometimes develop other illnesses.

When the test results came back, BHP had a surprise offer of $20,000 in compensation, including $2000 to redeem future medical and other expenses. Mr Arbon was worried.

"I thought: 'Shit, there must be something going on. In one breath they're saying there's nothing wrong with me, and in another breath, here's $20,000,"' he said.

Now 55, he works as an operator of heavy machinery for a company called Multiserve and is worried about his health and an unknown future.

Mr Arbon said he would not accept the offer: "I think ... if this thing is going to kill me, then $20,000 is not going to bloody help my wife survive."

A spokeswoman for BHP Billiton said it could not comment on individual cases.

Jane McDermott, a partner in the Adelaide office of law firm Slater & Gordon, said the health and financial considerations were "far reaching" if people developed mesothelioma or other asbestos-related diseases after agreeing to the offer. Under South Australian workers compensation law, workers are allowed to finalise only one claim against their employer.

"The $20,000 is a flat, one-off payment . . . but an average claim for mesothelioma or an asbestos-related cancer would be $300,000," she said

Trust fund bill would exclude many asbestos victims

By Andrew Schneider
Of the Post-Dispatch
10/10/2004
Medical criteria used by Senate are outdated, incomplete, critics say.

SANDPOINT, Idaho - Mick Mills endures the agony of full-blown asbestosis.

He shuttles between home and hospital, often having four, five or six quarts of suffocating fluid drained from his abdomen each visit.

Congress has spent four years struggling through often rancorous debate to get federal legislation that would help people like Mills and those with asbestos-caused cancers that kill far more quickly. The proposed law is called the Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act.

The bill was meant to help Americans sickened by asbestos exposure without their having to sue the companies responsible for the exposure. Under the legislation proposed, these people would be compensated from a trust fund. Much of the discord around the measure was over the size of the trust fund and how much was going to be contributed by corporations that used asbestos, their insurance companies and the government. But to those suffering with the disease and to the physicians treating them, the most important deficiency in the bill was the medical criteria that controlled who would get help and who wouldn't.

Now there is a compromise on the table between Republican and Democratic Senate leaders on the size of the fund - $140 billion. Specialists in chest diseases say the bill would still leave many people as sick as Mills - and there are thousands like him - out of luck. They would be on their own, scrambling for the $400,000 to $800,000 usually spent on oxygen, drugs and pain medication before they die. Mills is paying his own medical bills with a combination of insurance and personal money.

The ATS guidelines, released last month in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, differ dramatically from the Senate criteria.

The Senate's criteria were developed in part by a committee of the American Bar Association and then were presented to Sen. Orin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who had sponsored the bill. Hatch first embraced the ABA offering but modified it after many union officials and public health specialists denounced it as "pro-industry" and unfair to victims who would be prevented from suing.

Many believe that Hatch's plan is still too exclusionary.

Major differences

The differences in the two criteria are vivid.

For example, in two of the most easily explained differences, Hatch's bill says people must have been exposed to asbestos for at least five years to qualify for compensation by the trust. ATS says studies have shown that as little as two months of exposure can cause disease. Hatch's legislation says only people exposed to asbestos on the job would qualify. ATS criteria say spouses and children of workers and those who lived near plants using asbestos must be considered.

Hatch's bill centers predominantly on malignant asbestos-caused cancers, including the fast-killing mesothelioma.

"None of this makes sense. Why should workers with asbestosis but less than five years' exposure be left without any recourse?" questioned Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a nonprofit training and advocacy group with a membership of some 250 union organizations. "Under the Hatch bill, someone who gets asbestosis from nonoccupational exposure will lose all right to compensation, even though the ATS criteria states, as we know perfectly well, that children and spouses of workers exposed to asbestos can, and do, get asbestosis from the fibers that get tracked into homes and cars."

The trust fund was offered up as a way to unclog courts across the nation that have had to deal with tens of thousands of asbestos claims.

All summer, Frist and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., made offers and counteroffers, and finally agreed that $140 billion would be the size of the trust fund. But the insurance lobby and several unions, including the AFL-CIO, balked, saying the fund was too small to cover existing cases, let alone any new ones.

Worried for future

When the legislation was introduced in the House in 2000 by Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., as the Fairness in Asbestos Compensation Act, the logic was that the tsunami of asbestos cases was over and all that had to be dealt with were the thousands of survivors whose cases were overloading court dockets.

Now, more than four years later, government health researchers are reporting that a new rush of asbestos victims is expected to surface over the next two decades. The ATS study said "asbestos is still a hazard for 1.3 million workers in the construction industry and for workers involved in maintenance of buildings and equipment."

In addition, the study warned of "new products that may contain" asbestos, and listed brake pads, roofing material, vinyl tiles and imported cement pipe and sheeting.

"It is absurd to say that asbestos is not a continuing threat in this country," said Shufro.

"Sen. Frist, who is a medical doctor, is ignoring best and latest science on the subject."

None of these participants - from major medical centers, federal agencies and universities - said they believe the asbestos epidemic is over.

The U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry also is evaluating former workers and neighbors of some of the hundreds of plants across the country that processed Libby's vermiculite.

Some in the group were highly critical of the medical criteria proposed by Hatch.

"I am treating about 1,500 patients, and two-thirds of them will not be covered by the Senate criteria," said Dr. Alan Whitehouse, a board-certified pulmonologist who first identified the disease in Libby, which has killed more than 200 miners, family members and neighbors.

Harbut, also a member of the Montana group, saying he was not speaking for the ATS, said it's "senseless" for Congress to pass any legislation that didn't consider all sources of asbestos exposure.

In Washington a week ago, Frist's spokeswoman, Amy Call, said that the senator had not seen the ATS study. Daschle's staff said the minority leader had the new medical criteria and "if the legislation is reintroduced next year," the ATS material will be examined with other new information.

Mills says he doesn't think he'll live long enough to see the legislation passed.

"I'm not sure anyone will," he says. "They're trying to pass that bill without knowing what this disease is all about."

He stops for a moment, tugs on the oxygen tube and tries to find a comfortable position for his skinny frame to sit on the dining room chair.

"Some type of legislation is probably needed, but the decision of who gets help and who doesn't must be left up to the doctors who treat people like me and not the politicians who just can't understand the pain."

Asbestos delays Wawa site; Council expected to award removal contract Monday

By Gwen Guerke, Milford Chronicle
MILFORD - On Monday night, Milford City Council is expected to award a contract for asbestos abatement at the former city public works yard.

Once the asbestos is removed, construction will begin on a Wawa convenience store at the site, said City Manager Richard D. Carmean.

The former city yard at the corner of U.S. 113 and North West 10th Street once held a garage, a few offices and a warehouse.

The buildings were sold at auction. In May, a salvager began work on the site, removing steel trusses and collapsing the roof, Mr. Carmean said.

But the city had to halt work on the site after it discovered that asbestos had been disturbed there.

"We knew we had asbestos there," said Mr. Carmean. "What we didn't know is that he (the salvager) was going to drop the roof."

Although asbestos was found in roofing, paint and flooring material, Mr. Carmean said the biggest problem is the asbestos in the boiler in the basement.

"The city has to clean up the contamination site," he said. "It's been an eyesore for two and a half months, and I apologize for that."

He estimates the cost at about $35,000.

"We had a price four years ago to get the place cleaned up. It's not that bad. After all, we still worked out of there for three years. Now the price is more expensive because it's more difficult to clean up. The money from the sale of the property will pay for it," Mr. Carmean said.

According to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site, asbestos could present a human health hazard. Exposure to inhaled asbestos could cause a lung disease called asbestosis, characterized by shortness of breath, cough and severe respiratory impairment.

Milford developer Dennis Silicato owns Silicato Commercial Realty and Development, which has been working to bring Wawa to Milford.

"I'm frustrated. It's just one of those things that happens. Their plans hinge on the city's letting them have the property."

He said construction will begin soon after the asbestos is removed, and the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has approved the process.

"I wish I had a timeline," said Mr. Silicato. "I have all the permits."

He said construction on the 6,200-square-foot store, minus gas bays, will take 120 to 160 days.

"They move quickly. You'll be surprised at how fast this goes. By spring, they will be open. That's my guess," he said.

The city relocated its public works department in the new business park off Airport Road last year.

Wawa opened its first market in 1964 in Pennsylvania, and since then has grown to more than 500 stores in five states, according to its Web site.

Asbestos judge tosses out 3 lawsuits

By Paul Hampel
Of the Post-Dispatch
10/06/2004

Daniel J. Stack and Judge Nicholas Byron

Madison County Circuit Judge Daniel J. Stack dismissed on Wednesday three out-of-state asbestos cases in his first rulings as chief asbestos judge, criticizing such lawsuits as a "cash cow" for the county. Stack inherited a backlog of asbestos cases on Sept. 8 from Circuit Judge Nicholas G. Byron, who resigned from the docket in July to handle other civil cases.

Stack's decisions come after a Post-Dispatch series last month disclosed the huge volume of lawsuits filed in the county, which has become a national center for asbestos litigation. The paper reported that more than 1,000 asbestos claims - worth in excess of $1 billion by conservative estimates - were filed in Madison County last year. Most were filed by people who had never lived or worked in Illinois.

Stack's order could represent a change in how some out-of-state asbestos claims are handled. The Post-Dispatch series found that a single asbestos lawsuit can generate $10,000 or more in filing fees, which goes to Madison County's general fund.

"Taxpayers of Madison County are actually being enriched by this docket," Stack wrote in his order to dismiss the lawsuit of Paul Palmer Sr., a Louisiana man suffering from mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the heart and lungs caused only by asbestos. "It is a proverbial 'cash cow,'" Stack called the system in his order. "The problem with this is, however, that it is not the function of the courts to make money. This is not a 'business.'"

The order went on to state that if the large numbers of asbestos cases filed actually did go to trial, they would place "an astronomical burden upon the citizens of Madison County." Asbestos defendants have complained that the thousands of cases filed leave them no time to prepare for trial, so they are forced to settle out of court. Stack touched on this issue as well.

"One of the reasons there are so few trials is because there are so many of these cases pending, somewhat of a 'Catch-22,'" he wrote. The other two cases Stack ruled on Wednesday, involving plaintiffs from Massachusetts and Florida, also involved mesothelioma. None of the plaintiffs ever lived or worked in Illinois.

The cases were filed by the East Alton personal injury firm of Wise & Julian. Barry Julian, managing partner of the firm, could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Each of the lawsuits named more than 80 defendants. Heyl, Royster, Voelker & Allen, a law firm based in Peoria, Ill., represented one of the defendants, Union Carbide. Robert Barney Shultz is the managing partner at the firm's Edwardsville office.

"Each case has to be decided on its own set of facts," Shultz said Wednesday. "But these (Stack's) decisions were unquestionably the right decisions."

Shultz had asked Stack on Sept. 15 to throw the cases out of Madison County based on the legal doctrine of forum non conveniens - Latin for "the forum is not convenient." "Where the plaintiff is not a resident, he is accorded less deference in regard to choice of forum," Shultz argued. "He is also accorded less deference if his injuries were not in the state."

In ordering the dismissal, Stack cited Illinois Supreme Court Rule 187, which gives the plaintiffs six months to file their lawsuits in another court. Stack noted that the plaintiffs lived much closer to courts with asbestos dockets in their own states.

In Palmer's case, Stack wrote that the man's home was "15 miles from the courthouse in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is approximately 700 miles from this court." Lisa Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, hailed Stack's rulings.

"From our perspective, his (Stack's) decisions indicate he's really making headway in changing the way that things are done in the county," Rickard said. "From our perspective, it indicates that he is applying the law of the state of Illinois in a really fair and even-handed manner."

Prognostic factors influencing survival in patients with brain metastases identified, largest ever study

05 Oct 2004
Allos Therapeutics, Inc announced the presentation of new findings from its Phase 3 clinical trial of the investigational radiation sensitizer EFAPROXYN™ (efaproxiral) in patients with brain metastases. A retrospective analysis of the results from the study led to the identification of the strongest prognostic factors for survival in patients with brain metastases. John H. Suh, M.D., Clinical Director, Radiation Oncology, Brain Tumor Institute at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and the study's lead investigator presented the findings in an oral presentation today at the 46th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiation Oncology. Preliminary data from the Phase 3 study, called REACH, were first announced in April 2003.

In abstract #60, titled "Prognostic Factors for Survival in Patients with Brain Metastases Enrolled on a Worldwide Phase 3 Randomized Trial of 538 Patients," Dr. Suh and colleagues evaluated certain factors influencing long-term survival of brain metastases patients, including Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS), site of primary, age, presence of extra cranial metastases, control of primary, gender, presence of liver metastases, timing of brain metastases diagnosis, prior brain tumor resection and number of brain metastases. Results of the analysis indicated that KPS, prior brain tumor resection, the presence of extra cranial metastases and gender were the strongest variables in predicting outcome. Moreover, the analysis affirmed the effectiveness of the study drug, EFAPROXYN, in improving survival time across a heterogeneous patient population.

"This study has significant implications for the design of future randomized trials in brain metastases patients," said Dr. Suh, “Our findings confirm the impact of certain variables in determining survival outcome for brain metastases patients. Moreover, the results demonstrated an improvement in survival for patients with brain metastases who received EFAPROXYN and whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT) with supplemental oxygen over those who received WBRT with supplemental oxygen only.”

Results from Dr. Suh's retrospective analysis were incorporated into the study design of Allos' Phase 3, randomized, open-label, multi-center trial, called ENRICH (ENhancing Whole Brain Radiation Therapy In Patients with Breast Cancer and Hypoxic Brain Metastases), designed to compare the effect of whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT) with supplemental oxygen with or without EFAPROXYN in women with brain metastases from breast cancer. The trial, which was initiated in February 2004, incorporated certain identified prognostic factors into the stratification and design, including KPS and presence of liver metastases.

Study Design

The REACH study was a randomized, open label Phase 3 clinical trial designed to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of EFAPROXYN in treating patients with brain metastases and good performance status. Patients with SCLC, germ cell tumors or lymphoma were excluded. Prior brain tumor resection was allowed as long as measurable lesion(s) remained. The study enrolled 538 patients and compared the safety and efficacy of EFAPROXYN plus WBRT and supplemental oxygen (271 patients) versus WBRT and supplemental oxygen (267 patients) in patients with brain metastases. The primary endpoint of the trial was survival.

About EFAPROXYN

EFAPROXYN is the first synthetic small molecule designed to “sensitize” hypoxic (oxygen-deprived) areas of tumors during radiation therapy by facilitating the release of oxygen from hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein contained within red blood cells, and increasing the level of oxygen in tumors. The presence of oxygen in tumors is an essential element for the effectiveness of radiation therapy in the treatment of cancer. By increasing tumor oxygenation at the time of treatment, EFAPROXYN has the potential to enhance the efficacy of standard radiation therapy. Unlike chemotherapeutics or other radiation sensitizers, EFAPROXYN does not have to cross the blood brain barrier or enter the tumor to be effective.

About Allos Therapeutics, Inc.

Allos Therapeutics, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing innovative drugs for improving cancer treatments. The company's lead clinical candidate, EFAPROXYN, is a synthetic small molecule that has the potential to sensitize hypoxic (oxygen deprived) tumor tissues and enhance the efficacy of standard radiation therapy. In addition, Allos is developing PDX (pralatrexate), a novel small molecule cytoxic injectable antifolate (DHFR inhibitor) intended to treat non-small cell lung cancer, mesothelioma and non Hodgkin's lymphoma. For more information, please visit the company's web site at: www.allos.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Future events may differ materially from those discussed herein due to a number of factors, including, but not limited to, risks and uncertainties related to the Company's ability to adequately demonstrate the safety and efficacy of EFAPROXYN for use as an adjunct to WBRT for the treatment of patients with brain metastases from breast cancer or any other solid tumor, and to obtain regulatory approval to market EFAPROXYN for this or any other indication, as well other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in the Company's SEC filings, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K, as amended, for the year ended December 31, 2003. [The company's product candidates are in various stages of development and may never be fully developed in a manner suitable for commercialization. If the company does not develop commercially successful products, its ability to generate revenue will be limited. If the company is unable to raise additional capital when required or on acceptable terms, it may have to significantly delay, scale back or discontinue one or more of its drug development programs. Delays in clinical trials, whether caused by adverse events, patient enrollment rates, regulatory issues or other factors, could adversely affect the company's financial position and prospects. Results from earlier clinical trials are not necessarily predictive of future clinical results. If the company is unable to generate meaningful amounts of revenue or cannot otherwise raise the necessary funds to support operations, it may not be able to continue as a going concern.] The company cautions investors not to place undue reliance on the forward looking statements contained in this press release. All forward-looking statements are based on information currently available to the company on the date hereof, and the company assumes no responsibility to update such statements.

Contact:
Jennifer Neiman
Manager, Corporate Communications
Allos Therapeutics
720-540-5227
303-518-4114 (cell)
jneiman@allos.com
http://www.allos.com

International Symposium Will Focus on Curing Mesothelioma

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Oct. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- A lethal, but long-overlooked cancer will take a major step out of the shadows next week, as The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation convenes the First International Symposium on Malignant Mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a rare, asbestos-related cancer. Research efforts were overlooked for decades, and effective treatment lags far behind other cancers. At the same time, incidence in the U.S. and globally is increasing to what some experts term epidemic proportions. The widely reported asbestos exposures resulting from 9/11 have increased the urgency of developing treatments for mesothelioma, in the view of many experts. The Symposium, to be held at Las Vegas' MGM Grand Hotel October 14-16, 2004, is the first ever meeting designed to unite the entire mesothelioma-concerned community to focus on the research needed to cure the disease.

The importance of this effort is gaining national attention. Today, the Honorable Harry Reid, Nevada Senator and Democratic Whip, confirmed that he will attend to deliver the Symposium's keynote speech. Jordan Zevon -- son of critically-acclaimed singer-songwriter Warren Zevon, who died from mesothelioma one year ago -- will also appear. Washington Senator Patty Murray will receive an award in the name of Congressman Bruce Vento, who died from mesothelioma in 2000.

The Symposium combines a scientific and medical conference with workshops designed specifically for patients, family members, industry representatives and others interested in the disease. Scientific Co-Chairs Nicholas Vogelzang, MD, Director of the Nevada Cancer Institute, and Harvey Pass, MD, Chief of Thoracic Oncology at Wayne State University's Karmanos Cancer Center, have assembled presentations by the world's leading mesothelioma surgeons, oncologists, and geneticists. Collectively, they will advance scientific understanding of the disease, while educating front-line physicians, as well as patients, families and all who help them, on recent advances, current treatment options, and emerging potential therapies for mesothelioma.

Additional presentations will address how both America's public and private sectors can allocate resources toward medical research to improve mesothelioma treatment. Representatives from government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and law firms and corporations who might typically be found on opposite sides in asbestos litigation are all expected to participate.

"Bringing together these diverse members of the mesothelioma-concerned community is the key step needed right now in the effort to solve the problem," said MARF executive director Chris Hahn. "This is also an important opportunity for us to build community among patients, family members, volunteers and patient advocates and provide them with knowledge, encouragement and hope as they observe first-hand the dedication and brilliance of those who are working so passionately to unlock the secrets of this disease."

Hahn continued by thanking the co-chairs, Dr. Vogelzang and Dr. Pass, for their efforts and expertise in assembling the Symposium, and the financial sponsors who are helping to make it possible: SimmonsCooper, Brayton Purcell, Waters & Kraus, Stanley, Mandel & Iola, Wise & Julian, Bergman & Frockt, and Alfacell Corporation.

The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation (MARF) is the national nonprofit organization whose mission is to eradicate mesothelioma as a life-ending disease. For more information, contact The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation (http://www.marf.org) Executive Director, Christopher E. Hahn, 805-560-8942, c-hahn@marf.org.

SOURCE Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation
Web Site: http://www.marf.org

ACT protesters rally against Canadian asbestos export

Tuesday, 5 October 2004

About 100 people have gathered outside the Canadian High Commission in Canberra to protest against the country's export of asbestos.

Unions say there is intense public anger over the conduct of some asbestos manufacturers.

They say the separate case of James Hardie has been a catalyst for community action today.

Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) spokesman John Sutton says the Canadian Government allows multinational firms to continue to mine and export asbestos products.

He says it is reprehensible, given tens of thousands of people around the world have died as a result of mesothelioma.

The protesters want Canada to ratify an international convention on asbestos and have passed their concerns directly to Canadian High Commission representatives today.

Surgery After Chemotherapy Shows Promise for Patients With Mesothelioma

Results from a recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology indicate that neoadjuvant chemotherapy appears promising for the treatment of patients with malignant mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer in which cancer cells arise within the lining of the chest wall. It is often associated with asbestos exposure and may develop many years after exposure. Prognosis depends on how early the cancer is found and how aggressively it is treated. Treatment may include surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Long-term survival for patients with mesothelioma remains dismal and research is ongoing in order to attempt to improve survival for these patients.

One type of therapy being evaluated in the treatment of mesothelioma is neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The idea behind neoadjuvant chemotherapy is to shrink the cancer prior to surgery so that more of the cancer may be removed. In addition, some experts believe that neoadjuvant chemotherapy may kill cancer cells that have spread in the body immediately, versus waiting for a patient to complete surgery and become medically fit enough to tolerate chemotherapy.

The recent trial consisted of 19 patients diagnosed with mesothelioma, 17 of whom were considered to have poor long-term outcomes. All patients who were eligible for the surgical removal of their cancer were treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Chemotherapy consisted of 3 cycles of cisplatin and gemcitabine weekly for 3 of 4 weeks. Following chemotherapy, patients underwent surgery for removal of the affected lung and surrounding structures. Radiation after surgery was then considered for all patients.

Results of the trial indicate that the anti-cancer response rate to neoadjuvant chemotherapy was 32%. Overall, chemotherapy was relatively well tolerated, with minimal side effects. Surgery was performed on 16 of the patients and 13 patients received radiation after surgery. The average survival time was 23 months, although 2 patients remained disease free at 38 and 41 months.

Researchers concluded that neoadjuvant chemotherapy appears promising for the treatment of malignant mesothelioma; however, further investigation is warranted. Patients are encouraged to speak to their physician regarding treatment options and participation in clinical trials. Two sources of information regarding ongoing clinical trials include the National Cancer Institute (cancer.gov) and www.cancerconsultants.com. Personalized clinical trial searches are also performed on behalf of patients by cancerconsultants.com.

Reference: Weder W, Kestenholz P, Taverna C, et al. Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy Followed by Extrapleural Pneumonectomy in Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma. Journal of Clinical Oncology. 2004;22: 3451-3457.

ASBESTOS FEAR STRIKES KING CITY

Former millworkers worry company didn't protect them

By LISA GIRION
Los Angeles Times

KING CITY Oct. 04, 2004 - Art Valdez spent 26 years working in the dust in the United States' last asbestos mill, pulling down $17.85 an hour before the place shut down last year.

He had a pension and five weeks' paid vacation. He had health insurance for his family. He could afford to give cars to his two boys, visit friends in Texas and take his wife to Denny's as often as he wished.

''I didn't know what asbestos was,'' he recalled recently. ''I thought that was the best job ever.''

He did not fret when the bagging machines spewed powder all over him, or when he drove home with his maroon Silverado covered in white residue. He didn't think much about the sludge cake he tracked into the house on his steel-toed boots or the dust that clung to his black hair and scattered when he hugged his kids.

Even after learning about the sometimes fatal hazards of asbestos, Valdez didn't imagine that it might damage his lungs or mark him for cancer. The mill bosses told him that the kind of asbestos Union Carbide Corp. scooped out of the Diablo Mountains near the central California town of Coalinga wouldn't hurt him, he said, and he believed them.

The workers who milled Union Carbide's trademarked Calidria asbestos, Valdez said, ''took the word of the company from Day 1.''

That is, until recently.

In several trials across the country, makers of products containing Calidria, their workers and customers have accused Union Carbide of wronging them. They have raised questions as to what Union Carbide really knew about asbestos that one of its employees described, in the words of an internal 1974 report, as ''harmless.'' In turn, a small but growing number of mill hands have come to feel haunted, fearing that the work they did could end up killing them.

Over the decades, 450 men and women worked at the mill near King City, a town of 11,000 in southern Monterey County. Many of them still live here, 30 miles from the mountains where Union Carbide's chrysotile asbestos was mined in what today is a government-designated asbestos hazard area, where visitors are cautioned to avoid inhaling dust.

What angers the former mill hands is that Union Carbide may have kept them in the dark about what it knew of Calidria's potential dangers, including the lung damage suffered by laboratory rats in Union Carbide's own tests in the 1960s.

Valdez, a tall man comfortable in boots and Wranglers, is apparently healthy at age 52. But he can't stop worrying about whether he and his friends have time bombs in their lungs. Since the mill closed last year, he has become something of an activist, a role he never expected to play.

''What if we get sick and die of cancer?'' he said as he walked along the railroad tracks where trains loaded with asbestos once rattled toward Los Angeles. ''God forbid.''

Union Carbide contends that recent research shows that, unlike those of other forms of asbestos, Calidria's fibers are short enough to be easily expelled from the respiratory tract and lungs before causing damage.

In defending itself against people's claims that Calidria in their homes or workplaces scarred their lungs or gave them cancer, the company has asserted that its asbestos couldn't be the culprit because none of the King City mill hands has ever been determined to have an asbestos-related disease.

It might not be so simple, however. Company documents disclosed in lawsuits in Georgia, Texas and Florida indicate that Union Carbide doctors saw symptoms possibly associated with asbestos-related disease in King City workers on about three dozen occasions. At least three workers have died of cancers that may be associated with asbestos, though in each case other factors, such as smoking, could be to blame.

In any event, mesothelioma, a fatal cancer, strikes as many as 50 years after a victim's initial exposure to asbestos. The legacy of the King City mill, which opened in 1963, might not be known for decades.

In 1957, a prospector for Union Carbide, a chemicals company that produced the first antifreeze and portable batteries, discovered an extraordinary patch of what's known as mountain leather sandwiched between layers of serpentine, the California state rock. The company staked its claim near the 5,164-foot-high Santa Rita peak in the Diablo Range.

Union Carbide reckoned that it could mine what it saw as a mother lode of asbestos for 4,000 years without hitting bottom. Even now it's considered the world's largest cache of asbestos.

Today, Union Carbide, a unit of Dow Chemical Co. since 2001, faces a mountain of lawsuits over injuries and deaths blamed on the asbestos shipped around the world from King City. The plaintiffs include painters exposed to Calidria in wall coatings, roughnecks who inhaled it when they ripped open bags of drilling mud and drywallers and do-it-yourselfers who were dosed with it when they sanded down joint compound.

None of the King City workers is a plaintiff in any of these cases, but Union Carbide has made them key to its defense: If the people who milled Calidria aren't ill, then the plaintiffs are blaming the wrong asbestos -- and the wrong company.

The mill was considered a model in asbestos hygiene. It was state of the art for its time, the first to use a wet process to control the dust. But it was dusty nonetheless, workers said, especially when churning out its biggest moneymaker, Resin Grade 244.

''It was a real fine powder, finer than baby powder,'' said Ernie Gallardo, who started at the mill at 22 after earning a Purple Heart in Vietnam. ''This stuff would just float.''

Union Carbide stresses that, even though Calidria is a relatively safe form of asbestos, it took the most conservative approach possible, advising plant workers that breathing in any asbestos could put them at risk. Warning signs, the company notes, were posted throughout the mill, and employees were regularly briefed about the importance of avoiding inhaling the dust.

But no matter what the experts determine, unless one of the former workers is diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease, there may be no cause for an injury claim.

Krause marina plan stalled by asbestos threat

GLENN GRIFFITH, Community News 10/01/2004

HALFMOON -- A project to demolish and remove a number of small homes and debris from a 16 acre site in Halfmoon has been halted over a concern with asbestos.

The site off Canal Road near the Mohawk River is the location of Krause's Restaurant and Grove. It is owned by Gary and Gail Krause, who are planning to develop the property once the debris is removed.

Officials with the State Department of Labor approximately two weeks ago asked for and received a temporary halt to the demolition of the structures on the Krause site.

Francina Kitchen of the Department of Labor said the department received a phone call stating there may be asbestos in some of the buildings on the site or in the construction debris that litters it. Kitchen said the project was stopped, voluntarily, while samples are being taken.

The restaurant site became a scene of anger and despair early in the summer when many long-time lease holders vacated their homes. The residents owned the structures but leased the land. When a 30-day-clause in their leases was invoked, many vacated the homes rather than move them. Some destroyed parts of the homes before vacating.

Since that time, the site has been the scene of at least two unexplained fires that partially destroyed what was left of the homes.

The town has been after the Krauses to move forward more quickly with the demolition and removal process. The original partner in the Krauses development plans, nearby construction company Bast Hatfield, is no longer involved in the project and all parties refuse to reveal why.

Town of Halfmoon Planning Board Chairman and Public Safety officer Steve Watts said he has given the Krauses four citations for safety and health violations over the structural debris. The Krauses were fined $50 in town court on Sept. 22 for having an unsafe structure. The fine was paid the same night.

A second construction company, BBL Services now has the contract for the demolition and removal of the buildings. Director of Operations Todd Woods said the company was informed of the phone call to the Labor Department and demolition was immediately halted.

Woods said the firm has hired an independent company to do a round of tests.

'We're responsible for the demolition and the removal now. We need the permits so we'll do that,'

Woods said the company will not do anything until the results of the tests come in.

'We're a big company and we understand our obligations. We'd like the public to know that we do the right things whenever requested. As soon as the complaint came in we stopped things. We don't want to proceed if it's dangerous to our workers.'

Woods said the company has a contract for just for the demolition and removal. 'But that doesn't mean we wouldn't like to go further with their project,' he said.

A dynasty waits for the dust to settle
October 2, 2004

For decades, James Hardie's management felt it was safer to sweep the company's asbestos problems under the corporate carpet. Ben Hills reports.

John Boyd Reid's signature on the typewritten memo has faded over the decades and with generations of photocopying. But there is no doubt he was worried about the newspaper cutting he attached.

Based on an article in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine, it was headlined "Urgent Probe Into 'New' Killer Dust Disease", and it recorded an epidemic of a rare and deadly cancer of the lining of the lung called mesothelioma - 76 deaths had already been reported at just one hospital, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Most of the victims were people who had worked in the asbestos industry up to 33 years earlier.

It was 1966 and the world was about to learn that "the miracle fibre of the 20th century" - from which everything from brake linings to insulation, water pipes and house cladding was made - was in fact an insidious killer. Today, an estimated 100,000 people are killed every year by asbestos disease around the world, and the final toll is expected to be 10 million agonising deaths.

In Australia, the man-made plague would strike harder than in any other country because our use per capita was the highest in the world - in the early 1950s half the houses in NSW were made of "fibro". James Leigh, the country's leading asbestos disease statistician, estimates that 27,000 Australians have been killed by asbestos cancers already, and that there will be another 27,000 deaths by 2020 when the epidemic should peak - 54,000 avoidable deaths.

In 1966, John Reid had recently been appointed a director of James Hardie Asbestos Ltd, Australia's largest asbestos products manufacturer, with thousands on its payroll and factories in all states. It also had stakes in asbestos mines in South Africa and Canada, and was to build factories in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Reid, who today is 74 and still active in the business world, is one of Australia's wealthiest men with assets estimated at $181 million.

The best advice is to ignore the publicity - dust is a fact - denials merely stir up more publicity."
E.T. PYSDEN, former James Hardie personnel managerHe remains a major shareholder of James Hardie, although he retired after 23 years as its chairman in 1996. Back in 1966 when he was sent that newspaper clipping he was a director, the third generation of his family on the board.

Although it continued to carry the name of its founder, James Hardie Industries (it quietly dropped the word asbestos from its name in 1979) the company would more accurately be referred to as "Reid Industries". Andrew Reid, a Scottish migrant, bought out his partner James Hardie in 1911, founding a corporate dynasty that would last 85 years.

The company was headed successively by his sons, Thyne Reid and Sir John (Jock) Reid, and his grandson John Boyd Reid. Even after it went public in 1951, the extended and influential Reid family continued to control it through interlocking shareholdings and trusts, which held around 20 per cent of the shares.

Educated at blue-blood Scotch College in Melbourne, with a law degree from Melbourne University, Reid was being fast-tracked to take over the business. That article about mesothelioma had been sent to him by James Hardie's partner in Tasmania.

Reid forwarded the article to the company's personnel manager, one E.T. Pysden, seeking his comments. Pysden's one-page reply to Reid is one of the most damaging documents to emerge in the decades of litigation in which more than 3000 asbestos victims have sued James Hardie for compensation, because of what it reveals about the company's corporate culture.

"The article is not new," Pysden wrote to Reid. "It is merely one of many reports of world studies which have been conducted since 1935 when the association between exposure to (asbestos) dust and carcinoma of the lung, mesothelioma of the pleura, tumour of the bladder and uterus and other fatal complaints was first recognised.

"The best advice is to (1) ignore the publicity - dust is a fact - denials merely stir up more publicity. (2) Do something positive about engineering the dust hazard out of existence."

In fact, the vast depositories of documents uncovered in the litigation show incontrovertibly that the dangers of asbestos had been known to the company's management for decades. That is why it has already been forced to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to workers and consumers killed and injured by its products - and, according to last week's Jackson report, may be liable for as much as $2 billion more.

According to Tanya Segelov, of law firm Turner Freeman, which has run hundreds of asbestos cases for James Hardie victims: "There is no doubt that the Reids had personal knowledge of the dangers (of asbestos). They were intimately involved in the business. Employees knew their faces - they used to walk around the factory floors."

The first workers' compensation case for asbestosis was brought against James Hardie in 1939, when the company's co-founder, Andrew Reid, was still at the helm. In the 1940s there were several awards for "asthma" and "bronchitis", and in 1952 the NSW Department of Public Health found dust counts of double the legal limit.

By 1957 the Victorian State Health Department had stepped in and ordered X-rays of workers in "dusty" industries - principally James Hardie's asbestos products factory at Brooklyn in western Melbourne. A report by Dr Gordon Thomas found that there were an alarming 539 cases of lung damage, and recommended "it is imperative that conditions improve in the dusty trades".

There were plenty of warnings. The company's national safety officer, Peter Russell, wrote to senior management in 1964 warning that asbestos was "one of the most dangerous of all industrial poisons" and that "the company could, in future, become a sitting duck for claims not only for . . . asbestosis, but for cases of lung cancer and possibly heart conditions".

Throughout the 1970s, evidence accumulated from around the world of the massive damage asbestos was causing to industry workers, consumers and innocent bystanders. By the end of the decade, 250 companies were being sued in the US, 100 new claims a month were pouring in, and Johns Manville - the world's largest asbestos company, which was in partnership with James Hardie - alone had 5000 claims.

However, at James Hardie's head office in Australia, there is no evidence that the warnings were being taken sufficiently seriously.

In 1974, the company's medical officer, Dr S.F. McCullagh, wrote indignantly to the Medical Journal of Australia: "The industry is well aware of the hazards of asbestos . . . we should remember asbestos has saved more lives than it has claimed."

Production continued apace and profits boomed. In 1978, John Reid boasted: "Every time you walk into an office building, a home, a factory; every time you put your foot on the brake, ride in a train, see a bulldozer at work . . . every time you do or see any of these things the chances are that a product from the James Hardie group of companies has a part in it."

What measures were taken to mitigate exposure to asbestos dust or warn of its dangers were too little, too late. At the 1979 annual meeting Reid revealed that the company was negotiating a product warning with the Health Department - but insisted that there was no cause for concern as "only" 100 workers had contracted asbestosis in the previous 15 years.

It was not until 1987, 21 years after John Reid read that article on mesothelioma, that the company finally stopped using the asbestos on which it had built its fortune.

It had been experimenting with other fibres for more than 40 years, but only now did it judge that it was worth the investment to switch from deadly asbestos to the timber pulp and plastic used now.

Reid's reputation as a doyen of corporate Australia has not been dented by the Jackson inquiry - as well as James Hardie he had lengthy stints on blue-chip boards such as Qantas, Coles Myer and BHP. A patron of Sydney University's Australian Graduate School of Management, he was awarded the John Storey medal for "distinguished contribution to management" in 1985 and given an honorary fellowship earlier this year.

He declined an interview for this article, declaring through a spokeswoman that he was no longer connected with the company, although he remains a significant shareholder. Just how big is impossible to tell, since his shareholdings are buried in trustee companies - in May BRW magazine estimated his holding at 25 million shares, which would make him the company's fifth-largest shareholder.

No one is suggesting that Reid is personally legally liable for the deaths and injuries suffered by his workers and customers during his tenure. But it is interesting to note that in France, Claude Chapin, the managing director of a defunct asbestos company, has been arraigned on criminal charges of poisoning, involuntary homicide and involuntary wounding of six of his workers who contracted asbestos disease.

Asbestos death toll rises again

October 1, 2004

TRAGIC deaths from killer building material asbestos continue to blight families across the country. Every day, more and more people die from a cancer brought on by exposure to asbestos many years ago and their families are left devastated by a disease that destroys these once healthy and happy people.

The number of asbestos related deaths has risen to 3,500 a year and is forecast to increase to 10,000 by the year 2020. Hundreds of thousands of tons of asbestos currently in buildings still needs to be removed. The Evening Star's Silent Killer Campaign has worked to highlight the tragedy of these deaths since 1997.

On Friday, Greater Suffolk Coroner Dr Peter Dean had the task of investigating yet more deaths resulting from mesothelioma, the cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Once again, Dr Dean had to record verdicts that these people died from industrial disease after unknowingly working surrounded by asbestos, often for years on end.

During the inquest of Alfred Bartlett, who was 73 when he died at Ipswich Hospital in June, Dr Dean heard he had been exposed to asbestos during his working life. Mr Bartlett, who lived in Deben Road, Ipswich, had written down details of his career before his death and the inquest heard he had held a number of posts, including time spent building and repairing steam locomotives for British Rail.

Mr Bartlett said he and his colleagues had been given no formal warnings about the dangers of asbestos, but they had been told to tie string around the sleeves of their overalls. He had also spent time working for the RAF, London Transport, the Ford Motor Company and ended his career as a warehouseman at Felixstowe docks.

Before his death, Mr Bartlett had visited his doctor several times and had been admitted to hospital. Mesothelioma was diagnosed after a biopsy and doctors had concluded Mr Bartlett's death was as a result of exposure to asbestos. Former Royal Navy electrician Arthur Harris, who was 83 when he died, had also been exposed to the killer substance, the inquest into his death heard.

Mr Harris had spent 24 years in the Navy and during that time had been exposed to asbestos. Visits to doctors and a series of tests had also revealed Mr Harris, of Holyrood Close, Ipswich had died from mesothelioma. Mr Harris died at St Elizabeth Hospice on September 7.

The inquest into the death of Irene Smethurst-King heard a report from her daughter Sandra Moore that Mrs King, 87, had worked in both a cotton mill and at a silk manufacturer. Whilst at the silk factory Mrs King, of Mark Rise, Martlesham Heath, had been responsible for drying silk in front of large open fires.

Although there was no direct evidence that she had been exposed to asbestos, Dr Dean said it was extremely rare for anyone to develop mesothelioma unless they had been exposed. He said: "On the balance of probability the fact is we have a mesothelioma and we have a disease that is caused more likely than not by asbestos exposure."

Harry Bywater was 83 when he died at the St Elizabeth Hospice in July. Mr Bywater, of Whitehorse Road, had worked on the reconstruction of houses in post-war Britain and had regularly cut up asbestos sheets by hand. He had been given radiotherapy before his death and had been treated by specialist doctors.

Dr Dean said there had been evidence of direct exposure to asbestos and once again recorded a verdict of industrial disease. Former toolsetter William Wenlock had also spent time working in mines, as a pit pony driver and a coal face worker.

When he died at Ipswich Hospital in May he was suffering from mesothelioma. The inquest heard asbestos fibres had been found in his body during a post-mortem examination. Mr Wenlock, 91, lived in Charles Adams Close, Leiston before his death.

Once again, Dr Dean said Mr Wenlock's death had been caused industrial disease. Tragically, the number of inquests that will hear similar stories is set to rise. Thousands of people were exposed to deadly asbestos between the 1940's and 1970's.

Helen Bucky from the occupational and environmental diseases association in East Anglia said: "The statistics are coming up and it is going to get worse. Many people who started apprenticeships in the 50s and 60s worked with asbestos. The figures are very alarming.

"After diagnosis you have about two years to live, they treat some of it and it prolongs life for a while but you go through an awful lot. "It is as big a problem in East Anglia as it is anywhere and a lot of it comes from the building trade and painting and decorating. It was even in car brakes so mechanics got it as well. "We have had about 12 cases in East Anglia so far this year and they are just the ones that really need our help.

"It is people from the age of 40 uwards that seem to be infected and we have one gentleman at the moment who is 48 and has five children. It is not a happy situation. "These cases won't stop for about 20 years." The Evening Star will continue it's Silent Killer campaign to ensure these needless deaths do not go unnoticed.

Have you been affected? Write in to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN or e-mail eveningstarletters@eveningstar.co.uk.

PAULINE Harris discovered asbestos would claim her husband's life on their 61st wedding anniversary. It was June 2, 2003, more than six months after Arthur Harris had complained of a chest infection.

Doctors had done numerous tests and could find nothing wrong – they even gave Mr Harris a full body scan. It was only when using a camera to investigate inside Mr Harris' lungs that they discovered a fibre of asbestos.

Mrs Harris, 81, said: "The oncologist came up from Norwich and said sorry you have got mesothelioma and he said it is terminal. Of course it was shock, that is putting it lightly, but they were very good and a lady told us what it would do."

Mr Harris was given regular check ups and each time the fluid in his lungs had increased. He was able to have it drained at St Elizabeth Hospice and spent much of the last 15 months there and at his home in Holyrood Close, Ipswich. Mrs Harris added: "The last time he went in he was very poorly. There was no pain with it just exhaustion and breathlessness all the time.

"On September 7 they told us to come down to the hospice because he wasn't getting any better. The nurses said he would go and we stayed there with him then. At the end his breath got slower and slower but he was on oxygen. "He said he wasn't afraid of death just of dying. "The last 12 months he just got weaker and weaker, he deteriorated and would just sleep all the time."

Mr Harris was exposed to asbestos in his time in the navy. He was a chief petty officer and is believed to have cut asbestos which was then used to cover pipes. Mrs Harris said: "Even my brother-in-law, who worked in the engine room, said they made snow balls out of the stuff as it came down. They didn't know."

The family accept no-one is to blame for the death of Mr Harris at the age of 83 and they are grateful they had so many years with him. They were particularly impressed with Mr Harris' care both on Somersham ward at Ipswich Hospital and at the hospice. Mrs Harris added: "Everyone did all they could to help and we had a lot of support. I don't think there is anywhere in the country you could get better treatment."

Once thought of as a man's disease, lung cancer is claiming women's lives at an alarming rate

BY JUDY PERES
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO Oct. 01, 2004 - (KRT) - Quick - what's the biggest cancer killer of women?

If you said, "breast cancer," you'd be in good company. But you'd be wrong.

Lung cancer kills more women in the U.S. tan breast cancer and all other gynecologic cancers combined. According to the American Cancer Society, nearly 70,000 American women are expected to die of lung cancer this year, compared with about 40,000 who will succumb to breast cancer.

"Women don't have this on their radar screen," said Dr. Kathy Albain, professor of medicine at Loyola University Chicago, "and it's a travesty."

Lee Ann Gaal, 50, one of Albain's patients at Loyola's Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center in Maywood, Ill., learned the hard way.

Gaal, a longtime Chicago Public Schools teacher, started having mammograms while she was still in her 30s. An aunt had died of breast cancer, making Gaal well aware of the danger from that quarter. But even though her father had died of lung cancer, Gaal smoked at least a pack of cigarettes a day from the age of 13.

"I guess I thought lung cancer was just for men," she said.

(That was true in the past, because far more men smoked cigarettes, and smoking causes nearly 90 percent of lung cancer cases. In recent decades, however, women have just about caught up: 21 percent of U.S. women and 25 percent of men now smoke.)

About six years ago, Gaal noticed that her ankles were swollen. Her primary-care doctor sent her to an arthritis specialist, who poked and prodded and eventually pronounced, "I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure you have lung cancer."

It was a bolt from the blue. Gaal turned out to have an 8-centimeter tumor on her lung that eventually spread to her brain. But after surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, she's alive to tell her story.

The majority of lung cancer patients are dead within two years of diagnosis, but Albain stresses that increasing numbers of patients are beating those odds, thanks to new and improved forms of treatment.

"I need to say 'thank you, Jesus' every day," Gaal said. "It's only by a miracle that I'm alive."

Her biggest regret is that she put her family through hell. "My (then) 15-year-old son had to hold his mother on the couch while she was having a seizure" from the cancer in her brain, she said tearfully.

"Women who smoke need to know they're risking their lives," Gaal said. "But what they do to their families is so much worse."

Gaal would like to help spread the word about women and the risk of lung cancer. "I'm not minimizing those who die of breast cancer," she said, "but for pity's sake, we just had the very first lung cancer walk in November! People just don't want to hear about it."

Albain, who specializes in both breast and lung cancer, is trying to do something about that. Three years ago she helped found Women Against Lung Cancer, which brings women oncologists and other health-care professionals together with leaders of women's advocacy groups to advance education and research.

This year she and other researchers are launching a large clinical trial that will attempt to establish why some people get lung cancer while others don't, and why some patients do better once they get it.

Being female may have something to do with it, Albain believes. Some studies (but not all) have suggested that women who smoke are more susceptible than male smokers to the carcinogens in cigarettes. There are also many more women than men among lung cancer patients who never smoked. It's unclear, though, whether that's because women are more susceptible to lung cancer.

DIFFERENT TYPE OF CANCER

Dr. Michael Thun, who heads epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society, said it could be simply because there are more older women than men in America who have never smoked.

Women also tend to get different types of lung cancer, to be younger when they get it and to have a close relative with the disease. In addition, lung cancer behaves differently in women than in men: Women are more likely than men to respond to certain types of treatment, and they live longer once diagnosed.

"Lung cancer appears to be a different disease in women," said Dr. Jyoti Patel, an oncologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and author of a recent paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association calling for gender-specific studies to address those differences.

Patel said that lung cancer is not a priority for agencies that fund medical research. HIV/AIDS research gets almost $30,000 per patient death, and breast cancer gets about $13,000, she said. But lung cancer gets only about $1,500 per patient death.

"There are no pink ribbons for lung cancer," Patel said. "So it's a double blow--you have a horrible illness and no one seems to care."

Albain agrees more research needs to be done. And, like Patel, she believes it's imperative that scientists include more women in lung cancer treatment and prevention trials so they can discover what differences might be linked to sex--which could yield important clues for treatment and detection of the deadly disease in both men and women.

LOOKING FOR ANSWERS

Some of the angles she expects to examine in her study are whether women metabolize certain carcinogens differently, whether their DNA is less efficient at repairing itself when it's damaged, whether they have more or different gene mutations that promote cancer ("oncogenes"), and how hormones affect their risk of getting lung cancer. Some studies have suggested, for example, that women who take oral contraceptives or hormone replacement therapy are more likely to get lung cancer.

"We know that smoking causes lung cancer," Albain said. "But only 1 in 10 smokers get the disease. Why is that?" The answer probably lies in the complex interactions between smoking and other factors, both environmental and biological.

So Albain's study of 740 lung cancer patients will collect information on smoking, exposure to secondhand smoke and other environmental carcinogens in addition to tissue and blood samples. "We need to find out if there's an environmental exposure profile that puts you at higher risk" for lung cancer, Albain said.

The study, which is expected to start enrolling patients nationwide in the fall, will include equal numbers of men and women, both smokers and non-smokers. Researchers in several large cancer research cooperatives will participate.

FIRST, STOP SMOKING

Once your consciousness has been raised, what can you actually do to protect yourself against lung cancer?

If you smoke, stop. Nearly 90 percent of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking, and the terrifying increase in the incidence of lung cancer among women in the last century tracked the increasing popularity of cigarette smoking.

Be aware that, if you've smoked in the past, you have an increased risk for many years--perhaps forever. So don't ignore possible symptoms, such as a persistent cough, coughing up blood, hoarseness, persistent chest or shoulder pain, weight loss, unusual fatigue or loss of appetite. Dr. Kathy Albain of Loyola University Chicago says lung cancer sometimes goes undetected because people are afraid to acknowledge the early symptoms. "You shouldn't be scared," she added. "We can cure more and more early-stage lung cancer."

If you have recently been diagnosed with lung cancer, says Albain, get to a major medical center where you'll have access to state-of-the-art treatments. Also consider enrolling in a nationwide study that is due to open in the fall. That study, to be conducted by Albain and others, could yield important clues about why some people are more susceptible to lung cancer than others.

And what about having a screening test for early detection of lung cancer--something like the mammograms used to detect breast cancer?

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says there isn't enough evidence to recommend for or against lung cancer screening of people with no symptoms. Early studies of lung cancer screening (mostly with chest X-rays) showed that screening detected many more cases of lung cancer but failed to reduce deaths from the disease. The conclusion was that the tests were probably detecting lung cancers that would never have become life-threatening. However, more recent studies using CT scans to screen high-risk men and women have raised questions.

Research is currently under way to determine whether screening with low-dose CT is more effective than old-fashioned X-rays. The results won't be known for several years, but in the meantime some doctors are recommending CT scans for patients at high risk, including longtime smokers and those with a strong family history of lung cancer.

One of the problems with CT screening is that the test is too sensitive: About 1 in 4 people who get screened will be found to have an abnormality that needs further work-up, but only 1 in 10 of those will turn out to be cancer.

"We're not recommending lung cancer screening outside of a good clinical trial," said Albain, "except perhaps for someone in a high-risk family, or a longtime smoker. But I will always recommend a diagnostic CT for someone whose symptoms won't go away--even if she's not a smoker."

ONLINE

More information is available at Women Against Lung Cancer (www.4WALC.org) and at The American Cancer Society (www.cancer.org).

RFA effective for easing lung cancer symptoms; CT findings identified that verify successful RFA

1-Oct-2004 - CT-guided radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is effective in easing the symptoms of lung tumors that cannot be removed by surgery, and enhancement pattern and changes in the size of the tumor as shown on CT are the most important factors for determining whether that ablation has been successful, according to a pair of independent studies in the October 2004 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.
For the first study, researchers from Caserta's S. Sebastiano Hospital in Italy analyzed 33 patients with malignant lung cancer who could not undergo surgery and opted for CT-guided RFA instead. No major complications occurred for any patient during RFA, and all RFA sessions were deemed successful at follow-up CT.

According to Giuseppe Belfiore, MD, lead author of the article, the study was prompted by the feeling that an alternative to the usual therapies for lung cancer was strongly needed. "We see too many lung cancer patients who, inoperable for a number of different reasons, are left with few chances to obtain an effective palliation," said Dr. Belfiore. "We believe that a powerful alternative/complementary option is now available, although we believe that the full potential of RFA is still to be assessed. For sure, RFA allows a better quality of life for many inoperable patients," Dr. Belfiore added.

In a separate but related study, researchers from Chonbuk National University Hospital in South Korea determined that pattern enhancement--a difference in contrast between a tumor and the surrounding tissue--and changes in tumor size were the most important factors in judging the success of RFA for lung tumors on CT.

The researchers analyzed 21 patients who had undergone CT-guided RFA for lung tumors, nine of whom had complete ablations and 12 of whom had partial ablations performed. For the former group, the researchers found that the tumors were without any enhancement on short-term follow-up CT and that the size of the lesions had decreased by 40% after 12 months. For the partially ablated group, the tumors were enhanced to various degrees at short-term and the tumor size had increased after six months.

"During the past two years there have been increasing reports of RFA being performed for lung tumors, but, to our knowledge, no study has focused on the changes of ablated lung tumors on follow-up CT. Based on our results, we conclude that an enhancement pattern is a reliable finding for assessing the precise therapeutic efficacy of RFA on immediate follow-up CT. In addition, the knowledge of the size changes of the ablated tumors on long-term follow-up CT is helpful in assessing a tumor's response to RFA in lung cancer," said Jeong Min Lee, MD, one of the authors of the study.

2004 Mesothelioma Lung Cancer News
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