Recently the New York Times magazine blog published a brief note about two classic science fiction novels bound in asbestos cloth. This has triggered widespread indignation around the world and I am pleased to report that I was the first to post a critical comment. The blog entry and comments can be found here. If you are as offended as we were, please feel free to log on, register with the New York Times (it’s free), and add your comments.

Recently, an advertisement appeared in the Hindustan Times, “Blast Those Myths About Asbestos Cement.” The notice that the ad was paid for by the Asbestos Cement Products Association may very well be the only factual statement printed.

The manufacturers proudly proclaim, “Only safe White Fibre is Used in Manufacturing of Asbestos cement products in India.” Safe white fibre? Do they mean chrysotile? Let’s examine what real experts have to say about chrysotile:

Since asbestos is the major cause of mesothelioma, and chrysotile constitutes 95% of all asbestos use worldwide, it can be concluded that chrysotile asbestos is the main cause of pleural mesothelioma in humans. Smith AH, Wright CC. Am J Ind Med. 1998 Jan; 33(1):94-6.

Chrysotile with little contamination of tremolite can lead to early development of malignant mesothelioma when heavily exposed from childhood at a company residence with household exposure. Yano E, Wang ZM, Wang XR, Wang MZ, Takata A, Kohyama N, Suzuki Y. Am J Ind Med. 2009 Apr; 52(4):282-7.

The cluster of 14 mesothelioma cases among workers who were active in the mine and 13 among other people exposed to Balangero chrysotile provides further evidence that tremolite-free chrysotile is carcinogenic. Mirabelli D, Calisti R, Barone-Adesi F, Fornero E, Merletti F, Magnani C. Occup Environ Med. 2008 Dec; 65(12):815-9.

This study confirms the findings from previous investigations of excess mortality from lung cancer and asbestosis and a strong exposure-response relation between estimated exposure to chrysotile and mortality from lung cancer and asbestosis. Hein MJ, Stayner LT, Lehman E, Dement JM. Occup Environ Med. 2007 Sep; 64(9):616-25.

The hypothesis that tremolite-free chrysotile caused no lung cancer was rejected. Ogden TL. Ann Occup Hyg. 2009; 53(4):307–309.

There are excessive risks of lung cancer and mesothelioma among workers exposed to chrysotile fiber alone. Li L, Sun TD, Zhang X, Lai RN, Li XY, Fan XJ, Morinaga K. Biomed Environ Sci. 2004 Dec; 17(4):459-68.

The conclusion is that in order to ensure adequate protection, there is no alternative to a total ban. The evidence for carcinogenicity of chrysotile is as good as for the amphiboles… Terracini B. Med Lav. 2006 Mar-Apr; 97(2):383-92.

Remind the Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association (ACPMA) that a lie told a million times is still a lie. It’s time to ban all forms of asbestos. Contact them at acpma@sify.com

Virotherapy is the use of biotechnology to convert viruses into cancer-fighting agents by reprogramming viruses to replicate in cancer cells and destroy them from within. In 2006 researchers from the Hebrew University succeeded in isolating the Newcastle disease virus, in order to specifically target cancer cells. The researchers tested this new virotherapy on patients with glioblastoma multiforme and achieved promising results for the first time. There are indications that virotherapy may also be useful in treating mesothelioma.

In order to create an effective virus, it is necessary to understand the molecular workings of the specific cancer. An adenovirus-based virotherapy agent is engineered by incorporating a tumor specific promoter (TSP) into virus genes. The TSP restricts the expression of certain genes and viral replication in tumor cells, while sparing normal cells. A team from the Center for Gene and Cell Therapy at Okayama University Hospital in Japan has been working on heparanase-assisted dual virotherapy. Initial animal experiments have been successful. Virotherapy has the ability to deliver localized treatment exactly where it is needed. According to a recently published report in Oncogene, “Telomerase-specific, replication-selective adenovirus OBP-301 can efficiently infect and kill human mesothelioma cells by viral replication. Intrathoracic administration of virus significantly reduced the number and size of human mesothelioma tumors intrathoracically implanted into nu/nu mice.”

The Mayo Clinic has been experimenting with using a recombinant measles virus for treating ovarian cancer, glioblastoma multiforme, and multiple myeloma. Clinical trials for virotherapy for mesothelioma are expected to begin next year.

Virotherapy is emerging as yet another technique in ultimately defeating mesothelioma.

But we have reason to be proud of one Californian. Linda Reinstein, co-founder (with her husband Alan, who died of mesothelioma) and Executive Director of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, has started a campaign to revoke the asbestos carcinogen-bearing serpentine rock’s recognition as our official State Rock. She began at home, with her local city council, and we wish her success in spreading this effort statewide. The non-profit ADAO is the United States’ premiere asbestos victims’ advocacy group and has earned a worldwide reputation for its efforts. Now, for a bit of history…

On April 14, 1965, Director of the California Department of Conservation DeWitt Nelson wrote a letter to Governor Edmund G. Brown urging approval of Senate Bill No. 265, designating serpentine as California’s State Rock.

“Serpentine indirectly is of great economic importance to California. It is a host rock for the state’s newest and most rapidly-growing mineral industry – asbestos, now bringing in several millions of dollars annually… Designating serpentine as the state rock will … improve the local economy in a number of places.”

It was approved by the California Senate on March 22, 1965. Assemblyman Pearce Young of Napa County sponsored the bill in the Assembly, where it was unanimously (69-0) approved two weeks later.

By choosing serpentine as the State Rock in 1965, California became the first state in the union to pick a favorite stone. It was meant to be a symbolic act with practical significance. However, chrysotile asbestos, found in serpentine, causes diseases such as mesothelioma, asbestosis, and lung cancer, and has already killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. The timing was curious – in October 1964, the world’s experts on asbestos and disease gathered in New York for a major seminar sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences, chaired by Mt. Sinai’s Dr. Irving Selikoff. The conference got a lot of press attention and was well attended by corporate and insurance representatives. Asbestos had already been proven to cause fatal asbestosis (by the 1930s), lung cancer (by 1955), and mesothelioma (by 1960), and industry was getting worried.

The Selikoff Symposium was published later in 1965 as a special volume of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and it seems obvious that California was duped as part of an industry public relations effort to neutralize these advances in medical knowledge and public awareness.

The last asbestos mine in California closed in 2002 and is now an EPA Superfund clean-up site. Asbestos mining and usage has left a legacy of death and suffering. 10,000 Americans die each year of asbestos disease; thousands of Californians have died from asbestos since 1965.

It’s long past time for another symbolic act with practical significance. It’s time to dump the rock – to remove serpentine as the State Rock of California. Such an action may serve to prevent exposure to this deadly fiber through increased attention and awareness.

Last week, the City Council of Manhattan Beach passed a resolution urging repeal of California Government Code section 425.2, which designated serpentine as California’s State Rock.

“I thank the Manhattan Beach City Council for moving quickly to pass this important resolution,” said Portia Cohen, Mayor of Manhattan Beach. This act represents the first official request to the California legislature to remove serpentine as California’s state rock. The campaign to remove serpentine was spearheaded by Linda Reinstein, who plans to take the campaign to other cities. “We have a strategic plan in place and look forward to working with other victims and political leaders in the state of California,” she said.

If California feels the need to adopt a new State Rock, my personal nominee would be Huey Lewis!

In its October 5 online issue, Forbes.com published an article about Stephan Schmidheiny, heir to the Eternit asbestos fortune, lauding him for his charitable good works and calling him “the Bill Gates of Switzerland.”

I wrote the attached letter to the editor, who will publish a brief extract because of space limitations. Thereafter, I published a brief comment in the comments section attached to the article on the Forbes.com web site, but their space limitations prevented me from saying everything I wanted to say. My full letter to the editor dated October 1, 2009 is reproduced below

Schmidheiny and his family have never lived up to their legal and moral obligations. It is often said that the acorn does not fall far from the oak tree; his family tree was rotten and is still bearing poisonous fruit.

View letter as PDF

As reported previously on our web site, our beloved partner, Philip A. Harley, passed away on July 2, 2009. Additional information can be found on our web site about his life and memorial.

For many years now, the Alameda County Office of Education has sponsored a countywide mock trial competition for high school students. The program is starting up again for the 2009-2010 academic year, with new teams registering and old teams returning to the competition. We were very pleased to learn that as the competition began, teams were told the Alameda County Office of Education had renamed the program in Phil’s memory. From now on, it will be called the Philip A. Harley Memorial Mock Trial Competition. The announcement was made by Superintendent Sheila Jordan in a press release issued on September 8, the day before Phil’s memorial service, where this news was shared with the attendees.

Our firm is proud and honored to support this very worthwhile program in Phil’s memory. He was not only an outstanding trial lawyer, but also a superb mentor for a whole generation of young trial lawyers. It is our hope that through this competition, the next generation’s interest in the law will be encouraged and enhanced, leading to ever improved and diverse generations of trial lawyers, with both talent and a passion for the law.

There continues to be significant progress in the worldwide movement to finally ban the use of asbestos. Two weeks ago, the Philippine House of Representatives (the Lower House of the Philippine Congress) took a giant step forward towards a nationwide ban on asbestos use.

On September 10, 2009, the House Committee on Health approved the consolidation of three bills banning the importation, manufacture, processing, use, or distribution in commerce of asbestos and asbestos-containing products in a hearing held on September 9, 2009.

A Technical Working Group was tasked to consolidate the three bills. The Committee approved a motion to list the Representatives present at the hearing as co-authors of the consolidated bill. The Committee Chair stated that the consolidated bill would be approved by the end of the month.

In his sponsorship speech, Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) Partylist Representative Raymond Democrito Mendoza, author of one of the bills, urged the passage of a law banning asbestos to protect workers, their families, and the public against the hazards of asbestos.

The Department of Health (DOH) expressed support for the passage of the bills, in line with the ILO and WHO position that the best way to eliminate asbestos related diseases is to cease asbestos use. The President of the Philippine College of Occupational Medicine lauded the House of Representatives for its initiative and expressed support for the ban of asbestos in the Philippines.

The TUCP presented a position paper on the issue in cooperation with the ALU/BWI Ban Asbestos Campaign. Another labor organization — the Philippine Seafarers Union – supported the TUCP position.

The issue of alternatives and their costs was raised. DOH mentioned some alternatives and said that asbestos may seem cheaper, but is more expensive in the long run because of high costs of asbestos-related diseases.

We congratulate the Filipino people on this great step forward and hope this legislation will rapidly move through the Philippine Congress toward final enactment. We can only hope that our Congress will take similar steps this year and present our President with a meaningful piece of legislation that he can sign.

Trade Union Congress of the Philippines: Update on the bills banning asbestos in the Philippines

Currently, over 90% of pleural mesothelioma victims exhibit signs of pleural effusion – the buildup of fluid around the lungs. In an effort to diagnose the cause of this fluid, a sample is taken and examined for cancer cells. This technique – pleural fluid cytology – is not always accurate in diagnosing mesothelioma, with up to a third of mesothelioma patients receiving inconclusive or suspicious results.

A joint team from the University of Oxford and the Oxford Centre for Respiratory Medicine at the John Radcliffe Hospital has shown that a new test can significantly improve diagnosis of the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma. The test was found to be particularly useful where cytology gave an inconclusive result. Mesothelioma cells produce the protein mesothelin, which is measured by this new test. Mesothelin measurement has proven superior to ordinary cytological examination in the diagnosis of mesothelioma.

Researchers obtained pleural fluid samples from 209 patients. Levels of soluble mesothelin were measured in all samples. Median pleural fluid mesothelin levels were over six times greater in patients with mesothelioma than in patients with metastatic carcinomas, and ten times greater than in patients with benign effusions. There were 12 false positive results with metastatic adenocarcinomas accounting for over 90 percent of these cases. However, all patients with pleural fluid cytology suspicious for mesothelioma and an elevated mesothelin level in fact were diagnosed with mesothelioma.

This new test may achieve earlier diagnosis and earlier treatment of mesothelioma. However, prevention of this deadly disease through the banning of asbestos on an international level should remain our priority.

USAction is a very effective national political organization devoted to organizing workers and voters around issues of economic justice and health care for all. We have had the opportunity to work closely with them for the last ten years on issues affecting the rights of asbestos victims and were particularly delighted to be honored by USAction on June 18, 2009 at a lovely reception in San Francisco. On behalf of the firm, I was the recipient of the Progressive Leadership Award at USAction’s 10th Anniversary Western Regional Celebration.

At the event, the award was presented by Jeff Blum, Executive Director of USAction. You can watch a film clip of his presentation and my remarks here.

We were very pleased to obtain permission to post a fascinating brief video about the growth of awareness of the hazards of asbestos in Japan and the public’s reaction to it. The entire video is available for viewing on our international informational web site, www.WorldAsbestosReport.org, which also hosts a great many other reports and videos. Click on the image below for a direct link to the full video.

The Japanese movement to ban asbestos originated several years ago after the onset of Kubota Shock, the term used to describe the public reaction to disclosure by Kubota, one of Japan’s most respected industrial corporations, that it had been brewing an epidemic of asbestos cancer among its workforce for decades.

This video includes moving accounts by mesothelioma patients and their family members, along with a great many illustrations of the asbestos impact in Japan and the public’s reaction which produced the very effective BANJAN movement. I hope you find the video interesting and would welcome hearing your reactions.