ASBESTOS-Take a look at USAction's new cartoon, “Halliburton's Doggone Good Deal.” First war profiteering, now an asbestos bailout scheme orchestrated by a company with oh-so-close relations to the White House.  

 CANCER RISKS IN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING FACILITIES. A chipmaking trade group said on Thursday that it would sponsor a far-reaching study on cancer risks in semiconductor manufacturing facilities, after years of calls for such an effort by industry critics. 

NJ RULE PROPOSALS - DEADLINE TO COMMENT Public Hearing: Tues April 6, 2004 Deadline to Comment: May 14, 2004 Topics: Camera & Audio Coverage; M...

WHO WILL MANAGE SSA - CMS (The people who enforce Medicare Secondary Payment laws) HHS Secretary Thompson Criticizes Opposition to Nomination of FDA ...

Being concerned with continuous wide used of asbestos in the world, the EU and ILO convened the European Asbestos Conference in September 2003 in Dresden, Germany. Gerd Albracht, chairman of the Conference, underlined that "mmillions of workers and consumers have been exposed to asbestos dust. Twenty-thousand asbestos related lung cancers and 10,000 mesotheliomas occur annually across the population of Western Europe, Scandinavia, North America, Japan and Australia alone, but developing countries have much higher risks of exposure. In such countries, asbestos is thus a time bomb that looks set to lead to an explosive increase in asbestos related diseases and deaths in the next 20-30 years." 

Government Statistics on deaths due to Asbestos-related disease have been released and appear in a recently released report published by the Environmental Working Group of Washington DC. The report reveals that: Camden, Somerset, Middlesex and Bergen have the highest rates in the State of NJ. At Least 2,775 People Have Been Killed by Asbestos in New Jersey Since 1979

 A significant challenge to the rights of injured workers in third party asbestos litigation was introduced in Congress in 1999 by U.S. Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) in what he termed the "Fairness in Asbestos Litigation Act of 1998", S.2546.

New Drug Helps Asbestos-Linked Cancer. First Treatment for Rare Lung Cancer. It's not a cure. But a new drug offers precious extra months of life to people with a rare, asbestos-linked cancer.. The drug, Alimta, from Eli Lilly and Company, today received FDA approval for use in combination with cisplatin chemotherapy. It will be used to treat malignant mesothelioma. It strikes some 2,000 Americans each year, mostly due to asbestos exposure. Worldwide, as many as 15,000 people each year are told they will die of mesothelioma.

 The horrifying true story of the decades-long poisoning of a small town and the definitive exposé of asbestos in America-told by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists who broke it.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved Alimta (pemetrexed disodium) for use in combination with cisplatin for the treatment of patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma - a rare type of cancer. Alimta received a priority review and is designated as an orphan drug. It is the first drug approved for this condition.

WORKER AWARDED $12 MILLION - WC BAD FAITH. Court awards $12 million in workers' compensation case. A former nursing home worker has been awarded more than $12 million in a judgment against three insurance companies that denied her workers' compensation claim. The Rapid City jury returned its verdict - $60,000 in compensatory damages and $12 million in punitive damages - last week after a a four-day trial in federal court.''An insurance adjuster is supposed to be like a judge, fair and impartial. ... If you bribe a judge, you get thrown in jail. But they bribe these claims adjusters with bounties that are tied directly to their performance in paying claims.'' 

 US energy firm Halliburton has revealed a $1.1bn (£607m) charge to cover claims from people suffering from asbestos-related diseases. Halliburton, formerly headed by US vice-president Dick Cheney, yesterday revealed a $947m net loss in the fourth quarter of the year, despite a large increase in revenues from its controversial contracts in Iraq.

 One in every hundred men born in the 1940s will die of die of malignant pleural mesothelioma, which is almost exclusively a consequence of exposure to asbestos, with a lag time that is rarely less than 25 years and often more than 50 years from first exposure. Half of all cases are now aged over 70, with 80% in men. For a man first exposed as a teenager, who remained in a high risk occupation, such as insulation, throughout his working life, the lifetime risk of mesothelioma can be as high as one in five.w1 There are now over 1800 deaths per year in Britain (about one in 200 of all deaths in men and one in 1500 in women), and the number is still increasing.1 w2 As exposure in the United Kingdom continued until 1980 the peak of the epidemic is still to come, and we need a strategy to manage these patients.

 The proponents of S.1125, the "Fairness In Asbestos Resolution Act of 2003," have claimed repeatedly that the majority of the awards paid in asbestos cases have gone to individuals who are not truly injured - yet, nothing could be further from the truth. This misleading and false argument is nothing more than an a cynical attempt to use a legal fiction to strengthen a political objective -- which will have the effect of denying injured workers and their families the compensation they deserve.

The remarks of politician/physician Sen. Bill Frist before the Senate show him to be so ill-informed about asbestos disease as to make one wonder if he has ever read a medical journal, let alone familiarized himself with the ins and outs of the asbestos litigation. 

New Jersey lawyers choose the tops in their profession in 24 fields of law.

CALIFORNIA - THE DISMATLING OF THE SYSTEM Schwarzenegger convenes special session on workers’ comp Displaying his priorities as the new governor of ...

911 COMPENSATION PROGRAM FAILS--Mount Sinai's Dr. Stephen Levin said most of his Ground Zero patients have been denied workers' compensation coverage. He called the system "dysfunctional."

For 42 years I worked with asbestos on Navy ships and in factories. Now I’m dying of cancer. The asbestos companies knew their product was deadly. It’s there in black and white. That’s why the jury awardedmy family a settlement. ow Congress may pass a law that would bail out these companies by throwing my settlement out the window. I’d have to stand in line and wait for compensation from agiant new federal bureaucracy, which won’t have enough to pay me in the first place.

 CASES--The compensation judge denied)petitioner’s motion for temporary disability and medical benefits regarding a rotator cuff tear in his right shoulder and problems with his left knee. where the compensable injuries he sustained in his work—related accident had to do with his left shoulder, neck and lower back assessing the conflicting medical testimony the compensation judge found that the new problems were not causally related to the work—related, and that conservative treatment, rather than surgery, was recommended for petitioner’s lower-hack problems.