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Detection, Prevention, Treatment and Cure of Mesothelioma
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., The U.S. Senate has taken an historic step in acknowledging the responsibility of both the federal government and industry to fund
research for a cure for malignant mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung, heart and abdominal linings associated with asbestos
exposure.
SB 852, the proposed Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act, was recently amended to include a National Mesothelioma Research and Treatment Program. The bill would allocate $29 million per year for 10 years to meso research. Of this, the asbestos trust fund contributors would pay $17 million per year, and the government, through the National Institutes of Health, would contribute $12 million per year.
Grateful for this first step, MARF continues to call on industry and government to do more. Worthington describes the advances in the treatment of AIDS in the last ten years as just one example of the life-saving progress that can be made in a disease previously regarded as hopelessly lethal. He points out how far the U.S. still has to go in making a full commitment to help meso patients survive. As originally conceived by MARF, the NMRTP called for the federal government to invest $30 million per year. "If you look at how much the federal government invests in cancer generally, at the government's own role in the nation's asbestos tragedy, and at the current needs in meso research, $30 million is the bare minimum the government should invest to get a viable meso research program off the ground," Worthington says. Under the proposed bill, the government would contribute only $12 million per year, or 1/4 of 1% of the National Cancer Institute's annual budget. And even though one third of today's meso patients were exposed to asbestos in Navy ships and shipyards, the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs still have no medical treatment or research programs for meso as they do for many other diseases.
MARF also calls on the companies who face tort liability for this asbestos-related cancer, which has been known since the 1950's, to do much more than $17 million per year. The 30 largest asbestos debtor corporations now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy are expected to contribute in excess of $65 billion to their bankruptcy settlement trusts. Since 2004, MARF has advocated that the asbestos debtor trustees set aside just 1% of these funds for meso research. This would amount to $650 million in private funds to help current and future meso patients. Unfortunately, the trust fund directors have so far declined to help.
26 May 2005
Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation
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Mesothelioma Attorneys
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