Mesothelioma is a devastating disease with a low survival rate.
Mesothelioma is a primary cancerous tumor that arises from the mesothelium of the pleura and it is very rare.
So rare in fact that people who get this rare cancer it turns out are usually exposed to asbestos, a know carcinogen.
The almost direct cause and effect of asbestos exposure to mesothelioma even carries onto the family members of individuals who are exposed. (Asbestos is carried into the home by fibers sticking to the clothing of the worker).
This secondary exposure may cause mesothelioma to develop years later in family members of those individuals. It is estimated that all mesothelioma tumors are associated with asbestos exposure in at least
80% of the cases. Soon after this direct cause and effect relationship became widely know mesothelioma lawyers around the world are signing up patients who develop mesothelioma with the intention of getting a nice court settlement for their pain and suffering.
All the lawyers need to do is dig around the person’s past and they will eventually find asbestos exposure somewhere (in at least 80% of the cases) and presto they have a plaintiff and a defendant they can sue.
This defedant is usually a large manufacturing company with deep pockets and lots of insurance, in a nutshell a personal injury attorney’s dream.
But what about the approximately 20% of those who have the disease but no evidence of asbestos exposure?
Are some people “encouraged” to make something up so as not to miss out on the large money settlements?
The feeling is that they might be “misremembering” (as Roger Clements puts it). But how to prove this?
The sued companies have found a way to fight back, to prove who is real and who is not in a effort to stop the bleeding a “new test” was recently described in the New England Journal of Medicine.[1]
Serum osteopontin levels can be used to distinguish persons with cancer who were not exposed to asbestos, and patients with pleural mesothelioma who were exposed to asbestos. The serum osteopontin test would effectively “discourage” people with the disease from claiming exposure to asbestos if they did not have it. And by so doing limit the millions of dollars paid by the defendants.
Source
1.NEJM.October 13, 2005.Number 15.Volume 353:1564-1573.
