MESOTHELIOMA

There was a good number of last month of obituaries of the producer Mickie record more. Much announced that he died of cancer, but not as much observed as he was another victim of a particularly malicious cancer of the lining of the lung called the mesothelioma. This is caused exclusively by inhaling asbestos. It entered in the most probably contact with asbestos studios of recording soundproofed with vinyl tiles soaked with asbestos.

The figures last month of Health and Safety Executive indicate to shock and an increasing tide of the mesothelioma. In the first five years of the years 80,2.317 men died of him. In five last years of the Nineties, this figure jumped to 6.475. The majority of these deaths were workmen in industry heavy and the insulation but, like the majority 'case of S proves, dust mortal of asbestos can strike almost anywhere.

Amazed by these figures, and the sad news of died as of the majority, I go in the search of a book which left it there has three years and made a major impression on me: Magic ore with the dust of killer by Geoffrey Tweedale, a principal lecturer in the center for the history of businesses at the university of metropolitan of Manchester. The book is an enthralling account of one of the industrial scandals of the 20th century. It opens with the two deaths in Rochdale in 1924. Mr Samuel Turner, 84, paternalist and plutocrat, died peacefully, leaving with his family a vast transmission derived almost entirely from the exploitation and sale of asbestos by the company which it founded, Turner and Newall. Nellie Kershaw, 33, died in the anguish of the lung disease caused by inhaling asbestos in the city the 's Turner and the factory of Newall, and were buried in poor a 'fall it from S.

M�ticuleusement, Mr. Tweedale traces the history of the company - once one of Great Britain of the 'main thing of S hundred - to its survival discussed and miraculous of the bankruptcy after years of litigation of former workmen and neighbors with its factories which had died of the contact with asbestos. The reactions of in chain of this litigation are still felt with the insurance companies and the purses on the two sides of the Atlantic, and are generally presented in the media of businesses as a hard chance on the industrialists, the bankers and the nabobs of insurance who made only their the best for their country. This drivel is reported on Mr. Tweedale. Turner and Newall, he concludes, opposition significant provided to the government 'to the de-dusting of S and arrangements medical between the Thirties and the Sixties; he neglected to entirely put pursuant to such arrangements both at RU and especially overseas; he did not inform customers; frequently refused to admit the financial and moral responsibility for the consequences for its actions; only money symbolic systems sums often paid for industrial accidents and deaths; tried to intimidate doctors, coroners and the medical council; sought to remove research binding asbestos and cancer; gave to the government vague data about the disease among its workmen of shipyard; and the vague information disseminated about the of �safety � of asbestos .

In all this it was helped by committed lawyers and the doctors pretending to be impartial and by old diseases British which helped to start the asbestos bomb - secrecy and restrictions on the freedom of information . Indeed, most of the information on which Mr. Tweedale counts for his bill of indictment of bursting is only available because of a civil proceeding to the USA between Turner and Newall and Chase Manhattan Bank. However in almost each year since 1980, like the pink of toll of death, the company provided a substantial benefit to its shareholders. Benefit before people were his inspiration, and there was nothing not very common to this subject. The same slogan leads the tobacco industry, of which policies mortals and cynical on the leaning one of tobacco were so much glorieusement exposed as Michael Mann 'film of S 1999 the initiate, and drug company like exposed as a John the Romance Square 'of S last, Constant Gardener. Come to think of him, benefit before people are the slogan which does not order simply big industries but also governments, in particular our clean new worker government, which was elected, inter alia, to order them.

� An expression that I wrote here little time ago released a hail of the furious email and a seizing way similar. I described late a friend and mentor as has Jewish Palestinian . What, request, is he a Palestinian Jew? cry boring my correspondents. Can Comment there is a Palestinian Jew when it does not have no place called there Palestine? Amn't I thus antisemitic? Well, a Palestinian Jew is a Jew which lives in Palestine, as my friend made during 25 years (it left in 1946). More generally, and in answer to all these other Zionists questions angry, I wait with interest the day when the Jews and the Arabs peacefully live side by side in a state whose name will not import.