One man's misery can be another man's fortune. This seems to be the case with the mesothelioma victims on the one hand and mesothelioma lawyers on the other. An online feeding frenzy is
currently taking place. The average mesothelioma case today is settled at around 1 million dollars, and that figure jumps to 6 million dollars when the lawsuit goes to the courts. With such enormous money to be made, legal firms are hungry for a slice of the action, and are shelling out big money for online visitors. The result is that search engines and other sites that can supply them with those visitors are racking up huge revenue.
It works like this. In the sponsored listings of search engines, clicks (visitors) are auctioned off to the highest bidder. When someone searches “mesothelioma”, the highest-bidding law firms appear. With the keen competition, these firms are paying as much as $100 per mesothelioma-related visitor to their web site. That’s $100 every time someone just clicks on their ad - and a lot of the clicks are from competitors. Less than one in ten visitors may actually submit an inquiry about the services of the legal firm. And only a fraction of the inquiries convert into clients. Therefore, it is costing lawyers tens of thousands of dollars in advertising to secure a single client.
There is something truly obscene about this situation. But, it is inevitable that while there is huge money to be made from litigation, lawyers and publishers will continue to hustle for their slice of the action. You can even find these vultures on YouTube making an undignified pitch for business. If only a portion of the money could be directed to cancer research. Perhaps these legal firms and others who profit from this horrendous disease should consider donating a portion of their gains to research organizations. By doing so, they may appear a little more genuine and less like vultures.
Mesothelioma is a form of cancer linked to asbestos exposure. In fact, 70% to 80% of mesothelioma cases are caused by a history of exposure to asbestos. It can take decades for the symptoms to appear. Each year, approximately 2,000 to 3,000 new cases of mesothelioma are reported. In the past 20 years, the number of reported cases has increased significantly. Although it can take up to 50 years for symptoms to manifest, mesothelioma patients experience a host of symptoms. These include shortness of breath, or a wheezing and hacking cough, which often lead to chest or abdominal pain. In the more serious cases, individuals may have bowel blockages, anaemia, a bloody cough, and jaundice. It is extremely difficult to secure accurate statistics about how many individuals suffer from mesothelioma because in the early stages, the symptoms are quite similar to various other conditions. This often leads to a misdiagnosis of the disease. In addition, when an accurate diagnosis is finally made, the disease has typically already progressed to a more advanced stage.
With the renovation craze that has occurred in the past 2 or 3 decades in countries such as Australia and the US, it is expected that the high rates of diagnosis will continue for decades to come. And as long as there is money to be made from this disease, the vultures will also be around.
Internet Is A Gold Mine For Mesothelioma Lawyers
Pleural Mesothelioma Cancer Involves The Lining Of The Lung
Pleural Mesothelioma or malignant pleural mesothelioma is cancer in the layer of the lungs that can spread to the lungs. The spread of the tumor over the pleura results in pleural thickening.
This hinders the reflexivity of the pleura and encases the lungs in an increasing restrictive belt. With the lungs thus restricted, they get constricted in no time and a person is always out of breath.
Pleural mesothelioma can be:
* Diffuse and malignant (carcinogenic)
* Localized and benign (non-cancerous)
Benign pleural mesothelioma can be removed surgically, but the malignant tumors are the real terror heads.
Most common among other mesothelioma cases, Pleural Mesothelioma is caused due to exposure to blue asbestos for a longer period of time, say 20 years, in which time the disease incubates only to show its fearful countenance via certain symptoms.
The symptoms of Pleural Mesothelioma
The symptoms of Pleural Mesothelioma include difficulty in breathing, difficulty in sleeping, pain in the chest and abdominal regions, blood vomits, weakness, weight loss, loss of appetite, lower back pains, persistent coughing, hoarseness of voice, sensory loss and difficulty in swallowing.
Diagnosis of Pleural Mesothelioma
The first step is to go through a chest X-ray or a CT scan (computed chest tomograph), which will reveal a pleural thickening and an effusion. This is followed by a bronchoscopy. However, it should always be left to a medical practitioner for a better understanding of the respective cases. Another method is a biopsy, which can be a needle biopsy, an open biopsy, or a thoracoscopy, where a mini camera is inserted inside the body and with that a tissue sample is attained for further diagnosis.
Treatment of Pleural Mesothelioma
Treatment is directly proportional to the time of the revelation of the disease, i.e., at an early stage the tumor can be removed through surgery.
A pioneering mesothelioma treatment option is immunotherapy, e.g., intrapleural inoculation of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) is a useful mesothelioma treatment in which an effort is made to intensify the immune response.
Radiation treatment and chemotherapy is probably then the answer to the malignant pleural mesothelioma, but this can aid the pain management only; there's no escaping death with Pleural Mesothelioma.
Side effects of Treatment
The side effects and penalty of mesothelioma lung cancer treatment are more than its treatment, which is damaged healthy tissues, a state of absolute fatigue ness; excessive radiation causes the skin to become red, dry and itchy.
Other side effects of radiotherapy are nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, urinary discomfort and a sudden reduction in the number of white blood corpuscles.
The average life span of a person with Pleural Mesothelioma is up to 6 months to a year and the maximum can reach up to 5 years - the magnesium-silicate mineral fibers take its toll that's more than painful.
Other factors that may accelerate the possibility of pleural mesothelioma are chronic lung infections, tuberculous pleuritis, radiation (Thorotrast), exposure to the simian virus 40 (SV40) or mineral fibers (Zeolite) and tobacco smoking to a certain extent.
Pleural Mesothelioma does not give a person the avenue for fair play. Though the existence depends much on the various stages of the disease, it is an ultimate killing menace that sucks out the life of the common man.
Mesothelioma The Deadly Effect of Asbestos
To provide hope and life-saving treatment to the thousands of people dying each year from asbestos cancer or asbestos-caused mesothelioma, federal governments of affected countries must make substantial investments into medical research.
Asbestos must be banned in the United States and in other developed countries to protect future generations from increased proliferation of this deadly disease.
Mesothelioma: A Terrible Killer
Mesothelioma is an extremely painful, almost always fatal cancer in which membrane cells (mesothelium) lining the chest or abdomen become malignant and multiply and divide without control. The resulting tumor thickens and hardens, crushing the lungs and suffocating the patient, invading the chest wall causing severe difficulty in breathing and sometimes invading other vital organs like the heart, aorta or the abdomen, leading to various forms of the cancer.
We are all at risk
Mesothelioma is the tragic legacy of the industrial and commercial use of asbestos.Advertised as “the miracle mineral” because of its excellent fireproofing, insulating, filling and bonding properties, asbestos was used virtually everywhere in industry,manufacturing and construction from the 1930s through the late 1970s, even as its carcinogenic and respiratory lethality was well known to medicine, industry and the government. At its peak usage, more than 3,000 industrial applications or products were listed as utilizing asbestos.
As a result, over 20 million American workers were exposed to this mineral and are at risk of developing mesothelioma today, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). When the workers in the asbestos related industries brought the fibers home on their skin, hair and clothes, their families were also exposed to the dangerous mineral.
Asbestos was prevalent on Navy ships, and servicemen and shipyard workers were heavily exposed. A study at the Groton, Connecticut shipyard found that over one hundred thousand workers had been exposed to asbestos over the years at just this one shipyard.
Mesothelioma has a long incubation period before its symptoms start to show (ten to 50 years), and even low-dose, incidental exposures to asbestos are sufficient to cause the cancer. Thus, the prolific exposures of the past are leading to an epidemic of disease today. Minnesota Congressman Bruce Vento worked near an asbestos-insulated boiler in a Minneapolis brewery for two summers while putting himself through college. In October 2000, he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, and died just ten months later.
According to the most recent data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2004, approximately2,700 Americans died from mesothelioma, and incidence still has not peaked.
Millions more Americans are being put at risk today, because of all of the asbestos that remains present in occupational settings; in buildings such as homes, offices and schools; and in a wide variety of products. Just one product, an insulation contaminated with a very dangerous form of asbestos, is estimated by the EPA to be in 30 million U.S.homes.
The EPA estimates that there are asbestos containing materials in most of the nation's approximately 107,000 primary and secondary schools and 733,000 public and commercial buildings. According to the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an “estimated 1.3 million employees in construction and general industry face significant asbestos exposure on the job.” The utility tunnels under our nation’s Capitol have hazardous levels of asbestos, and demonstrate just how pervasive the problem is.
In fact, asbestos still has not been banned. Every year, the hazards of asbestos increases as more of the carcinogen is introduced into our environment. Asbestos is still used in roofing and other building materials, and in many consumer products including vehicle brakes. As a result, everyday occurrences like going to work, simple remodeling projects, or the normal wear of roofing materials, tiles or brakes on a family vehicle are exposing Americans to the hazardous risk of mesothelioma.
Needed: A National Commitment to a Cure
Mesothelioma was identified in medical literature by the late 1940’s. However, for decades the need for research to develop effective treatments for mesothelioma patients was ignored, obscured by the legal, economic and political aspects of asbestos.
The National Cancer Institute’s annual investment in clinical mesothelioma research has been, on a per death basis, only a fraction of its investment in other cancers. For years,despite the disproportionate toll of the disease on Navy veterans and shipyard workers,the Department of Defense did not apply any of its vast biomedical research resources to mesothelioma.
As a result of the Meso Foundation’s advocacy efforts, in 2008mesothelioma investigators are for the first time eligible to compete for Department of Defense Peer Reviewed Medical Research Grant funding. No mesothelioma grants have yet been awarded, however, this has led to advancements in the treatment of mesothelioma lagging far behind those of other cancers. According to the National Institutes of Health, the median survival of mesothelioma patients is only 14 months, with most patients dying within two years.
But there is hope. Since 1999, the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation has awarded over $5 million to spur mesothelioma research forward. Researchers are gaining valuable understandings of the tumor and potential treatment targets, and new clinical trials are opening. The field is ripe for federal partnership. Federal investment in the research needed to develop earlier detection and more effective treatment is essential to provide hope to the thousands of Americans who will become sick as a result of asbestos exposures that have already occurred or that will inevitably occur given the virtual ubiquity of asbestos in our environment.
The proliferation of asbestos cancer or asbestos-disease must be stopped. Over 40 developed and industrialized countries have already banned asbestos; the United States should also protect its citizens by enacting an immediate asbestos ban.