OAKLAND – On April 28, 2010, worker health and safety advocates around the world observe Workers’ Memorial Day.

President Obama stated in his April 15 remarks addressing the victims of the Massey mine explosion, “We owe them action. We owe them accountability. We owe them an assurance that when they go to work every day, when they enter that dark mine, they are not alone. They ought to know that behind them there is a company that’s doing what it takes to protect them, and a government that is looking out for their safety.”

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis noted, “Some argue that workplace health and safety inspections, enforcement, and regulations are ‘inconvenient and intrusive.’” My reply: No paycheck is worth a life, and no quest for profit should ever be allowed to circumvent our law. So wherever workers are in danger, the Department of Labor will act decisively.”

“California may once have stood at the vanguard of programs protecting workers, but overall the current administration has significantly weakened workplace protection. Something needs to be done,” noted Fran Schreiberg, pro bono attorney for Kazan McClain Lyons Greenwood & Harley. “Profits should not be at the expense of workers’ lives and health.”

More than 80 years ago, a feisty old woman named Mary Harris “Mother” Jones rallied and raised hell on behalf of miners killed in Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia. Her motto then is what we still believe today: Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.

“We need reform now so that at next year’s event, we will have fewer tragedies and more successes to share,” said Worksafe Executive Director Gail Bateson. With the passage of the health care reform bill, the next challenge for the U.S. will be the most neglected problem in public health – protecting the health and safety of workers, whose work-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths amount to $290 billion a year and cost countless families their loved ones. “Improving the way we protect our workers is long past due. It is shameful that workers still face high rates of death and serious injury on the job when employers know how to prevent injuries, but fail to do so.”

In Oakland, participants at Worksafe’s Workers’ Memorial Day event are remembering and honoring the loss of California’s workers over the last year with a moment of silence. About 6,300 workers die each year in California: 400-500 from fatal injuries and the remainder from occupational disease, according to the latest federal statistics.

This year’s World Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job is all too relevant. In April alone the nation has witnessed three major incidents in the energy sector – coal, oil extraction, and refining – resulting in 35 workers killed, several severely injured, and 11 reported missing and presumed dead. The April 5th explosion in a West Virginia mine operated by Massey Energy was the worst US mining disaster since 1970.

These deaths – and the deaths of so many others in the workplace – are preventable. We need improved health and safety. Not only is it important to remember the dead, but also critical to unite around solutions to prevent the further loss of lives.

To improve worker health and safety, Oakland-based non-profit Worksafe is launching its 2011 Health and Safety Legislative Reform Agenda for California and building a worker health and safety movement in California.

Worksafe is a California-based organization dedicated to eliminating all types of workplace hazards. It advocates for protective worker health and safety laws and effective remedies for injured workers. It watchdogs government agencies to ensure they enforce these laws. Worksafe engages in campaigns in coalition with unions, workers, community, environmental and legal organizations, and scientists to eliminate hazards and toxic chemicals from the workplace. To protect the most vulnerable of California workers, Worksafe engages in impact litigation and provides legal training, technical assistance, and advocacy support to legal services programs who serve low wage and immigrant workers.

Workers Memorial Day 2010

Friedrich Nietzsche once cynically wrote, “Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man.” For victims of mesothelioma and their families, the dismal prognosis of this disease and the search for answers often takes them beyond the bounds of conventional medicine. All too often, they find themselves victimized again. Motivated by greed, we’ve seen unscrupulous lawyers as well as pharmaceutical companies resort to misinformation and downright fraud. Too often the media falls into the same trap, relying solely on press releases from pharmaceutical companies for information.

A recent article in a British paper with the headline “Asbestos Cancer Destroyer” stated:

Scientists have safely tested a potential vaccine they hope can beat a deadly cancer linked to asbestos. The development has been described as the most significant breakthrough in the battle against Clydeside’s death dust ticking timebomb. Research leader Dr. Joachim Aerts said: “We hope it will be possible to increase survival in patients with mesothelioma and to eventually vaccinate people who have been in contact with asbestos.” The news has been greeted with enthusiasm in Clydebank where thousands of workers were exposed to asbestos in places such as John Brown’s shipyard and Turner & Newall’s Dalmuir asbestos factory. The town is the worst affected area in the UK for mesothelioma deaths. The cancer is extremely difficult to treat and often proves fatal in a very short time-scale. Bob Dickie, of Clydebank Asbestos Group, which has more than 1,400 members, said: “If this becomes a reality, it would be a tremendous step forward in the treatment of mesothelioma. If these experiments prove to be successful then it would be wonderful for people who suffer from this terrible disease.” Ten patients with advanced mesothelioma were given the new treatment – being called a vaccine – and all showed signs of recovery.

It sounds promising. Even hopeful, perhaps. But the truth is much less promising. for the real information is found in the February 18, 2010 article titled Consolidative Dendritic Cell-Based Immunotherapy Elicits Cytotoxicity Against Malignant Mesothelioma published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, which is much more circumspect. The median survival of those participating in this study was 19 months (range, 11-34 months), with only one patient currently alive. Hardly an “Asbestos Cancer Destroyer.” The potential vaccine, which infuses a patient’s own dendritic cells with antigens from the patient’s tumor, was able to induce a T-cell response against mesothelioma tumors. Three patients showed partial responses after receiving immunotherapy, one had stable disease, and six patients had no response. While the ten person study has demonstrated that this therapy is capable of inducing an immunological response to tumor cells in a small percentage of patients, a potential vaccine is at best years away.

Research is important, and ongoing efforts to find ways to treat and someday cure mesothelioma are to be applauded and supported. Indeed, that’s why we devote our own time and money to the effort. But over-promoting very preliminary results can only create false hopes and lead to disappointment amongst current patients and their families.

We’ve seen some recent attention to a major problem in asbestos litigation concerning the fabrication of evidence by defense experts. In a recent editorial, “Data Sharing, Federal Rule of Evidence 702, and the Lions in the Undergrowth” the editor in chief of the Annals of Occupational Hygiene, Trevor Ogden, discusses the sharing of occupational exposure data, and the very real possibility that published data may be misinterpreted by those with commercial interest.

Ogden explains how Federal Rule of Evidence 702, which encourages expert witnesses to get their testimony material into peer-reviewed journals, has led to the manipulation of scientific research. The notes for the rule contain a checklist for courts to apply to expert evidence, including whether the experts’ “technique or theory has been subject to peer review or publication.” This has resulted in the creation of “vanity” journals whose primary function is to polish up bad science for use in lawsuits. There is no shortage of “scientists” willing to manufacture doubt, if the price is right.

Recently, it was revealed that the Australian branch of publishing giant Elsevier published six journals between 2000 and 2005 that were secretly sponsored by pharmaceutical companies: the Australasian Journal of General Practice, the Australasian Journal of Neurology, the Australasian Journal of Cardiology, the Australasian Journal of Clinical Pharmacy, the Australasian Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine, and the Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint [Medicine].

Michael Hansen, CEO of Elsevier’s Health Sciences Division, admitted this breach, and issued the following statement:

“It has recently come to my attention that from 2000 to 2005, our Australia office published a series of sponsored article compilation publications, on behalf of pharmaceutical clients, that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures. This was an unacceptable practice, and we regret that it took place.”

A multi-million dollar industry has been created to serve industry at the expense of public health and to the detriment of victims’ rights. One would hope these abuses stop, but until they do, we will continue to investigate these abuses as we take depositions of these dishonest experts.

And to its reporter, Roger Parloff, for today’s expose about a new low in lawyer conduct.

Dozens of websites presenting themselves as VA Medical Centers offering government help to our veterans suffering from mesothelioma, but in reality operated by law firms looking for business, have been uncovered and reported on by Mr. Parloff. These sites have no affiliation with the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs, but that would not likely have been clear to an elderly or infirm visitor seeking medical aid and information on asbestos-related diseases resulting from his or her military service.

Read the Fortune article and let us know what you think!

The United States Senate has unanimously passed Senate Resolution 427 designating the first week of April 2010 as National Asbestos Awareness Week.The resolution urges the Surgeon General to warn and educate Americans regarding the hazards of asbestos exposure.

The hazards of asbestos are severe. The resolution notes that “the World Health Organization, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Surgeon General currently state that there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos,” and that “asbestos fibers can cause mesothelioma, asbestosis, and other health problems.” There is no known cure for mesothelioma, a fatal disease.

According to the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), which praised the passage of the resolution, “more than 10,000 Americans die each year from exposure to asbestos and the number is rising. It is projected that in the next decade asbestos diseases will kill at least 100,000 Americans alone.”

For its part, the ADAO will be running an educational campaign during the asbestos awareness week. “Americans deserve and want to know how to prevent asbestos in their homes or in the workplace,” said CEO and ADAO co-founder Linda Reinstein.

Preventing exposure continues to pose a challenge as the U.S. and Canada are today the only two industrialized nations without asbestos bans. The United States, according to Senate Resolution 427, “continues to consume almost 2,000 metric tons of the fibrous mineral for use in certain products throughout the Nation,” even though “asbestos-related diseases have killed thousands of people in the United States.” The result is that “thousands of workers in the United States face significant asbestos exposure.”

Each of these workers is unnecessarily risking his or her life. The Kazan Law Firm supports “National Asbestos Awareness Week,” and all efforts to educate and raise awareness around this harmful toxic material to one day end exposure to asbestos and the resulting needless deaths.