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Mesothelioma
Treatment
Abstracts
& Articles
New
Drug Offers Hope For Asbestos
Sufferers
U.K.
-- Doctors have discovered a new drug to
combat the suffering of asbestos disease
victims, it emerged yesterday.
Researchers
have hailed Alimta™ as a huge breakthrough
in treating mesothelioma, an incurable
lung cancer caused by inhaling tiny shards
of asbestos.
Details
of the drug, which is being tested at the
Newcastle Freeman Hospital, were uncovered
in a Frontline Scotland documentary, Don't
Hold Your Breathe, which will be broadcast
on BBC1 Scotland tonight.
Twenty-seven
Newcastle-based mesothelioma sufferers
were treated with Alimta™, which is
currently unlicensed in Britain and the
United States, where it was
developed.
The
majority of the patients, most of whom are
former construction workers, showed rapid
improvements in their symptoms.
Speaking
on the programme, Professor Hilary
Calvert, who has led the trials, said the
results had been unusually good.
She
said: "We've had about half the patients
having a shrinkage of their tumour and
most of the patients have got a marked
improvement in their symptoms. These are
the best results I've seen in my
career."
But
Professor Calvert, who hopes the drug will
be licensed by 2002 if further tests are
successful, added that although the
results were encouraging, it was not yet
clear if the symptoms would go away
forever.
News
of the drug came as a support group for
Clydeside sufferers of the disease
launched a campaign to streamline Scots
law so more employers who subjected their
workers to asbestos could be
prosecuted.
One
of those campaigning is Owen Lilly, 63,
from Clydebank, whose condition was
triggered by his job in
shipbuilding.
Doctors
believe he has just weeks to live and will
not see the compensation to which most
believe he is entitled.
He
said of himself: "What you have got here
is a talking skeleton. That's all you have
got and I am bitter about it."
The
Clydeside Action on Asbestos group, who
will present a petition to the Scottish
parliament today, claims too many
companies are able to stall legal
proceedings and avoid compensation
payouts.
The
group will urge the Scottish executive to
establish a fast-track compensation system
and ensure that juries, rather than
judges, decide the levels of
compensation.
Mesothelioma,
together with other asbestos-related
diseases, have claimed the lives of more
than 120,000 in the UK.
In
Clydebank, where many residents worked in
construction industries that used large
amounts of asbestos with little
protection, the mortality rate from
mesothelioma is 11 times higher than the
UK average.
John
Woodcock SCOTSMAN 2000 Nov 7;6
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