You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Letters to the editor
One fibre or many; what causes mesothelioma?
  1. A Seaton
  1. Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Aberdeen University Medical School, Foresterhill, Aberdeen AB25 2ZP, UK; a.seaton@abdn.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/thorax.57.2.186-b

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    In a recent case (00/TLQ/1284) in the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court in England, a widow sued on behalf of her husband who had died at the age of 60 of mesothelioma. Unusually for such cases, Mr Justice Curtis found for the defendants, and the grounds for his judgement were sufficiently curious to be of general interest and worthy of debate.

    It was not disputed that the deceased had been exposed to substantial quantities of asbestos during two periods of employment, nor that there had been a breach of statutory duty by his employers at that time. The judgement was based, however, on the expert and agreed opinion of “two most highly qualified medical men”. In their joint report and oral evidence, the judge believed these doctors to have stated that mesothelioma is the consequence of malignant transformation in a single cell, the result of a hit by either one or several fibres. This led the judge to reason that, although a fibre or fibres inhaled during one or other period of employment may well have led to the …

    View Full Text