Oppose Senate Bill 1125 Florida
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ASK VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY As an FSU grad (PhD. 1979) and former non tenured faculty member (College of Engineering 1998-2003), I support the alternative choice concerning the vice president speaking at commencement and I support the decision of SUPJ to stand up and walk out of the vice president's address (Democrat, April 20). However, in this teachable moment, (Democrat editorial April 15) I think questions need to be asked of the vice president not only about his work these last four years in the Bush administration, but also his work in the previous Bush administration, his role as chairman of Halliburton and his obvious continued involvement in that company. The issue of the dangers and safe disposal of asbestos has surfaced recently in Leon County (Democrat, April 13). We need to ask Dick Cheney why we even have to face this issue when the senior Bush administration had the chance to ban asbestos products from the United States in 1989-1991 and failed to do so. Ask him why Halliburton bought 11 subsidiaries that produce asbestos products while he was their CEO and then immediately put them into Chapter 11 to avoid the responsibility of paying settlements to families who had a family member working for those companies and have lost them to mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a rare cancer related directly to asbestos exposure that kills 2,000 to 4,000 Americans each year. Some of the more famous people who have died of mesothelioma are Steve McQueen, actor (1980), Navy Admiral Elmo Zumwalt (1999), Minnesota Congressman Bruce Vento (2000), Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard scientist and professor, (2001), and Warren Zevon, singer and songwriter (2003). This type of cancer attacks the protective lining of the lungs, abdominal organs or heart. Once diagnosed, patients die within a year. There is no early detection, no successful treatment, and no cure. Thousands of products on the U.S. market still contain asbestos. This would be the easiest cancer to eliminate as a health threat. All we need to do is stop producing, importing or exporting products that contain asbestos. Ask Dick Cheney how much asbestos Halliburton is stuffing into the rebuilding of Iraq and how many U.S. workers there and Iraqi citizens will die from mesothelioma 20 to 50 years from now. (The incubation period extending from exposure to diagnosed illness is that long.) Then ask him why the U.S. Senate has not passed a bill to ban asbestos when one has been filed by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) the past two years. Why hasn't the U.S. government, one of the most advanced societies on earth and in history, banned asbestos when 30 other countries have already done so? Why do we continue to ignore the health concerns of the American worker over corporate greed? Why has the U.S. government supported the lies of the asbestos industry for over 100 years resulting in the people of this country lulled into thinking asbestos has been banned? We are at the point with the muck and deceit of this industry where we were with the tobacco industry 20 years ago. Why has the U.S. government lied about the air quality of New York following 9/11? Why weren't strict safeguards put into place immediately, and why were outdated air quality testing instruments used, resulting in estimates that we will lose 300 of our firefighters, our 9/11 heroes, to mesothelioma in 20 to 50 years and we may lose as many to mesothelioma as we lost in the original disaster if we count firefighters, police officers, other rescue workers, and the general public. (Fatal Deception, the untold story of asbestos, why it is still legal and still killing us, Michael Bowker, 2003.) If the government and the asbestos industry are so concerned for the victim, why haven't any dollars been allocated for research on mesothelioma to determine early warning signs, find a treatment and cure? (Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, www.marf.org) Ask the vice president why the Republicans in the Senate want to short change families who have lost someone to this horrendous disease by having the awards capped, paid out by the federal government, and taking years to process instead of allowing families one of their basic rights to due process through the U.S. court system (U.S. Senate Bill 2290). I would ask Mr. Cheney these questions myself but I will be in Milwaukee on May 1 helping to clear up and clean up the asbestos mess by talking to WISCOSH, Wisconsin Commission on Safety and Health. My knowledge and research on asbestos and mesothelioma comes through personal experience. My husband, Lee Hartnek, was a detective and arson investigator in Racine, Wisconsin for 30 years and in retirement a security officer for Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. He died of mesothelioma in December 2002 having described the painful feeling in his chest for almost a year as "drowning" or as an "elephant sitting on my chest". As a leader in business and government, Dick Cheney could have done the responsible thing to end the use of asbestos in the U.S. at several points in his career He did not. So, I would ask you, finally, in my absence, to ask the vice president to make the ethical decisions needed now to stop killing innocent Americans through exposure to asbestos.
Jean Ainsworth
*** POSTED ON ARIL 21, 2004 *** |