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Major Italian Asbestos Trial Jails 2 & A M4M Speaker Was There
The BBC is reporting that Swiss tycoon Stephan Schidheiny & Belgian baron Jean-Louis de Cartier have been sentenced to 16 years in jail for their roles in knowingly exposing thousands to asbestos.
L to R: Courtney Davis, Marilyn Davis Whitehead, Paul Whitehead, Linda Reinstein
ADAO co-founder & Miles For Meso 2012 Symposium speaker Linda Reinstein left this year’s event to travel unexpectedly to Milan for the verdict.
It is an unprecedented ruling that will undoubtedly affect all future cases.
Two convicted in asbestos-linked deaths trial in Italy
A BBC Report
“This trial will go down in history… but it will not bring my dad back,” Piero Ferraris, whose father Evasio died in 1988 of lung cancer after working in a local Eternit factory, was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
An Italian court has convicted a Swiss tycoon and a Belgian baron of negligence over some 2,200 asbestos-related deaths.
Stephan Schidheiny and Jean-Louis de Cartier each got 16 years in prison.
The Turin court said the two had failed to comply with safety rules at building firm Eternit, where they were key shareholders. They denied the charges.
Prosecutors argued that thousands had died from contact with asbestos fibres processed in four of the firm’s plants.
Swiss Schmidheiny, 64, and Belgian De Cartier, 90, were sentenced in absentia on Monday.
Anti-Asbestos Advocate Larry Davis Working Toward Miles for Meso Race Sunday in South Florida
February 7th, 2012 | By: Tim Povtak | To read the original article click here
Larry Davis probably won’t finish the third-annual Miles For Meso Race Sunday in Boca Raton, Florida, but he will be at the starting line bright and early with everyone else.
His latest hospital stay will not keep him away. The event means too much to him now.
“I’ll be there, and I’ll walk as much as I can,” Davis said today from his South Florida hospital room where he has been getting treatment. “It’s important to keep raising awareness to the danger that’s out there.”
Davis, who was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2006, continues to battle the same cancer that killed his father many years before, inspiring others now with his determination to work toward a cure.
Davis, 65, helped start the Florida event in 2010, one of several Miles for Meso fund raisers around the country now that benefit the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation (MARF). With a good turnout this weekend, Davis hopes the three-year total will top the $100,000 mark.
The event this year will include a Mesothelioma Symposium Saturday at the Hilton Hotel in Deerfield Beach (3-7 p.m) with Raja Flores, M.D., from the Mt. Sianai Medical Center in New York.
On Sunday along A1A in Boca Raton, there will be both an 8 K Race, and a two-mile Tribute Walk, in which Davis will start. In the previous two years, Davis ran in the timed race. And just eight months ago, he ran a Father’s Day Triathlon with his daughter Courtney, only a few days before one of his many surgeries.
Since his original diagnosis, Davis has followed an unconventional path, shunning much of the chemotherapy and radiation treatments that many patients choose to endure. His focus, and the research money he continues to raise, has been on alternative treatments.
He has been a strong advocate pushing for a complete ban of asbestos, the cause of mesothelioma, which currently has no cure. He still is irked at the lack of government leadership in pushing for that ban in the United States, which already exists in more than 50 other countries around the world.
“We should not have to fear asbestos in our homes and work place,” he said. “We should be aware of how the powerful political forces have not made the effort to ban this material, simply because of greed and politics.”
Davis, who lives in South Florida where he still owns an eyewear and sunglass business, is scheduled to be in California next month to be honored at the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) Conference for his fund raising efforts.
The Miles for Meso Race this weekend is the first of four similar events in the next three months that will be used by MARF as it moves through Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut.
Many thanks to the folks at Asbestos.com for this article!
Action Against Asbestos 