This same virus contaminated the polio vaccine administered to 98 million Americans from 1955 to 1963. Federal health officials see little reason for concern. Pass had never before met Carbone, and had talked to him for the first time, on the telephone, only a few hours before. Now Carbone was asking Pass for his help in proving a controversial theory he had developed about the origins of mesothelioma, a deadly cancer that afflicts the mesothelial cells in the lining of the chest and the lung. Mesothelioma was virtually unheard of prior to 1950, but the incidence of the disease has risen steadily since then.
Most patients die within eighteen months of diagnosis.
See a collection of Atlantic articles on health care. Randomized clinical trials are the most conclusive way to test new treatments for cancer, but these trials are often resisted by patients, by doctors, and by insurers reluctant to pay for unproven therapies. One would think, given the deadly outbreak in Britain, that the U.S. government would by now have taken every possible precaution. Women are more alarmed than they need to be about the chances that they will develop breast cancer. Safer stuff is available.