Ancil Delaney served his country as a soldier during World War II and returned home to spend the next 30 years of life working for Johns Manville Corporation in New Jersey. His job involved working in a plant that produced roofing shingles containing asbestos.

He died a few years after the class action settlement that sent Johns Manville into bankruptcy to avoid paying the full dollar amount of claims employees filed for unknowingly working with substances that caused cancer. Ancil L. Delaney died penniless never having received but a fraction of his share of the asbestos settlement.

On February 15, 2006, Senate Bill 852 was narrowly defeated. The bill would have established a $140 billion trust fund to be administered by the federal government to handle asbestos related claims from victims. The trust fund would have limited the amount of claims victims could assess against any single company (involved in the mining of the substance or in the production of products containing the substance).

Some of the most vocal opponents against the bill include Dick Arney, (Republican), Texas, the AFL-CIO Labor Union, Ted Kennedy, and Minority Leader, Harry Reid.

The issues regarding asbestos are as pervasive as any other national crime in America and the dollars associated with the mining of the raw minerals and the subsequent usage in more than 5,000 products exceeds the gains from street crimes so commonly depicted in media today.

When the fact that asbestos continues to be mined in South Africa, Canada, China, Australia, Kenya, USA, and Zimbabwe the worldwide scope of the pandemic of cancer caused from exposure to this substance is incalculable.

It is easy to comprehend the stereotypical images of criminals associated with the production and sale of illegal drugs; a masked bank robber with a gun; and a bookie locked away in a dark room taking illegal bets. However, it is difficult at best to perceive that some of America's largest corporations have colluded with the nation's largest insurance companies to hide the impact of products that have caused cancer in literally hundreds of thousands of Americans and countless others around the world for more than a century.

Some form of asbestos has been used and in many cases is still used in home construction products, cosmetics (talc), kids' toys to include crayons and sandbox sand; the brake and clutch linings on automobiles trucks and industrial equipment; paints; agricultural products to include animal feed; and even planting soil (vermiculite) used for indoor plants.

A silent killer, asbestos can only be detected under a microscope. Once inhaled, there is no evidence that the particles ever exit the body. The latency period for the cancers produced range from 10 - 40 years.

Public records from court cases have provided irrefutable evidence taken from confidential company correspondence that Bendix Corporation (now Honeywell), Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Exxon, Dow (Union Carbide), DuPont, The Travelers Insurance Company, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Dresser Industries (now Haliburton), National Gypsum, Owens-Corning, General Electric, Johns Manville, and W.R. Grace are a few of the companies that have profited for nearly a century from the production and usage of asbestos at the expense of the medical health and lives of unknowing Americans and citizens of the world.

The extent of the industry's knowledge and complicity in literally murdering innocent workers is reflected in a 1958 National Gympsum confidential memo made public at trial indicating the following: "We know that you will never lose sight of the fact that perhaps the greatest hazard in your plants is with men handling asbestos. Because just as certain as death and taxes is the fact that if you inhale asbestos dust you get asbestosis."

A 1968 memo from a Johns Manville attorney to the Travelers Insurance Co. stated: "Confidentially Johns Mansville has been contaminating the "Hell" out of both the air and the water for quite some time."

A memo written by Travelers Insurance Company in 1969 stated: "control of asbestos in the community air is impossible when you consider the contribution from brake linings abrasion of piping, house siding or other materials widely handled by the general public."

The criminal neglect is implicit because the health risks from asbestos have been known for more than 100 years.

In 1900, Doctor H. Montague Murray, a London physician discovered asbestos fibers in the lungs of a 33 year old man who had worked 14 years in an asbestos fabric factory. The worker died of severe pulmonary fibrosis that the doctor linked to his occupation.

The first case of death attributed to asbestos was published in 1924 in the British Medical Journal. The first case published in the United States appeared in the 1930 journal of Minnesota Medicine.

More recently authors have used court documents to write definitive books on the subject of asbestos. These authors and their books include, Paul Brodeur, Outrageous Misconduct; Barry Castleman, Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects; Michael Bowder, Fatal Deception; and Andrew Schneider, An Air That Kills.

The companies mining and producing the toxic products are not alone in the profiteering. The legal system has also made asbestos cases a profit center.

In March 1991, The Report of the Judicial Ad Hoc Committee on Asbestos Litigation revealed between 200,000- 265,000 Americans had died from exposure to asbestos.

The court systems have been inundated with asbestos related cases. As of 2004, records show that each year 600- 700 appellate opinions have involved issued regarding asbestos claims. The figure does not include cases that were dismissed or settled out of court.

A Rand Study shows that less than half of the money awarded to victims in asbestos cases actually went to the victims. The bulk of the money went to lawyers and to cover legal fees.

Attorneys such as Peter Angelos became wealthy representing asbestos victims. In 1993, Angelos purchased the Baltimore Orioles, along with his partners, for $173 million.

Reports show that victims in many cases have received less than 10% of the awards in their cases.

On January 7, 2005, The White House released a press statement covering President Bush's Asbestos Litigation Conversation that took place at the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts, Macomb Community College, Clinton Township, Michigan. An excerpt from the release quotes the President:

"Well, first of all, we spend about $80 billion on asbestos litigation, and that could end up being $200 billion over time. Secondly, these asbestos suits have bankrupted a lot of companies, and that affects workers here in Michigan and around the country. Thirdly, those with no major medical {sic} impairment now make up the vast majority of claims, while those who are truly sick are denied their day in court. We'll hear a little bit more about that-we'll hear more about that a little bit later."

Lester Brickman, law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardoza School of Law at Yeshiva University participated in the panel discussion with the President and made these remarks:

"More than 100,000 workers have died as a consequence of asbestos exposure. But lawyers have taken this tragedyand turned it into an enormous money making machine, in which, as you say, baseless claims predominate."

Some states have taken measures to limit the number of cases that can be filed in their jurisdictions. Georgia passed a reform bill that requires an out-of-state plantiff to provide "prima facie evidence of physical impairment" that shows "to reasonable degree of certainty" that exposure to asbestos was "a substantial contributing factor" to the plantiffs' injuries.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs complain that this new requirement would foreclose 98% of the pending claims, and that the law is unconstitutional.

The federal government is not without responsibility in this national tragedy.

The National Clean Air Act was not enacted until 1970 and indicated that "more than 100 million American workers were exposed to asbestos in the workplace." That's nearly three quarters of a century after asbestos was scientifically proven to cause cancer.

The fact that the asbestos industry's lobbyists contributed millions of dollars each year to political action groups no doubt helped to defray any meaningful legislation. According to an article by Andrew Schnieder and Carol Smith, entitled Asbestos-It's The Killer That Won't Die, published on February 11, 2000 in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the W.R. Grace company alone contributed $764,618 to political action committees.

According to the National Cancer Institute, the 1989 Environmental Protection Agency action to ban asbestos, did nothing to stop the production of existing products. It only banned any new uses of the substance.

As put by Schnieder and Smith: "Almost everyone believes that the mining, production, sale and use of asbestos in America has been banned. Almost everyone is wrong."

A contemporary clergyman has been quoted for saying, "Perhaps the greatest victory of the Devil is that he has convinced humanity that He does not exist!"

Sources for this article: The National Cancer Institute; Seattle Post Intelligencer; EWG-The Asbestos Epidemic In America; The White House Press; and The Environmental Protection Agency