Document o95wb7zZYr1njEbkpyOzYyjJr

14256997033 2002-02-26 19:09:21 (GMT), page 53 52 Because the cohort workers were bom between 1890 and 1920, some mesothelioma deaths are likely to have occurred before the disease was widely recognized by most physicians in the mid to late 1960s. Mesothelioma was not added to the ICDA system until the early 1970s. By this time, much ofthe cohort was over 65 years of age and had accumulated more than 40 years of latency. It is likely that this diagnostic bias explains the low mesothelioma rate. Underreporting by Quebec physicians must also be considered likely. As no less an authority than Pierre Elliott Trudeau noted, the QAMA mines have been the center of Canadian politics during this century. In the forward to the only book he ever wrote before he retired. The Asbestos Strike of1949, Trudeau called the strike the most important political event in Canadian politics in the twentieth century.(Trudeau 1974) The political importance, power, and influence of the QAMA during the century cannot be overestimated. This is particularly true with respect to the QAMA's recognition ofthe potential impact of asbestos health effects on profits. The mine owners began projects to influence the medical literature and individual physicians in Quebec in the 1920s when they took a "mortgage out on McGill .''(Wright 1926) "It is suggested that we approach the Dean of the faculty of Medicine of McGill University with a proposal that upon the establishment of an adequate Department of Industrial Hygiene in the McGill Medical School the Metropolitan enter into an agreement with McGill to secure for the Company certain services and information relating to the health of industrial workers in Canada. ...It would be of great value to the Company to have specific information regarding such matters as: 52