This paper discusses the asbestos plaintiffs’ bar’s efforts to redefine tobacco-induced lung cancers and turn them into claims for asbestos-related cancers. Because of the recent surge in lung cancer case filings, and given that the American Cancer Society estimates approximately 225,000 lung cancers are diagnosed annually in the United States, there is a need to return to an evidence-based approach founded upon epidemiology, and to develop medicolegal guidelines for asbestosrelated lung cancer lawsuits.

The recent surge in lung cancer filings ignores well-recognized studies on lung cancer causation. Instead, the asbestos plaintiffs’ bar advances an ambiguous approach that advocates for an unquantifiable synergy between smoking and lung cancer. The standard is unworkable and replaces science with speculation and conjecture; neither of which has any place in the field of medicine or law. Moreover, the abandonment is not founded on any epidemiological evidence, but rather subjective reports of work history because exposures sufficient to cause asbestosis are now exceedingly rare given the promulgation of OSHA and other regulations. The bottom line is that the arguments advanced by the asbestos plaintiffs’ bar and their experts abandon the epidemiological moorings that establish the threshold necessary before lung cancer can be attributed to asbestos exposure while at the same time ignoring the known relationship between smoking and lung cancer.

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