cancer
Tuesday, October 20th 2009
The cancer claims made by Richard Cabrera is one of the most shocking examples of the absurdity of his work. Cabrera, a mining engineer with no experience or training in oilfield remediation work, was appointed by the court to assess possible environmental damage.
This is an environmental remediation case, and none of the 48 named plaintiffs have claims for cancer or related damages.
But Cabrera assessed more than $9.5 billion in damages for “excess cancer deaths,” yet failed to identify a single victim or provide any corroborating documentation, such as death certificates or medical diagnoses.
Instead, Cabrera based his cancer claims on self-serving answers to ad hoc surveys administered to the local population in secrecy by unknown individuals. The survey asked leading questions like “what [do] you think should be demanded of Texaco Petroleum as relief of the damages suffered?”
Additionally, Mr. Cabrera makes obvious math errors in his calculations and incorrectly interprets his own survey data to obtain falsely high rates of cancer. He lumps all types of cancers together, even though there is no evidence linking components of crude oil to most of the cancer types reported, including stomach and uterine cancer – the two most common cancers reported in the surveys. These are also the two most common types of cancers in Ecuador.
Cabrera’s conclusions are contradicted by official Ecuador statistical data on cancer mortality, which show there is no increased cancer risk in the oil-producing areas compared to non-oil producing regions of the Ecuadorian Amazon. The cancer rate calculated by Cabrera is more than 250 times higher than the rate reported by Ecuador’s government. View an analysis of cancer mortality and oil production in the Amazon Region of Ecuador.
This isn’t the first time lawyers who have been involved in this case have tried to bring cancer claims against Chevron. In 2007, a U.S. federal court for the Northern District of California threw out a similar complaint against Chevron allegedly filed on behalf of Ecuadorians from the Oriente region. The case was dismissed after it was discovered that the plaintiffs had never been diagnosed with cancer and they testified that they did not even know that a suit had been filed in their names.
Friday, August 28th 2009
“They look at individual cases of cancer and say it can not be traced back to the oil that was spilled by Chevron,” he said. “It’s true that the exact correlation cannot be proved.” – Pablo Fajardo, lead trial lawyer. The (Eugene, OR) Register-Guard: 8/27/09
In a statement made during an August 26, 2009 speech, Ecuadorian attorney Pablo Fajardo once again admitted that the activists and trial lawyers involved in the lawsuit against Chevron cannot prove the cancer claims they have made against Chevron.
A number of individuals representing the plaintiffs have made similar statements. In a May 12, 2009 interview with Radio CRE, CRE Noticias, Luis Yanza, Legal Coordinator of Amazon Defense Coalition said, “But I should clarify one thing: the cancer subject is relatively complementary because in the trial we don’t have to prove that anyone died of cancer…”
Similarly, in comments posted on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website, Karen Hinton, U.S.-based spokesperson for the Amazon Defense Coalition said, “The lawsuit does not seek to prove health claims because of the associated costs; it has been expensive enough to prove the contamination itself.”
Neither the plaintiffs’ attorneys nor the court appointee, Richard Cabrera, have submitted any medical evidence that a single cancer case or death has occurred. Cabrera submitted only a summary of opinion survey results from which he extrapolated approximately $9.5 billion for alleged cancer deaths. Not only is his alleged cancer death rate more than 250 times higher than that reported by the Ecuadorian government for this region of the Amazon, he fails to name a single patient or provide any death certificates or medical records.
In 2006, Cristobal Bonifaz, the attorney that originally filed the lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador sued Chevron in a U.S. federal court for the Northern District of California alleging his new clients developed cancer as a result of Texaco’s operations. In 2007, after some of the plaintiffs admitted that they had never been diagnosed with cancer, the presiding federal judge dismissed the case, fined Bonifaz $45,000, sanctioned the lawyers, and ordered them to submit the ruling to their state bars.
If the plaintiffs are trying to extort over $9 billion for claims they admit they cannot prove–what else are they fabricating?
Wednesday, May 27th 2009
FICTION:
“The evidence clearly documents how Chevron created a cancer pit in the Amazon to save money in its production costs.” - Pablo Fajardo, Amazon Defense Front Press Release: 2/28/08
FACT:
In 15 years of litigation the Amazon Defense Coalition has yet to submit a single piece of medical evidence to substantiate cancer claims.
Medical and scientific experts have reviewed the studies used by the plaintiffs to support their claims and each expert independently concluded that they are flawed, biased and inconclusive.
Arana and Arellano’s published letter in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2007 shows that there is not an increased risk of cancer in the village of San Carlos.
Kelsh, et al, concluded in their 2008 peer reviewed paper published in International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, “The national mortality data collected and summarized by INEC does not currently support a relationship of oil extraction activities and adverse health outcomes in potentially exposed communities.”
Neither the plaintiffs’ attorneys nor Mr. Cabrera have submitted any valid evidence to the court to support that there are increased health or cancer risks in the area. Mr. Cabrera submitted only a summary of an opinion survey from which he extrapolated approximately $9.2B for individual cancer deaths. Not only is his reported cancer death rate more than 250 times higher than that reported by the Ecuadorian government for this region of the Amazon, he fails to name a single beneficiary to collect the dollar damages. Instead plaintiffs have announced that all damage awards will go the Amazon Defense Front.
