Ignore Lung Cancer’s Threat at Your Own Risk
FRIDAY, Nov. 5 (HealthDay News) — More people in the United States die from lung cancer each year than die of breast cancer, prostate cancer and colon cancer combined.
So lung cancer receives the lion’s share of publicity and research funding, right?
Wrong. In fact, it’s deadly wrong for the more than 150,000 Americans who have succumbed to lung cancer every year since the mid-1990s. That’s a statistic that bears repeating in November, Lung Cancer Awareness Month.
Jill M. Siegfried, co-director of the Lung and Thoracic Malignancies Program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, said lung malignancies are woefully neglected by the public and the medical community. Research isn’t doing that well, either, she added. And, she said, there are three reasons why:
“First, there’s the stigma attached to smoking, the major cause of lung cancer, even though many other diseases — such as heart disease — are primarily caused by smoking and aren’t stigmatized.”
“Second, there is no critical mass of scientists and physicians motivated to work on lung cancer.”
“And third, there’s an unwillingness or inability on the part of survivors to speak out and demand more funds and public attention.”
Statistics from the U.S. government’s National Cancer Institute seem to bear this out. Research on lung cancer receives far less funding per death than other cancers. In 2001, the most recent year for which such data is available, NCI research allocated an estimated $1,311 per lung cancer death compared to $11,704 per breast cancer death, $8,190 per prostate cancer death and $3,625 per colorectal cancer death.
It’s not much different at the American Cancer Society where Dr. John Stevens, vice president for extramural grants, said that breast cancer research snagged $29 million in new funding in 2003, compared to $12 million in new funds for lung cancer research.
Siegfried believes the absence of advocacy on the part of lung cancer survivors is because their numbers are relatively small, and also because of the pervasive public perception that individuals with lung cancer brought the disease down on themselves.
Added to that, say experts, is a significant amount of misplaced media emphasis on the relative pervasiveness of other cancers. Some of them have achieved very high profiles.
Dr. Kathy S. Albain, director of thoracic and breast research at Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center in Chicago, pointed to a recent women’s magazine cover touting breast cancer as the “#1 killer of women.”
It’s just not so, she said.
During the past two decade, lung cancer in women has become an increasing concern of physicians and public health experts. Females’ rates of diagnosis with and death from the disease began to inch up — and then surpass that of males.
It’s only since 1998, in fact, that rates of female lung cancer have begun to slowly decline, years after rates in men showed a similar improvement — of about 2 percent per year. Despite the recent trend, however, lung cancer remains the top killer in both men and women, with a median survival period after diagnosis that is still just a little more than 10 months.
Albain is the founding vice president of Women Against Lung Cancer (WALC), an organization of physicians, researchers and patient advocates dedicated to raising Americans’ awareness of the deadly disease.
“We in no way are advocating for less funding for breast cancer, prostate cancer, skin cancer or other cancers,” she said. “WALC simply wants to make sure that lung cancer — a very prevalent, very serious cancer — gets the funding that’s required to improve survival rates in the years ahead.”
Dr. Jyoti Patel, a thoracic oncologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, said another important goal of research and the media must be discovering and disseminating information about better ways to help women and men quit smoking — and discouraging young people from taking up the habit in the first place.
“Tobacco companies are spending $9 billion a year on tobacco advertising to promote smoking,” she said. “The entire NCI (National Cancer Institute) budget for cancer research and other cancer-related activities is $4.5 billion annually, including only $100 million for tobacco education and cessation programs.”
Patel added that most doctors aren’t yet doing a good job of communicating the serious risks associated with smoking and its strong relationship to lung cancer deaths.
“They order mammograms and prostate cancer tests religiously but grossly underestimate the risk of developing lung cancer and lung cancer death in their patients who smoke,” Patel said.
More information
Find out more about lung cancer and how to encourage more funding for this deadly malignancy from the Women Against Lung Cancer Web site.
SOURCES: Jill M. Siegfried, Ph.D., professor in the department of pharmacology, and co-director, Lung and Thoracic Malignancies Program, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute; John Stevens, M.D., vice president for extramural grants, American Cancer Society; Kathy S. Albain, M.D., professor of medicine, Loyola University, and director of thoracic and breast research, Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center, Chicago; Jyoti Patel, M.D., thoracic oncologist, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago