Posted on 08/07/2005 10:07:33 AM PDT by summer
...At 44 years young, [Lisa] Roffman is preparing to die.
"There's a limited time period," she said. "...
Two and a half years ago, Roffman, a non-smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer and given less than five years to live.
"It was a complete and total shock," she said. "I certainly thought that it was going to be people who had smoked their whole lives. I always thought it was more men than women. I thought they were people who were 60 or older."
As the number of men with lung cancer declines, the American Cancer Society estimates that 73,020 women will die in the U.S. of lung cancer this year, more than those who will die from breast, ovarian, and uterine cancers combined.
Ill Despite Healthy Lifestyle
While no national studies have yet been done, many lung cancer specialists say they're seeing a disturbing trend of more and more non-smoking women with the disease.
"Many of them have done an excellent job of taking care of themselves," said Dr. Joan Schiller, who specializes in lung cancer in non-smoking younger women at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "They run. They eat right."
Ten to 15 percent of lung cancer victims are non-smokers. Among that group, women are two to three times more likely than men to get the disease. Doctors don't know why. Hormones, second-hand smoke, diet and air pollution all are believed to be factors.
"These women are tragic victims of the fact that they have a disease that is associated with smoking," Schiller added.
Adding to the deadliness of lung cancer, the symptoms, which include shortness of breath and a chronic cough, often are misdiagnosed as asthma....
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
People who lead healthy lifestyles often feel cheated when they develop a disease that "flesh is heir to"...as if they've fulfilled a contract that the other side has not. The mentality is making the sacrifice to the "lifestyle" gods, so you'll be protected by that little god.
I don't know any male friend who smokes. Less than one in six men still smokes, mostly minority males (blacks with their menthols and poor, uneducated hispanics).
But about 1/3 of women smoke.
We all do, but there are so many variations of cancer that I doubt we ever find a single cure. Hope I'm wrong.
My first wife died of lung cancer at age 52, she had been a smoker for many years, her STEPfather died a few months before her of the exact same type of lung cancer.
My paternal grandfather died of cancer, my father had throat cancer and died of complications of a tracheostomy. My mother died of cancer, one of her sisters died of leukemia, I can't count the cancer deaths on both sides of my family but insofar as my blood relatives are concerned the common thread is that they were past the average life span when they died of cancer. My mother was 78, my father was almost 82, his father was 86, if you live to be old enough you probably will die of cancer because you have not succumbed to the other possibilities.
What about abortion? There are assertions that it can increase the instance of other forms of cancer.
The excerpt did not mention heredity. My father in law died from a virulent cause of colon cancer in his early fifties, despite being in exceptional physical health, regular biking exercise and an unusually nutritious and healthy diet. But both his parents died of the same thing.
Also, some forms of cancer are triggered by stress.
And, whether you like the war on drugs or not, pot smoking has some bad effects on the lungs, and some non-tobacco users may have hit the wacky weed.
I do not consider second hand smoke a major factor, because it is maybe one tenth what it used to be, when one third or more of the population smoked, and no place was off limits.
******
What Are the Key Statistics for Lung Cancer?
During 2005, there will be about 172,570 new cases of lung cancer (93,010 among men and 79,560 among women). Lung cancer will account for about 13% of all new cancers. Lung cancer mainly occurs in the elderly. The average age of people diagnosed with lung cancer is 70; fewer than 3% of all cases are found in people under the age of 45. The chance that a man will develop lung cancer is 1 in 13 and for a woman, it is 1 in 18. Of course this figure includes all people and doesn’t take into account whether or not they smoke.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women. There will be an estimated 163,510 deaths from lung cancer (90,490 among men and 73,020 among women) in 2005, accounting for around 28% of all cancer deaths. More people die of lung cancer than of colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined. In spite of the large number of people diagnosed with this cancer, there are only about 330,000 long-term survivors.
Another article in this series said there is more research spent on HIV than on lung cancer. Both are terrible diseases, but I think more should be spent on lung cancer research, as some progress has been made on HIV. There is so little progress on curing cancer it seems.
I meant: research money.
I question these numbers. It smells of media agenda. Its like all the AIDS stories that told us it was running rampant through suburbs and no of the sort was happening.
I don't know. If you read the obituary pages on any given day, the vast majority of people died of some form of cancer.
You are exactly right. How many people with cancer who smoke would have gotten cancer smoke or not?
I'm screwed
I've got a similar kind of occurence in my family except it hit's us young. My mother was in her 30's when diagnosed with uterine cancer(she was surgically cured) but her dad died in his early 50's from leukemia and of my mother's 2 brothers and 2 sisters, both brothers died of lung cancer, 42 and 46 and both sisters had breast cancer, one died at 50 and one is battling it now. My dad was diagnosed with lung cancer in his late 40's (he broke a rib and they found a tiny growth by xray) and his dad died of lung cancer at 45. I'm 46 and true to form, found out this year that I have kidney cancer.
A panel appointed by the National Academy of Sciences wants the National Institutes of Health to listen more closely to patients and ordinary citizens when deciding how to spend its $13.6 billion annual budget. It also recommended that the agency consider data on the prevalence, death rates and costs of different diseases in setting its research agenda and priorities.
The 19-member panel presented comparisons of how much NIH is spending for research on particular diseases vis-a-vis the number of deaths occasioned by those diseases in 1996.
* For every AIDS death, NIH allocated $43,206 in research -- for a total of $1.4 billion (see figure).
* Research into heart disease commanded only $1,160 per heart-disease related death -- at a total cost of $851.6 million.
* Yet 733,834 heart patients died in 1996, versus just 32,655 from AIDS.
* Cancer research garnered $4,723 per cancer death that year -- or $2.570 billion for 544,278 deaths.
The report stated that such data encourage "the perception of some members of Congress and the public that NIH spending often follows current politics and political correctness, or responds to media attention to certain diseases."
The report estimates that direct costs to society from heart disease totaled $70 billion a year, while costs from AIDS were $10.3 billion.
Source: Robert Pear, "Health Agency Urged to Review Spending," New York Times, July 9, 1998.
Based on the number of deaths caused by various diseases, NIH funding seems skewed -- spending $111 per death from AIDS, compared to $10 per death from cancer, $3 for heart disease and $2 for stroke. Based on the number of people affected, NIH spends $1,069 for each person afflicted with HIV/AIDS, $296 for cancer, $158 for multiple sclerosis, $93 for heart disease, $54 for Alzheimer's and $26 for Parkinson's.
Source: Tammy O. Tengs, "Planning for Serendipity: A New Strategy to Prosper from Health Research," Health Priorities Project Policy Report No. 2, July 1998, Progressive Policy Institute, 518 C Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002, (202) 547-0001.
translation: they are guessing.
Unmentioned is the other half of the problem and all the factors that remain undiscussed.
The other half of the problem: the limitless variability of individual susceptibility to fatal diseases (lousy genes); the unknown, unmentioned, and unstudied environmental factors which exploit the weakest ones among us which in times past, would die in infancy.
Second hand smoke is easily at hand and makes a wonderful PC target, but it inhibits real research and encourages mindless ignorance.
Real and extensive scientific research has failed to establish a link, so the only thing left is mindless ignorance and junk science.
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