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THREE thousand Britons a year die because of a lack of lung cancer treatment, it emerged yesterday. Vital areas of care are "woefully inadequate" and there are shortages of key surgical staff, according to new research. A review has revealed a shambolic postcode lottery where treatment varies from one part of Britain to another. In some areas, fewer than one in TEN patients get any kind of treatment at all and there are "huge variations and vast inequalities" in others, the UK Lung Cancer Coalition reported after a review of services. There are only 44 thoracic surgeons - specialists in...

Introduction: Surgery is the established treatment for early stage primary lung cancers (cancer that started in lung) or limited secondary cancers (cancer that started outside and spread to lung, also known as metastases or metastatic cancer). External beam radiation is an alternative local therapy to surgery, particularly for patients who are not candidates for surgery due to other medical conditions. Thermal ablation, using either heat or cold, is a newer treatment to destroy cells in lung tumors. Heat is most commonly used, and is referred to as Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA). RFA of tumors has gained significant interest and acceptance in...

As Montana bars dealt with their first smoke-free weekend since the state’s indoor smoking ban went into effect, ingenuity ruled. In Missoula, according to a great piece by Michael Moore in the Missoulian, the Rhino Bar gave smokers their very own place to light up: a Butt Hutt, created by Dave Golden of Well Done Welding and Jim Bell, a general contractor. Moore describes the hut as a 4-by-8-foot “metal smoking dugout” in the alley behind the Rhino in Missoula. The no-smoking laws spark the type of debate that never seems to get extinguished. Pro-smokers argue that the bans hurt...

Patients with suspected lung cancer could in future be breathalysed to check if they have the disease. Scientists have developed a sensor that can quickly detect lung cancer molecules on the breath. They believe the technology could lead to cheap, portable breath-test devices with the potential to save large numbers of lives by spotting cancer early. The lung cancer biomarkers were found by comparing breath samples from 40 diagnosed patients and 56 healthy individuals. From the results, the researchers identified 42 "volatile organic compounds" (VOCs) present in the breath of 83% of cancer patients but fewer than 83% of healthy...

Sources close to Iraqi Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim say the cleric has died. Hakim was being treated for lung cancer at a hospital in Iran, and those close to the man said his health was deteriorating. A family member and an aide to Hakim, speaking on the condition of anonymity, separately told reporters Wednesday that he had suffered a setback. Hakim was known for his close links with Iran, and he led the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, one of Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite groups. In June, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani visited Hakim in Tehran, where the ailing cleric was...

Reform: If the world's most famous physicist, Stephen Hawking, is a shining example of British health care, how is it that others in the U.K. are repeatedly denied critical care and medicine?In commenting on efforts to overhaul American's health care system, we have tried to pull back the curtain and pay attention to those trying to clone the systems of Canada and Britain. But supporters of government-run health care frequently ignore some of the less-pleasant facts. Much has been made of this statement in one of our Aug. 3 editorials: "People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance...

Why do the British lag behind American survival rates? Screening standards are different. In the United States, internists recommend that men 50 and older get screened for colon cancer; in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, screening begins at 75. And British patients wait much longer to see specialists. A Clinical Oncology study of British lung cancer treatment found in 2000 that 20% "of potentially curable patients became incurable on the waiting list." Novel drugs offered here often aren't available there; for instance, Avastin, a drug for advanced colon cancer, is prescribed more often in the U.S. than...

ORLANDO, Fla. – There's more troubling news about hormone therapy for menopause symptoms: Lung cancer seems more likely to prove fatal in women who are taking estrogen-progestin pills, a study suggests. Hormone users who developed lung cancer were 60 percent more likely to die from the disease as women who weren't taking hormones, according to results reported Saturday. The new findings mean that smokers should stop taking hormones, and those who have not yet started hormones should give it careful thought, said Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. He led the analysis and presented results at...

WASHINGTON – It may be riskier on the lungs to smoke cigarettes today than it was a few decades ago — at least in the U.S., says new research that blames changes in cigarette design for fueling a certain type of lung cancer.

Foods containing a widely used additive may increase the growth of lung cancers or cause new tumors to develop, new research suggests. Tumors were more plentiful in mice with lung cancer fed a diet containing 0.5 to 1 percent inorganic phosphates (equivalent to the 40 mg. that humans on average consume daily) for a month according to a study in next month's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The tumors' mass increased by 14 percent in the mice fed the most phosphates. Inorganic phosphates are chemicals added to a variety of processed foods including cheese, meat, beverages and...

An unsettling fact about lung cancer is that not even clean living can guarantee a free pass. A significant proportion of cases — 10 to 15 percent — occur in people who never smoked, and just in the United States, 16,000 to 24,000 a year die. What causes the disease in nonsmokers is not known, though researchers suspect genetic susceptibility combined with exposure to cancer-causing substances like asbestos, radon, certain solvents and other people’s tobacco smoke. A huge new study conducted in Europe, North America and Asia, based on 2.4 million nonsmokers who had lung cancer, provides new information about...

Studies suggests that cancer risk is not just down to lifestyle. Amongst smokers, genetics may raise the risk of lung cancer by 80%.PunchstockThree independent genetic studies have found some of the strongest evidence yet that your genes influence your risk of developing lung cancer. Lung cancer, the most common killer cancer in the world, is largely caused by smoking. Tobacco is thought to be responsible for about 5 million premature deaths every year and smoking is still clearly the largest risk factor. But the new results suggest that, amongst smokers, some people may be as much as 80% more at...

There are smoke-free offices, smoke-free bars, smoke-free malls. Could smoke-free apartment houses and condo towers be next? Scattered apartment units across the state already ban smoking. But early next year, the Department of Public Health plans to survey landlords, condominium associations, and tenants about the feasibility of making smoke-free residential zones the norm, rather than the exception. There could even be a state-run registry to connect tenants with landlords and condo boards that offer developments entirely devoid of smoke. The state review emerges as an influential coalition of health and housing officials is issuing a sweeping call to make smoke-free...

Kids Show Signs Of Addiction Almost Immediately A new study published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine shows that 10 percent of youth who become hooked on cigarettes are addicted within two days of first inhaling from a cigarette, and 25 percent are addicted within a month. The study found that adolescents who smoke even just a few cigarettes per month suffer withdrawal symptoms when deprived of nicotine, a startling finding that is contrary to long-held beliefs that only people with established smoking habits of at least five cigarettes per day experience such symptoms. The study monitored 1,246...

Turning Stem Cells Taken From Fat Tissue Into Personalized, Cancer-targeted Therapeutics Researchers in Slovakia have been able to derive mesenchymal stem cells from human adipose, or fat, tissue and engineer them into "suicide genes" that seek out and destroy tumors like tiny homing missiles. This gene therapy approach is a novel way to attack small tumor metastases that evade current detection techniques and treatments, the researchers conclude in the July 1 issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "These fat-derived stem cells could be exploited for personalized cell-based therapeutics," said the study's lead investigator,...

The active ingredient in marijuana cuts tumor growth in common lung cancer in half and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread, say researchers at Harvard University who tested the chemical in both lab and mouse studies. They say this is the first set of experiments to show that the compound, Delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), inhibits EGF-induced growth and migration in epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expressing non-small cell lung cancer cell lines. Lung cancers that over-express EGFR are usually highly aggressive and resistant to chemotherapy. THC that targets cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 is similar in function to endocannabinoids,...

Scientists in the United States have come up with a breath test which can detect lung cancer in patients even when it is in the early stages of the disease. By means of a simple colour test which shows up unique chemical changes in the breath of people with lung cancer, the disease was accurately detected in just under three out of four people with the disease.By using a sensor just slightly bigger than a coin, which is relatively cheap and easy to use, unique chemical changes in the breath of people with lung cancer could be seen with...

Republican U.S. Rep. Charlie Norwood of Georgia has died after a long battle with cancer, his office announced today. He was 65.

Some years ago, when I was freelancing at a mutual fund company, I took a break to go downstairs and smoke my pipe. On my way back upstairs, I found myself sharing the elevator with one of my co-workers in the corporate communications department. "Ewww, smoke!" she exclaimed. "Let me out of here! I don't want you to give me cancer!" Let's absorb this slowly. My fellow worker thought that: 1) Cancer was contagious. 2) She could "catch" cancer from the smell of tobacco smoke clinging to my clothes -- not from the smoke itself, which was long gone outdoors,...

In recent years, legal scholars have produced a voluminous literature on the rule of law in indirectly controlling social norms and individual preferences. Smoking bans provide on of the favorite "success stories" of those who laud the use of legal rules to change norms and preferences. According to these scholars, smoking bans affect behavior, even if under-enforced, because they change the social norm regarding smoking in public. With the advent of smoking bans, non-smokers who previously felt embarassed about publicly expressing their distaste for ETS are speaking up. By providing a de facto community statement that public smoking is unacceptable,...

Way back when, the closest thing to a "smoking ban" had to do with the age at which you could legally buy cigarettes. I think it was 12 or 13. After that, about half the teenage population seemed to be lighting up at least once an hour. At Morgan Park High School, where I spent four years in the 1960s, there was a white line on the sidewalk a block away from the school building. That marked the point where the high school determined kids could smoke. It didn't stop the hard-core smokers who really needed to feed their habit...

OPP probes nursing home death; Resident, 65, was left outside Gore Bay facility when he went for a smoke -ON Sudbury Star- January 25, 2007 by Laura Stradiotto Local News - Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of a nursing home resident who was found outdoors in a courtyard Jan.16. Detectives from the Ontario Provincial Police's crime unit in Orillia were at the Manitoulin Lodge in Gore Bay on Wednesday. Nursing home resident Murray Myles Patterson, 65, was transported to the Mindemoya Hospital on Jan. 16 and died a day later. In a statement released Wednesday by the...

Smoking cigarettes is a clear health risk, as most everyone knows. But lately, people have begun to worry about the health risks of secondhand smoke. Some policymakers and activists are even claiming that the government should crack down on secondhand smoke exposure, given what "the science" indicates about such exposure. Last July, introducing his office's latest report on secondhand smoke, then-U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona asserted that "there is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure," that "breathing secondhand smoke for even a short time can damage cells and set the cancer process in motion," and that... --snip-- In addition,...

SEOUL, Jan. 25 (Yonhap) -- A South Korean court Thursday ruled in favor of a local cigarette maker in the longstanding suits filed by ailing smokers and their families against the company, saying there was no evidence to prove smoking caused their illnesses. They are the first anti-tobacco lawsuits involving individuals in South Korean legal history. The court said the plaintiffs failed to prove a connection between smoking and cancer they or their family members contracted. "There is no evidence to prove cigarettes produced and sold by the company had problems in terms of manufacture, design and labeling, and that...

Silibinin, a drug derived from milk thistle, destroys lung cancer in mice, investigators at the University of Colorado, Denver report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Lead investigator Dr. Rana P. Singh told Reuters Health, "We have been studying milk thistle components, silymarin and silibinin, to examine their efficacy and mechanisms against different...cancers for over a decade." In the current study, Singh's team injected mice with a chemical called urethane to induce lung cancer. The animals then received diets containing different doses of silibinin. "We obtained pure silibinin from Sigma Chemical Co., and silibinin diets were commercially prepared...

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Marijuana smoking does not increase a person's risk of developing lung cancer, according to the findings of a new study at the University of California Los Angeles that surprised even the researchers. They had expected to find that a history of heavy marijuana use, like cigarette smoking, would increase the risk of cancer. Instead, the study, which compared the lifestyles of 611 Los Angeles County lung cancer patients and 601 patients with head and neck cancers with those of 1,040 people without cancer, found no elevated cancer risk for even the heaviest pot smokers. It...

SCIENCE NEWS May 24, 2006 Large Study Finds No Link between Marijuana and Lung Cancer The smoke from burning marijuana leaves contains several known carcinogens and the tar it creates contains 50 percent more of some of the chemicals linked to lung cancer than tobacco smoke. A marijuana cigarette also deposits four times as much of that tar as an equivalent tobacco one. Scientists were therefore surprised to learn that a study of more than 2,000 people found no increase in the risk of developing lung cancer for marijuana smokers. "We expected that we would find that a history of...

The smoke from burning marijuana leaves contains several known carcinogens and the tar it creates contains 50 percent more of some of the chemicals linked to lung cancer than tobacco smoke. A marijuana cigarette also deposits four times as much of that tar as an equivalent tobacco one. Scientists were therefore surprised to learn that a study of more than 2,000 people found no increase in the risk of developing lung cancer for marijuana smokers. "We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use--more than 500 to 1,000 uses--would increase the risk of cancer from several...

Nicotine can prevent chemotherapy drugs such as taxol from killing lung cancer cells, research say, in a finding that may help explain why lung cancer is so difficult to treat in smokers. The findings may also suggest even people who quit smoking but use nicotine supplements, such as patches or gum, may not be helped as much as they should be by cancer therapy, US researchers said. "Our findings are in agreement with clinical studies showing that patients who continue to smoke have worse survival profiles than those who quit before treatment," the researchers wrote in a study published by...

NEW YORK -- A 41-year-old paramedic who worked at a morgue for months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center was buried Monday after dying of an asbestos-related cancer. Deborah Reeve, a 17-year paramedic, died on March 15 of mesothelioma, a lung cancer associated with exposure to asbestos, her family said. Reeve developed a cough in late 2003 and retired at the end of 2004 after becoming too ill to work. Her doctors and family say her cancer was caused by exposure to toxic dust from the World Trade Center site. City health officials say it's...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Singer Lou Rawls is dead. A spokesman says he died this morning at a Los Angeles hospital. He sold more than 40 million albums, and his hits included "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine."

The nude mouse tale: Omega-3 fats save the life of a terminal cancer patient Category: Cancer/Oncology News Article Date: 11 Nov 2005 Ron Pardini is not a medical doctor. Yet he is seen as a hero by his cancer-stricken neighbor, "D.H." Pardini helped the 78-year-old after D.H. was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. "In 2000 he was told by his doctor he had only a few months to live," said Pardini, a professor of biochemistry and associate director of the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Nevada, Reno. "But five years later, he is still alive, and has...

Study: Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer Protective Effect "Not Unreasonable" Marijuana smoking -"even heavy longterm use"- does not cause cancer of the lung, upper airways, or esophagus, Donald Tashkin reported at this year's meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society. Coming from Tashkin, this conclusion had extra significance for the assembled drug-company and university-based scientists ( most of whom get funding from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse ). Over the years, Tashkin's lab at UCLA has produced irrefutable evidence of the damage that marijuana smoke wreaks on bronchial tissue. With NIDA's support, Tashkin and colleagues have...

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER Saturday, August 13, 2005 · Last updated 6:20 p.m. PT Smokers taking controversial cancer test By MARILYNN MARCHIONE AP MEDICAL WRITER If a simple, painless test can find the world's deadliest cancer when it is smaller than a pea - and such a test does indeed exist - shouldn't people who are most at risk have one? Surprisingly, the federal government, American Cancer Society and a raft of cancer specialists say the answer is "no." They are waging an uphill battle as frightened current and former smokers rush to get a special kind of X-ray that other physicians...

...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...

A star he is ~ but it could have been different. Lance Armstrong could have well been an abortion statistic. His mother was a 16 year old unwed mom and poor. But she did the right thing and was a continual source of support and inspiration to Lance throughout his life. Linda, then a supermarket checkout girl, had got pregnant at the age of 16 and gave birth to her son when she was only 17. The pair enjoy an exceptionally close relationship, which Linda puts down to the fact that "we grew up together". Armstrong took on the...

What's up in the town of Winthrop, Maine? SMOKERS NOT WELCOME AT WINTHROP BEACH!Winthrop proves smoking is not a health issue at all.  But it's all about CON T R O L!7-16-05 - I was notified of the ridiculous treatment given to one family just because a family member was smoking. A cop approached the family and told them they would have to leave because this was a "no smoking beach."  The family, as you can see, is not "on" the beach, but on the grassy area.  There were no signs stating that the area was smoke free.  The cop told...

A widow whose husband died from lung cancer has lost her legal battle against one of the world's biggest tobacco companies.Margaret McTear claimed Imperial Tobacco failed to warn her husband Alfred that smoking could give him cancer. But the judge in the case said: "The pursuer's case failed on every issue on which I would have needed to find in her favour." Alfred McTear began the action against Imperial in 1993 and his wife continued it after his death that year. Mrs McTear, 60, of Beith, Ayrshire had demanded £500,000 in damages. She said she was disappointed at the judgement...

/begin my translation China: Smoking Problems Among Young Kids 05/12/05| A small kid in tattered clothes is lighting up like an old pro. He must have done it for quite a while. It appears that he is a kid panhandling in front of a Buddhist temple. We can see an incense burner and a plastic bottle for collecting money, and on the left side, we see the appeal for help written on a board. Inhaling after lighting it up   Judging from the way he carries the cigarette between his fingers, he looks as experienced as any chain-smoking grownup. Inhaling again There is a wide...

Firing Smokers - Reading Beyond the Headlines Trend: You smoke? You're fired!May 11, 2005 By Stephanie Armour More companies are taking action against employees who smoke off-duty, and, in an extreme trend that some call troubling, some are now firing or banning the hiring of workers who light up even on their own time.The outright bans raise new questions about how far companies can go in regulating workers' behavior when they are off the clock. The crackdown is coming in part as a way to curb soaring health care costs, but critics say companies are violating workers' privacy rights....

Vitamin K is absolutely essential to build strong bones -- and it is proven to prevent heart disease. For several years, compelling evidence has shown that most people don't get enough vitamin K to protect their health through the foods they eat.Green leafy vegetables supply almost half of the vitamin K for the majority of Americans. Most foods considered rich in vitamin K have shown to have less vitamin K than previously thought. Despite this vital information, the majority of multi-vitamins don't contain any vitamin K at all -- and those that do don't contain enough.Recent research supporting vitamin...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today announced that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) intends to provide new coverage allowing certain Medicare beneficiaries who smoke to receive counseling services that will help them quit the habit. "We're building on our efforts to help America's seniors help themselves to quit smoking and live longer," Secretary Thompson said. "This new benefit, focused on treating seniors' smoking related diseases, will go a long way toward reducing their risk of dying prematurely. The combination of lives lost, unnecessarily, and the cost of treating smoking-related diseases makes our...

New law for 'fire-safe' cigarettes takes effect Associated Press ALBANY, N.Y. -- There's something different about cigarette brands sold in New York these days, but you would hardly notice it by looking at them. Next to the bar code of a pack of smokes is a tiny mark -- an asterisk, a dash or a diamond -- indicating that the cigarettes will self-extinguish if they're not puffed on regularly. On Monday, New York will become the first state to phase in a law requiring tobacco companies to sell the new "fire-safe" cigarettes. The law is meant to cut down on...

PORTLAND, Maine -- The latest batch of anti-tobacco television advertisements created by Maine students features a guy with yellow teeth and a giant cigarette butt chasing children around. The Department of Human Services had so much success with the original ads three years ago that Maine youths were tapped again for public service announcements that began airing Monday.

Some pull support for Cancer Society fund raisersNo one is a fan of cancer. But some Oshkosh restaurant owners lately have less love for the American Cancer Society. As a form of protest, a few city restaurants fuming over Oshkosh’s two-month-old smoking ban ordinance have refused to donate food or drinks to annual cancer-cure fund-raisers fueling the organization. The referendum drive that led to the ban was supported financially by the Cancer Society. “If we could be 100 percent sure the money we were donating was going to research and not to put us out of business, we’d do it,”...

Cases of lung cancer are beginning to drop among women after decades of smoking-fueled increases, and survival rates are improving, too, for most types of cancer for both men and women, according to a national report set for release on Thursday... Developing..

FINDINGS Influenza has been added to the recommended schedule of shots for all infants, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday. The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians recommend that, beginning in fall 2004, all children age 6 months to 23 months, as well as household and out-of-home caregivers for such children, receive an annual influenza vaccine, the CDC said. The CDC had been moving toward the recommendation even before this past flu season, which began early and featured a nasty strain of virus that killed...

April 30, 2004 Genetic Link Seen in Cancer Drug's Power By ANDREW POLLACK s one treatment after another failed to beat back her lung cancer, Kate Robbins began writing her thoughts and feelings in journals to leave her children "something tangible that they could read and refer back to" after she died. Then Mrs. Robbins, who lives in Concord, Mass., began taking a drug called Iressa. Her tumors began to melt away. Sixteen months later, while it is possible that the tumors will return, there is no sign of them. Stories about such rescues from death's door have given hope...

Women with lung cancer survive slightly longer than men with the disease, respond differently to at least one cancer drug and show higher levels of tobacco-induced genetic damage in their lungs, researchers are reporting today. Some differences may stem from the effects of estrogen, whether naturally occurring or taken as a drug, and the scientists said more women should be included in studies of lung cancer to find out whether particular methods of treatment, prevention and detection are best suited to them. The researchers also said that clarifying differences in the disease between men and women might yield information that...

EPA Studies Chemicals Emitted From Microwave Popcorn Linked to Lung Disease Mar 11, 2004 By Connie Farrow/ Associated Press Writer The Environmental Protection Agency is studying the chemicals released into the air when a bag of microwave popcorn is popped or opened. Exposure to vapors from butter flavoring in microwave popcorn has been linked to a rare lung disease contracted by factory workers in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has said it suspects the chemical diacetyl caused the illnesses. However, health officials insist people who microwave popcorn and eat it at home...