OVERALL DROP IN CANCER DEATH RATE DOES NOT APPLY TO WOMEN WITH LUNG CANCER

Research Funding, Screening Missing for Number One Cancer Killer

Washington, D.C. [October 15, 2007]--Lung Cancer Alliance (LCA) President and CEO Laurie Fenton Ambrose said that figures released earlier today showing an overall drop in cancer mortality rates are encouraging and laudatory, but, she warned while the incidence and mortality rates in lung cancer dropped for men, both rates increased for women.

Public health policy officials credited screening as one of the key factors in the escalating decrease in the overall cancer death rate, “an option that these same public health officials are not encouraging for those at high risk for lung cancer,” she said.

The Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1975-2004, released earlier today by the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and the American Cancer Society, indicates that the overall death rate from cancer dropped by 2.1 percent during 2002 to 2004.

However, between last year’s report and this year’s, the number of women being diagnosed with lung cancer rose from 54.7 women for each 100,000 of population to 55.2, and the number of women dying of lung cancer rose from 41 per 100,000 of population to 41.1.

According to NCI statistics, this year an estimated 70,880  women will die of lung cancer, more than breast cancer (40, 460) ovarian cancer( 15,280), uterine (7,400) and cervical cancer (3,400) combined.

“The numbers are horrendous,” Fenton Ambrose said, “and so is the under funding of research into this cancer which has been stigmatized and blamed on the patient even though the majority of new cases are being diagnosed in former smokers or people who never smoked. 20 percent of women getting lung cancer now have never smoked.”

Lung cancer is still the biggest single cancer killer by a wide margin taking more lives each year than the next most common cancers -- breast, prostate, and colon -- combined.

“That hasn’t changed,” she said, “and while we are seeing a slight drop in the rate at which men are being diagnosed and dying of lung cancer, this is not true for women.”

“We cannot continue to ignore this epidemic,” she said.

Lung cancer kills three times as many men (89.510)  as prostate cancer (27,050) or colorectal cancer (26,000).

Lung Cancer Alliance (www.LungCancerAlliance.org) is the only national non-profit organization dedicated exclusively to patient support and advocacy for people living with, or at risk for, lung cancer.  As the number one cancer killer, lung cancer will kill more than 160,000 Americans this year alone, causing more deaths than breast, prostate, colon, liver, kidney cancers and melanoma combined.

###