Focus Disease of the Month: Lung Cancer

• What exactly is lung cancer?: Lung cancer is the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in one or both of the lungs. While normal lung tissue cells reproduce and develop into healthy lung tissue, these abnormal cells reproduce rapidly and never grow into normal lung tissue. Lumps of cancer cells (tumors) then form and disrupt the lung, making it difficult to function properly.

• Lung cancer is deadly: An estimated 160,440 Americans will die in 2004 from lung cancer, accounting for 28% of all cancer deaths. Deaths from AIDS in latest reported period, 2003: 18,017. More Americans die each year from lung cancer than from AIDS and breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers combined. Annually, lung cancer kills more men than prostate cancer and more women than breast cancer.

• Lung cancer is common: Approximately 173,770 new cases of lung cancer will be diagnosed in 2004, accounting for 13% of all new cancer cases. Estimated cases of HIV/AIDS: 35-40,000.

• Lung cancer and women: Between 1960 and 1990, deaths from lung cancer among women increased by more than 400%. An estimated 68,510 women in the U.S. will die this year from lung cancer. Deaths from AIDS in women: 4,736

• Lung Cancer and African-Americans: Lung cancer is the second most common cancer among African American men and women, and kills more African Americans than any other cancer. African American men are at least 40% more likely to develop lung cancer than Caucasian men. The mortality rate of African American males with lung cancer is 107.0 per 100,000 people, compared to 78.1 for Caucasian males. The incidence of lung cancer among African American males is 120.4 per 100,000 people, compared to 79.4 of Caucasian males. African American women have the highest incidence rates of lung cancer.

• Lung cancer symptoms: Non-smoker's cough that persists for more than two weeks, persistent chest, shoulder, or back pain unrelated to pain from coughing, change in color or amount of sputum, wheezing, recurrent pneumonia, fatigue, loss of appetite, headache, bone pain, aching joints, bone fractures not related to injury, neck and facial swelling or unexpected weight loss

• Diagnosing lung cancer: Early detection of lung cancer is critical to improving chances of survival.

• Lung cancer and you? More than 87% of lung cancers are smoking related. However, not all smokers develop lung cancer. Quitting smoking reduces an individual's risk significantly, although former smokers remain at greater risk for lung cancer than people who never smoked. Exposure to other carcinogens such as asbestos and radon gas also increases an individual's risk, especially when combined with cigarette or cigar smoking.

• They caused it, they should not get more funding: Some people feel that lung cancer and AIDS should be penalized because behavioral issues result in one becoming ill with those diseases. If one were to adopt that approach, what would be the penalty to Type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease funding because some of those patients are overweight? The dismay of patients whose behavior was not a factor in their illness and who feel a sense of unfairness because their disease is getting poor funding is completely understandable, however, it is simply not mathematically possible to calculate funding based on behavior. The FAIR Foundation insures all diseases will receive fair and equitable funding with its allocation factors. See here.

• Fairness? The NIH is spending $1,829 in research per lung cancer death (a, b & c) with a $300 million budget versus $162,624 per AIDS death with a $3 Billion research budget.

You have helped us grow rapidly, but we need more members to change Congress and the NIH. Please encourage new membership by posting this in chat rooms, Blogs, internet support groups, and by forwarding it to your associates, friends and relatives with your recommendation that they join free HERE. With strength in numbers, we WILL achieve fair and equitable NIH distributions for Lung Cancer as well as ALL other diseases. 

Information on lung cancer reproduced from "Lungcancer.org sponsored by CancerCare, American Cancer Society,  and the National Cancer Institute


The FAIR Foundation
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E-mail: FAIR@dc.rr.com

FAIR Mission Statement: The FAIR Foundation is dedicated to fair and equitable distribution of research funds by the government for all diseases, including the 16 that kill a million more Americans than AIDS. A disease’s mortality rate shall be given emphasis in determining allocations and other secondary factors shall be utilized to insure diseases that cause great suffering but have low mortality rates will also receive significantly increased funding.