Lung cancer groups, however, have struggled to attract attention. Pink ribbons have graced items including pistols and fried chicken buckets, becoming so ubiquitous that some now question whether the cause has become too commercialized. The White House is lit pink each October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In contrast, breast cancer advocates have raised millions through everything from road races to galas. “There’s not much time to fit a walkathon in,” he said. Most people are diagnosed at an advanced stage and die within six months, said Jeffrey Borgia, a cancer researcher at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Part of the challenge is that the disease is so deadly that there is no critical mass of survivors to raise its public profile. Making that moon-shot will mean convincing the public and policymakers that lung cancer victims are worthy of support. We sent people to the moon by saying, “‘That’s what we want to do.’ And then we figured out how to do it.” “We didn’t send people to the moon because we happened to have a rocket ship sitting around. In their view, it could set the entire cancer research field back by leading to a quota system for research on specific cancers instead of funding the most cutting-edge science that will advance the field overall.Ĭarbone, however, says unless a portion of federal funds are specifically directed to lung cancer, advances in the field will remain baby steps. And many influential scientists, such as the head of the National Cancer Institute, balk at letting pressure from advocates influence research priorities. “We are at a precipice where we could really break through,” said Kim Norris, president of the Lung Cancer Foundation of America.īut these advances have come at a time when funding for research is scarce. Recent breakthroughs in cancer genetics and lung cancer screening have added urgency to advocates’ calls for more money for lung cancer research, which will get $231.2 million this year from the two main federal agencies funding such work. We need to take care of those who are sick and need to do everything we can from a public policy perspective to reduce the number of people at risk in the future.” David Carbone, a leading lung cancer researcher at Ohio State University, added, “This is a public health problem that needs to be addressed, regardless of how it came about. “Health care providers, scientists, politicians, patients’ family members and the patients themselves all bear some burden of the responsibility for the fact that lung cancer research is grossly underfunded,” Aberle said. Researchers estimate that another roughly 50 percent of lung cancer cases involve former smokers who quit the habit years ago. If lung cancer in never-smokers were considered a separate disease, it would still be the sixth-leading cancer killer in the U.S., ahead of liver, ovarian and esophageal cancers. In fact, an estimated 15 percent of lung cancers are diagnosed in people who never smoked. They also cite the paradoxical invisibility of a disease that claims so many lives but has few champions of the sort who have made breast cancer a cherished cause. Advocates say efforts to improve lung cancer patients’ chances have been stalled by unexamined biases among health officials and the public as well as by scant research funds. But there will be no victory without winning the battle against lung cancer, which causes more than one in four U.S. It has been 41 years since President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, effectively declaring war on cancer. In 2011, the two federal agencies providing most of the research money funded breast cancer research at a rate of $21,641 per death while spending $1,489 per lung cancer death. The discrepancy is starkest when death rates are taken into account. Yet while lung cancer remains largely a death sentence - just 15.9 percent of those diagnosed are alive five years later - the federal government funds far less research on the disease than on other common cancers.
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