CAP Lung Cancer Medical Writers’ Circle

If you have browsed the American Cancer Society or National Cancer Institute’s web sites, or read some of the other articles written by the CAP Medical Writers, you will note the high incidence rate for lung cancer. Roughly 219,440 people were expected to be diagnosed in 2009 alone [1, 2]. This number exceeds that of breast (192,370), prostate (192,280) and colon & rectum cancers (146,970). An even larger gap exists in the survival and mortality rates between lung cancer and these other top cancers. The first question that comes to anyone with a modicum of critical thought is, “Why does such a disparity exist?” Why are the survival rates so much lower for lung cancer than these other cancers? One might consider that the low level of funding allocated to this disease dissuades researchers from pursuing lung cancer research, thus inhibiting the path to a cure or an agent that slows the tumors’ growth. However, we can ask again, “Why does such a disparity exist . . . in funding?” Some speculate that the small funding dollars are the result of stigma due to cigarette smoking [3].