Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S., more than breast, prostate, colon and pancreatic cancers combined. Ten to 15 percent of people diagnosed each year were never smokers. But the stigma that it’s their fault haunts patients, support groups and even research funding.
Dir. National Cancer Registry: Dr. Owizz Koroma, Dir. Thinking Pink Breast Cancer Foundation: Mrs. Crimilda Pratt, and Founder and Team Leader of Rowaca Cancer Group: Alpha Bedoh Kamara
CHICAGO — November was Lung Cancer Awareness Month, but you’d never know it.
Shoppers aren’t bombarded by products in blue, the color designated by some to raise the profile of the disease.
No NFL players or coaches wore blue-ribboned apparel, despite donning pink just a month earlier for breast cancer.
“It just doesn’t seem fair,” said Meghan O’Brien, 31, a nonsmoker diagnosed with stage 4 of the disease last year. There is no stage 5.
The lack of buzz is especially perplexing because lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, claiming more lives than breast, prostate, colon and pancreatic cancers combined.
The five-year survival rate is just 16 percent — a statistic that has barely budged since 1975, according to the American Cancer Society.
But lung cancer is seen as a tobacco-related illness that patients bring upon themselves.
About 10 to 15 percent of the roughly 228,000 people diagnosed with lung cancer each year were never smokers, according to the LUNGevity Foundation, a Chicago-based support organization.
Stigma negatively affects everything from emotional support to the anemic November awareness campaign. Even in obituaries, family members feel compelled to include the “nonsmoker” status, lest the deceased be unfairly judged.
However, nowhere is the disparity felt more acutely than in funding research.
The National Cancer Institute estimates that $17,835 is spent per breast-cancer death versus $1,378 for lung cancer, even though lung cancer accounts for almost 23,000 deaths annually among nonsmokers.
“If we don’t start paying attention and changing attitudes, we will have a losing battle ahead of us,” said Dr. Ravi Salgia, O’Brien’s oncologist at University of Chicago Medicine.
“In every other disease, the first question people ask is, ‘How can I help?’ But with lung cancer, there’s no empathy. It’s always, ‘Did you smoke?’ After a while, it’s just easier not to say anything,” said Andrea Ferris, president and chair of the LUNGevity Foundation.
In O’Brien’s case, doctors pinpointed a rare genetic mutation, called ALK, created when two normal genes fuse together to form a new, cancer-causing one.
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