WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is being issued by the Lung Cancer Alliance:
We are disappointed that the American Cancer Society (ACS) would paint such a rosy picture in releasing their annual report on cancer statistics yesterday.
While ACS cites what they call historic drops and milestones in the fight against cancer, their own figures demonstrate that this does not hold true for lung cancer.
Contrary to what their press release claims, the incidence of lung cancer continued to rise in both men and women and the death rate in women is still going up.
More disheartening is that the five-year-survival-rate for lung cancer is still only 15%, even now, 35 years after Congress passed the War on Cancer Act, and even as the five-year-survival-rates for the most common other cancers -- colon, breast and prostate -- have climbed to 64%, 87% and 97% respectively.
According to the actual figures released, the number of men diagnosed with lung cancer in the period from 1997-2001 was 90 per every 100,000 of population. The number of men diagnosed with lung cancer for the most recent five-year period, 1998-2002, is 90.1 per every 100,000 of population.
The number of women diagnosed with lung cancer in the period 1997-2002 was 54 per 100,000 of population and for the period of 1998-2002 that rate rose to 54.6 per 100,000 of population.
The death rate, the number of men dying of lung cancer per 100,000 in population, did drop from 77.9 to 76.3.
However, the death rate for women is still going up and there has been a very disturbing increase in the number of non-smoking younger women being diagnosed now with lung cancer.
The bottom line is that we still have an average of 447 people a day dying of lung cancer and this cannot go on.
Tobacco control alone is not enough. In addition we must increase dollars for research and early detection.
Lung Cancer Alliance
CONTACT: Kay Cofrancesco of the Lung Cancer Alliance, +1-202-463-2080
Web site: http://www.lungcanceralliance.org/
