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Mercury News (Associated
Press), August 10, 2005.
By Marilynn Marchione
Genetics does play role
in disease, experts say
When Dana Reeve, widow of "Superman"
star Christopher Reeve, announced Tuesday that she is
battling lung cancer, she highlighted a situation that
is not that uncommon: She does not smoke. Although most
lung cancers do occur in smokers, 1 in 5 women diagnosed
with the disease have never lit a cigarette, doctors
say. Yet they share an unfortunate stigma with all lung-cancer
patients.
"The underlying assumption is you were
a smoker and you caused this, therefore you're not going
to get my sympathy,'" said Tom Labrecque Jr., who started
a foundation to raise awareness after his non-smoker
father died several years ago of the disease.
Doctors say people who get lung cancer early in life,
like the 44-year-old Reeve, are more likely to have
genetic factors fueling their disease. Only 3 percent
of lung cancers occur in people under 45, regardless
of smoking status.
Sandy Britt of Alameda was told she had
terminal cancer last year, several years after developing
a bad cough and hoarse voice. The 47-year-old museum
docent lost her father to lung cancer 16 years ago,
and her brother, who was only 42, in 1998. She believes
genetics are to blame.
"I hate smoking. I deplore it. I do everything
I can to get away from it," she said. "That's what's
so sadly ironic about this."
Reeve, an actress who leads a paralysis
research foundation named for her husband, who died
last year, gave no details Tuesday on how she is being
treated or where.
Reeve's announcement came two days after
ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, a smoker who had quit
and later started again, died of lung cancer at age
67.
Despite their different smoking histories,
they share the most common cancer in the world, and
the deadliest. This year in the United States, an estimated
93,010 men and 79,560 women will be diagnosed with lung
cancer and almost an equal number -- 90,490 men and
73,020 women -- will die of it.
About 10 percent of men and 20 percent
of women with lung cancer never smoked, and the number
of non-smokers with the disease does not seem to be
rising significantly, said Dr. Michael Thun, chief epidemiologist
for the American Cancer Society.
But awareness may be on the rise because of the aggressive
anti-smoking campaigns in recent years. And the stigma
may be rising, too.
"When people get breast cancer, people
say, `What can I do to help you?' When people get lung
cancer, people say, `Did you smoke?' " said Susan Mantel,
executive director of Joan's Legacy, a fundraising group
named for Joan Scarangello, a non-smoker and former
head writer for news anchor Tom Brokaw. Scarangello
died in 2001 of lung cancer, as did her non-smoking
mother before her.
Doctors who treat the disease, like Dr. Bruce Johnson
of Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston, bristle at the
notion of ``innocent'' and "not-so-innocent" victims.
Britt believes that lung-cancer research
has been poorly funded compared with other kinds of
cancers because society has a tendency to blame the
victims. She hopes that that attitude will begin to
change.
"If Dana Reeve can get lung cancer and
I can get lung cancer," she said, "anyone can get
it."
Mercury News Staff Writer Julie
Sevrens Lyons and Associated Press Staff Writer Jim
Fitzgerald in White Plains, N.Y., contributed to this
report.
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