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Is Lung Cancer Becoming a Woman's Disease?

By Henry J. Fishman, M.D.
ConsumerAffairs.com

February 3, 2006

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Over the last 70 years, the death rate for lung cancer in women has gone up nearly 600 percent. In 1987, it passed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer death in women.

All this at a time when lung cancer death rates among men are declining.

Why? Simple answer: women smoke too much. The number of male smokers has been cut in half in the last 40 years, while the number of women smokers has declined only 25 percent.

Today, 25 percent of U.S. women smoke and the numbers are even higher among teen-agers and overseas in Africa and Asia. Even 13 to 22 percent of pregnant women smoke.

Most women smokers begin as teen-agers. Despite government warnings, school programs and expensive cigarettes, the prevalence of smoking among teen-aged girls increased in the 1990s.

Thirty percent of high school senior girls say they smoke, usually to feel independent, be cool or lose weight.

The tobacco companies aren't helping. They spent nearly $7 billion on ads last year, up 50 percent over five years ago.

Just to make matters worse, some studies have found that women are more susceptible to lung cancer. Genetics, the hormone estrogen and the inability to destroy cancer cells may all play a role.

The good news: women get different kinds of lung cancer than men and respond better to chemotherapy.

Women should talk to their doctors about lung cancer, and all Americans need to take the problem of smoking more seriously.

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