By Hannah Hoag
...new studies found that at least 25 percent of cancer’s costs could be attributed to lung cancer. In 2008, an estimated 161,840 people died of the disease in the U.S., far more than died of any other cancer. The researchers further calculated that if lung cancer mortality rates declined by 1 percent annually, the value of life lost in 2020 due to lung cancer would drop from a projected $433 billion to $355 billion. A 4 percent annual decline in these mortality rates would put the estimated value of life lost to lung cancer in 2020 at $192 billion.
“The issue with lung cancer is that we are so naive about what we really know,” says Regina Vidaver, the executive director of the National Lung Cancer Partnership. “We need more knowledge in every single aspect, certainly in understanding [cell] signaling pathways and where they go wrong in cancer initiation and drug-resistance development.”
Even so, Laurie Fenton Ambrose, the president and chief executive officer of the Lung Cancer Alliance, is optimistic that a 1 percent annual decline in mortality is possible with additional funding for lung cancer research, including efforts aimed at finding cancers earlier. “Most cancers that have seen improvements are due to a more robust mechanism to detect their cancers early,” she says.
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