Young cancer survivor touches senator

from NEWS & RECORD
news-record.com

Greensboro, North Carolina
By: Doug Clark, Staff Writer

LA Daily News reports: Equality and better treatment sought for lung cancer patients

As an emergency physician, Dr. Michael Weitz battles illnesses to save the lives of others.

In his own personal fight with lung cancer, he is battling the stigma that his disease carries.
Weitz, who is one of the 215,000 people diagnosed each year with lung cancer, knows what others think: "You did it to yourself," the Woodland Hills man said.

But Weitz never smoked cigarettes - did nothing he knows of that would infect the delicate tissue of his lungs.

Yet even for those with lung cancer who have never smoked, the condition comes with a negative stereotype. They often are asked, "Did you smoke?"

It's a perception health advocates say needs to be shattered. Why, they ask, should state or federal funding toward the detection and treatment of lung cancer be any different than, say, for illnesses associated with obesity, alcoholism or other kinds of cancer?

"We have to get to the point of saying it doesn't matter," said Kim Norris, a Los Angeles resident who founded the Lung Cancer Foundation of America.

The foundation's goal is to raise enough funds to lead to lung cancer research and treatment. The five-year survival rates for all stages of lung cancer haven't changed in decades, a result of little progress toward finding better treatments, Norris said.

Norris and others note that research for lung cancer treatment remains "under-funded, under-researched and under-reported," because government funders view it as the "the black sheep" of cancers.

"Just because smoking is legal - and the Department of Defense once handed out cigarettes during wars - doesn't mean (those who smoked) deserve (lung cancer)."

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May's Issue of Woman's Health Magazine reports: When a Fit Body Fails You

Being active, not smoking, and eating right can go a long way toward protecting you against lung cancer. But it's not always enough.

Emily Miner gave up smoking at age 6. "I was on a camping trip with my cousins," the 39-year-old Californian recalls. As the family sat around the campfire, her uncle lit a cigar. Intrigued by the sharp scent of the smoke, Emily persuaded him to let her try it. "I took a huge puff and turned green," she says. "That was it for me."

Thirty years later, Emily was a picture of healthy living: She ran a family winery in Napa Valley with her husband, Dave, had two young daughters, and was training for a half—marathon. So the discovery that a deadly disease was ravaging her was nothing short of shocking.

It started out as back pain, a recurring twinge. When an MRI showed a tumor on her spine and spots on her lungs, Emily and her oncologist assumed it must be breast cancer that had spread, a diagnosis not unknown in young, healthy women. No one was prepared for the biopsy result, which showed that Emily had lung cancer that had metastasized to her spine.

The number of lung cancer deaths among American women has grown by 600 percent since 1950. The disease is highly fatal, killing more women each year than breast and all gynecologic cancers combined. Today, one in every 16 women will develop lung cancer. And though the increase in its incidence is most likely due to a surge in the number of women smokers, nonsmokers aren't immune, says Michael Thun, M.D., vice president emeritus and research director of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

"No one's risk is zero," Emily says emphatically. "Look at me."

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