Fighting a lag in funding, patients push for new tests
Jump to full article: Boston (MA) Globe, 2002-06-23
Author: Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, 6/23/2002
Intro: They think: `People cause it themselves, so why should we pay money for them?' The very first question is always: `Did you smoke?'''
Parles's effort to raise funds to combat lung cancer is about to get an enormous boost. This summer, the National Institutes of Health will begin a landmark $200 million lung cancer research trial. About 50,000 Americans will be recruited to determine whether a special computerized scan can provide early detection.
As many as 15 percent of women and 5 percent of men who contract lung cancer had never smoked, according to government estimates. The reasons remain uncertain, but some cases may be associated with other carcinogens. Genetic factors may also come into play.
The NIH initiative itself has generated ire and controversy.
Some scientists argue that the scans, whose reliability has not been proven, will generate a large number of false positives, alarming patients and wasting resources. Others assert that far from rushing into things, the NIH may be unnecessarily delaying widespread use of the screening to conduct its study.
Patients, doctors, and researchers have stakes in the trial. Across the biotechnology industry, companies are beginning to increase lung cancer research, partly in anticipation of a boom in early detection.
Some companies have developed pills called ''molecule inhibitors'' that may reduce the impact of lung cancer. And there is hope that detecting lung cancer early will allow surgical removal of a cancerous lesion with 1-inch incisions for endoscopic surgery, rather than the current procedure, which involves cutting a 1-foot-long gap in the chest and removing all or part of a lung.
For now, there is no government-certified way to screen patients for lung cancer. And by the time symptoms appear, the cancer is usually untreatable.
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Quotes from this article:
For breast cancer, we wear a pink ribbon, but for lung cancer the ribbon is clear because it is the invisible disease.
Michelle Slattery Tuohey, who works with the Cancer Care organization to try to ease the stigma of lung cancer. A Boston Globe article examines the lung-cancer screening debate. Kranish, M.
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