Lung Cancer

A Philadelphia biologist yesterday reported the discovery of a gene that may be a key player in lung cancer, the nation's leading cancer killer. If the discovery is borne out by further studies, it could lead to treatments and diagnostic tests for a disease that is expected to kill 143,000 Americans this year, said Carlo M. Croce, a molecular geneticist at Temple University and a member of the scientific team that made the discovery. Croce is internationally recognized in the rapidly expanding field of molecular genetics, which in the years ahead appears likely to solve a host of medicine's long-standing mysteries.

Blasting lung cancer with radiation and chemotherapy at the same time is more effective than using one after the other - the current standard treatment, according to a new study. Researchers with the Radiation Therapy Oncology group, a federally funded cancer clinical-trials group based in Philadelphia, found that while side effects from treatment were more severe with "concurrent" therapy, patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, which is generally caused by smoking, lived an average of 2.5 months longer - 17.1 months versus 14.6 months.

Rosalind Brannigan recently resigned as vice president of Drug Strategies, a nonprofit research institute Dana Reeve's announcement and Peter Jennings' death are casting a spotlight on a dirty secret about lung cancer: You don't have to be a smoker to get it. This year, deaths from lung cancer will exceed the number of deaths from almost every other cancer combined, and even people who gave up smoking decades ago, and people who have never...

CANCER-TREATMENT VAGARIES. If you've got lung cancer, you're more likely to undergo surgery, radiation treatment or chemotherapy if you're married and have private medical insurance. But if you're over 75, you're less likely. So says a report in today's New England Journal of Medicine, which concludes that social and economic considerations can play as big a role as medical factors in lung-cancer treatment. Said the report: "The greater frequency of surgery in patients with lung cancer who were married suggests . . . doctors treated married patients more aggressively, perhaps attempting to cure when they would otherwise (ease the pain)

Periodically, rumors circulate in Miami and Washington about the health of Cuban President Fidel Castro - mostly that he is dying, is dead or has been assassinated. In all cases, the rumors are quickly denied and laid to rest. Yesterday was one of those days. A small item in this week's edition of Time magazine quoting Soviet officials as saying Castro has lung cancer prompted Miami's Spanish-language radio stations to broadcast the report and U.S. officials in Washington to scramble for the latest data on the Cuban leader's health.

I call you a dirty, low-down, good-for-nothing son of a gun. You sue me. Your lawyers furnish solid evidence that you shower daily. I publicly retract "dirty" while standing behind "low-down, good-for-nothing son of a gun. " I pay your legal fees and we call it quits. At that point, are you going to crow to the world about your great victory? The answer is yes, if you manufacture a product that is addictive, a chief cause of lung cancer and emphysema and a contributing cause of heart disease and which most users become habituated to while they are children or teenagers.

Tammy Faye Messner has been the butt of jokes most of her professional life, especially when she served as wife of disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker. But now the author of the self-help tome I Will Survive . . . And You Will, Too!, has some very serious news to share. Messner, 62, told CNN's Larry King on Thursday that she has inoperable lung cancer. "God knows I'm scared," she said. "But it's not wrong to be scared. " But she also struck an upbeat note, telling one caller that she "believes in miracles" and another that she is considering holistic medicine in addition to chemotherapy to treat her illness.

Willard G. Rouse 3d, developer of Liberty Place and chairman of the long effort to build the new Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, is undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer this weekend at Fox Chase Cancer Center. "I'm feeling fine, except that I've got a time bomb ticking inside of me. That's the price you pay for smoking," he said in a telephone interview yesterday. After the three treatments this weekend, there will be an 18-day break before more treatment, Rouse said.

Dodgers Hall of Fame shortstop Pee Wee Reese is undergoing five weeks of radiation treatment for lung cancer, according to friends. Reese, 78, who overcame prostate cancer years ago, had a lung tumor removed that was malignant, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday. Reese, who also is recovering from a broken hip, started radiation treatments a week ago. He will undergo 25 treatments - five days a week for five weeks - in Venice, Fla. "He looks fine, but he's not real well," said Buzzie Bavasi, the former Dodgers general manager, who saw Reese at a Hall of Fame Veterans Committee meeting last week in Tampa.

Larry Gilbert, a three-time winner on the Senior PGA Tour who was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer last September, died yesterday in Lexington, Ky. He was 55. Gilbert, who won the Senior Players Championship in July, was diagnosed Sept. 2 during a routine physical. He was one of four senior tour members diagnosed with cancer in 1997. Arnold Palmer and Jim Colbert had prostate surgery, and Bruce Devlin had his right kidney removed. Gilbert was the only one of the four whose condition could not be treated.

Christopher Fifis, Nick Fifis, and John Fifis are the owners of Ponzio's Diner & Bakery Bar in Cherry Hill Growing up as sons of a first-generation Greek immigrant, we learned early about the value of hard work and family. As the owner of Ponzio's Diner in Cherry Hill, our dad spent almost every day for more than two decades greeting guests and entertaining them with his dry wit and sense of humor. We had dinner at the diner almost every night because our dad was always working, and when we were old enough, he put us to work there, too. On the rare occasion that our dad did take time off for a family vacation, we all piled into the car to head to Wildwood for a week, with Greek music turned up as loud as we could stand.

Days before he died, Fred McGraw realized that he would never know who killed his daughter - a mother of two shot execution-style behind the Jericho Fire Company in Deptford Township. Thursday marks seven years since Desiree McGraw, 27, was found dead. She had been a good student and an all-star pitcher in Audubon, Camden County, before her life took a tragic turn: She lived for three years on the streets of Camden, addicted to drugs. "On his deathbed, he made me promise him that I won't give up, and I won't," said McGraw's other daughter, Jennifer, 35, who helped care for her father at his Maple Shade home.

Marshall Lytle, 79, the original bass player for Bill Haley & His Comets, one of the first bands to take rock 'n' roll mainstream, died Saturday at his home in New Port Richey, Fla., said a niece, Shayna Golda. He was diagnosed with lung cancer this year. Mr. Lytle recorded hits like "Rock Around the Clock" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll" with Haley in the 1950s. He was known for his percussive bass style, slapping the strings as he played. He would sometimes take the bass over his head or ride it like a surfboard.

THE FEDERAL JURY that last week convicted North Philadelphia drug kingpin Kaboni Savage of 12 counts of murder began hearing arguments yesterday for his execution or for spending what's left of his life in an 8-by-10-foot cell in a "supermax" prison in Florence, Colo. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Troyer portrayed him as a vengeful, rage-filled, unrepentant murderer. Defense attorney William Purpura told the jurors that Savage was a victim of the mean streets after losing his father to cancer at age 13, but that he had grown into a mentor for his children and his older sister's children.

Connie Williams, 72, a community activist who worked with children and police to keep her East Camden neighborhood safe, died early Saturday, May 18, of lung cancer. Ms. Williams ran after-school and summer crime-prevention programs in an effort to keep children active and away from drugs. For the last decade, she had been president of the East Side Civic Association in Camden. "It's a sad day for the city," Camden County Police Chief Scott Thomson said. "Miss Connie was a mother hen to the children of East Camden.

At the chemical plant in Toms River, nylon stockings would melt on the legs of secretaries sent on errands to production buildings. Noxious, colored smoke rose from the plant's stacks. Its effluent tinted the river, and fish caught there had a strange taste. At a nearby kids' swimming hole, a guy who took a dip came out with purplish foam clinging to his body. So when the children of Toms River began to be diagnosed with cancer - so many that one hospital doctor commented, "Another one from Toms River" - it was the plant's fault, right?

Bobbie Smith, 76, a former lead singer of the Spinners, has died in Orlando, Fla. A statement released Monday by the manager of the rhythm-and-blues group said Mr. Smith died Saturday of complications from pneumonia and influenza. The statement said he had been diagnosed with lung cancer in November. Mr. Smith was the group's original lead singer and was the voice on its first hit, "That's What Girls Are Made For. " The group earned nearly a dozen gold records and a half-dozen Grammy nominations.

As Maria Grasso sees it, people are dying because people aren't talking. So she is talking. " 'Have you had a colonoscopy?' I work that into every conversation," said Grasso, of Mount Laurel, who organized the fifth annual "Get Your Rear in Gear" race and walk in Fairmount Park on Sunday to benefit colorectal cancer research and treatment. Her father and grandfather died of it. Embarrassment, she said, often keeps people from talking about symptoms and from getting a colonoscopy, the test used to detect the nation's second-most fatal cancer.

Mary Louise Vitale, 62, of Center City, a former teacher and financial services worker who did volunteer work to help people affected by cancer, died Monday, March 4, of lung cancer at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. After a career in education and financial services, Ms. Vitale served as a volunteer at the Cancer Support Community of Philadelphia. The organization, formerly known as the Wellness Community of Philadelphia, provides emotional and educational support for cancer patients and their loved ones.

For Claudia Dowling Burzichelli's father, who had Parkinson's disease, death came quickly. "A day after being released from the hospital, he blew his brains out," she told a New Jersey Assembly committee Thursday. "Actually, he didn't. He used a special bullet so that everything wouldn't splatter all over the house. " Burzichelli, 54, a Bridgewater resident who herself is in the late stages of lung cancer, wants the option to end her own life less violently. By adopting a bill sponsored by her brother-in-law Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D., Gloucester)