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)

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?

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.

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.

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)

After the Pennsylvania State University board of trustees fired football coach Joe Paterno in a phone call, his wife of 50 years, Sue, impulsively rang back to let her feelings be known. "After 61 years, he deserved better," she was quoted as telling John Surma, the board vice president. That was in November 2011, not quite 15 months ago. Since then, Sue Paterno has been largely silent about the way her husband's legacy and his final weeks of life were engulfed by the Jerry Sandusky child-abuse scandal.

Question: I can't stand my best friend's boyfriend. He's passive-aggressive and is always making snarky, spiteful comments. It's common for him to join activities in which he has no interest, and then disparage anyone or anything involved. And rather than express his feelings honestly, he keeps them bottled up until he explodes in a fit of snarkiness. I love my friend but I'm running out of excuses for not hanging out with him. What should I do? Tell him I can't stand his boyfriend and risk losing a friend I value, or accept that the price of admission is putting up with his soul-sucking boyfriend?

Sol Yurick, 87, whose street-gang novel The Warriors was adapted into a film of the same title that became a cult favorite, has died. His daughter, Susanna Yurick, said the author died of complications from lung cancer Jan. 5 at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan. A native and longtime resident of New York City, he drew upon his years working in the Welfare Department for The Warriors , his first book, which came out in 1965. The movie, released in 1979, was directed by Walter Hill and substantially changed from Mr. Yurick's book.