Lung Cancer

The lung cancer support group meeting had been going on for some minutes when David and Joan Frieder walked nervously into the room. The news was grim. After years of almost continuous chemo, treatments that left David wretchedly ill but not cured, he could endure no more. "So I'm in hospice now," said the 66-year-old retired stockbroker from Bala Cynwyd, beginning to cry and waving at Joan to continue their story. Soon Joan was crying, too. "I felt sort of guilty coming here today," she said.

AstraZeneca P.L.C.'s new cancer drug Iressa was approved yesterday by the Food and Drug Administration to treat advanced-stage lung cancer patients who have exhausted traditional chemotherapy. The FDA approved Iressa, a once-a-day, 250-milligram tablet, to treat non-small-cell lung cancer that has progressed despite treatment with chemotherapy. The ruling is important not only for London-based AstraZeneca, with its U.S. headquarters and 4,000 employees based near Wilmington, but also for seriously ill patients who now have another option.

For residents in this waterfront town, where factories once ruled and where the plywood-patched shells of that industry now stand, there was good news in a study by the state Department of Health and Senior Services. The study, released two weeks ago, found that overall cancer rates were not elevated at the Welsbach Superfund site, which lies in Gloucester City and Camden and contains the remnants of two gas mantle factories that closed in the 1940s. There also was some bad news, however.

Willard Rouse 3d says he's taking on lung cancer the way he's taken on a long list of seemingly insurmountable business and civic challenges. "I've told the doctors that I'm an incredibly egocentric person. Hopefully, it comes out as a positive thing. The fact that the odds are poor, and the stakes are high just means I'll be more satisfied by the win. "Take book on it. I'm going to beat the odds," Rouse, 59, said in his first interview since his devastating diagnosis was announced Jan. 2. For more than two decades, Rouse has been the region's go-to civic leader and a force in real estate development.

The urgency in the caller's voice was palpable, her message heartbreaking. Just days before Christmas, Kathleen Maurer was about to begin chemotherapy for stage IV lung cancer. After a month of treatment for what doctors thought was bronchitis, X-rays revealed a 4 1/2-inch tumor in her left lung and many smaller nodules throughout both lungs. Within two weeks, the 33-year-old Yardley homemaker, a nonsmoker, was in and out of Pennsylvania Hospital and scheduled to begin an aggressive regimen of the anti-cancer drugs Taxol and Carboplatin.

Lung cancer takes more lives than any other cancer. This year it will kill an estimated 160,340 Americans, more than breast, colon, and prostate cancers combined. Yet while lung cancer remains largely a death sentence - just 15.9 percent of those diagnosed are alive five years later - the federal government funds far less research on the disease than on other common cancers. The discrepancy is starkest when death rates are taken into account. In 2011, the two federal agencies providing most of the research money funded breast cancer research at a rate of $21,641 per death while spending $1,489 per lung cancer death.

A letter by M. T. Jarvis of Meadowbrook (June 24) accused the institution of which I am president of a badly flawed study concerning the relationship between air pollution and lung cancer. First, the author seems to believe that we have come to a conclusion. We have put forth a hypothesis that is being tested in a way that will permit a conclusion. Since the data show an increase in lung cancer in men but not women in the same area, the hypothesis is that it is difficult to believe the cause of lung cancer is a general environmental one rather than a specific one related to the behavior or experience of the men. We all believe air pollution is undesirable.

When Heather Saler was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2003, she was determined to do something about it. A nonsmoker, she was bothered by the stigma surrounding lung cancer victims, and frustrated when looking for a coherent, national movement dedicated to funding lung cancer research, such as the Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer. When her treatment was completed, Saler reached out to the LUNGevity Foundation, a small group in Chicago. She started a chapter of the foundation in South Jersey and organized the first South Jersey Lung Cancer Walk in 2004.

Lung cancer cases among men have dropped significantly, the National Cancer Institute reported yesterday in its annual statistical survey. Overall, the institute said, death rates for all cancers were "essentially stable . . . for both blacks and whites" from 1973 to 1985, the last year covered in the survey. But analysis showed markedly differing trends for a number of cancer sites. For example, lung cancer incidence was down from 84 cases per 100,000 white men in 1984 to 80.5 in 1985 and from 135.5 to 124.7 for black men. The institute attributed the decrease to a decline in cigarette smoking.