Women's lung cancer death rate almost the same as men's

Submitted by Mastodon on Wed, 2013-01-23 23:48

Article here. Excerpt:

'U.S. women who smoke today have a much greater risk of dying from lung cancer than they did decades ago, partly because they are starting younger and smoking more - that is, they are lighting up like men, new research shows.

Men who smoke have long had higher lung cancer death rates, but now women have caught up in their risk of dying from smoking-related illnesses. Lung cancer risk leveled off in the 1980s for men but is still rising for women, the study found.

"It's a massive failure in prevention," said one study leader, Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society. And it's likely to repeat itself in places like China and Indonesia where smoking is growing, he said. About 1.3 billion people worldwide smoke.
...
Smoking needs more attention as a health hazard, Dr. Steven A. Schroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary in the journal.

"More women die of lung cancer than of breast cancer. But there is no `race for the cure' for lung cancer, no brown ribbon" or high-profile advocacy groups for lung cancer, he wrote.'

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Comments

It's really bad this is happening. But of course it's also just as bad that for many years, men have been dying from cigarette smoking at these rates. But efforts to get people to stop smoking have been targeted at the general population. Women's smoking rates have historically been less than men's but addressing men's health protection due to smoking has never come up as such in the context of addressing the problem as it relates to men.

Suddenly women are dropping dead from cigarette smoking at nearly the same rate as men and BLAM!, it's a national emergency. Guess the problem of people dropping dead due to self-destructive habits is only a real serious problem if it's women doing it. Suicude gets treated the same way. Men offing themselves? Meh. Women offing themselves? Arrghhh, quick, do something!!

And people wonder where men get their Disposable Male Syndrome from.

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Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2013-01-24 03:13