Lung Health News, Fall 2002 / Winter 2003
Victoria Colgan knew she was in trouble when she started coughing up blood in the summer of 1997. Three months later she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
When Colgan started smoking at age 13, she didn’t know the cards were stacked against her. Like other teens, she thought she was invincible. But that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. In fact, women who smoke may be twice as likely as men who smoke to develop lung cancer, according to a study released last year. This has serious implications because smoking has not declined among women at the same rates it has for men and an alarming one-third of female high school seniors smoke.
Jill Siegfried, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, suggests that women may be more susceptible to adverse effects from smoking due to their higher levels of the hormone oestrogen, which has been linked to other cancers.
Lung Cancer Kills More Women
Lung cancer will kill about 68,000 women this year, more women than breast cancer and ovarian cancer combined. It is the leading cause of cancer deaths among both men and women, with a five- year survival rate of less than 15 percent.
Yet the disease is almost as preventable as it is deadly because nearly 90 percent of lung cancer cases are smoking-related. The problem is, teens begin smoking before they understand the health risks and then they become addicted.
"It’s an incredibly powerful addiction," says Colgan, 54, who quit smoking two years before she was diagnosed with lung cancer. "I had tried to quit many times over the years."
The San Francisco resident started smoking because her older sister smoked. Both her parents smoked as well.
‘You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby’
Fifty years ago, lung cancer in women was rare. Since then, lung cancer mortality rates for women have jumped 600 percent.
"We have clearly seen an epidemic of lung cancer among women in the last 40 years," says California Thoracic Society member Paul Brunetta, MD, who has worked with cancer patients for the last four years at Mount Zion Cancer Center.
The rise in lung cancer among women can be directly correlated to the increase in smoking among women in the 1940s, not long after tobacco companies began heavily marketing their products to the female sex.
In 1968, Virginia Slims cigarettes capitalized on the changing role of women with its "You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby" ad campaign, which linked smoking with freedom and independence. Within six years after the ads first appeared, the number of 12-year-old girls who smoked increased 110 percent, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Colgan says advertising definitely played a role in her decision to smoke. That’s why she volunteers for the American Lung Association speaking out about tobacco advertising.
"My sister looked cool smoking because of advertising," she says. "The ads all conveyed that this was a glamorous adult activity."
Carol Burnett Reaches Out
Unfortunately for impressionable girls and young women, they are bombarded by advertising and by images of beautiful young female stars who smoke. While it seems so many young female celebrities from Kate Hudson to Winona Ryder are lighting up, others are trying to raise awareness about the dangers of smoking and lung disease.
Veteran comedian and entertainer Carol Burnett knows all too well the pain smoking and lung cancer can cause. In January 2002 she lost her daughter Carrie, a longtime smoker, to lung cancer. Carrie Hamilton was only 38.
Burnett has decided to reach out to others who are addicted to cigarettes by helping the American Lung Association raise awareness about its Freedom From Smoking® Online quit-smoking program, which is available to everyone at no cost. She has agreed to tape a public service announcement promoting the program.
More Research Needed
Colgan says lung cancer is a difficult disease to have because there is often a "blame the victim" mentality.
"One of the unintended consequences of the campaign against smoking is we’ve completely eliminated any sympathy for people who get lung cancer because it is seen as self-inflicted," she says. "That may be why lung cancer is so under-funded compared with other diseases."
In 1999, lung cancer research received about $900 per death, compared to $9,000 per breast cancer death, $3,500 per prostate cancer death and $2,300 per colorectal cancer death.
"The American Lung Association does a great job with prevention and helping people quit smoking," she says. "But we need more research."
