Lung cancer leads in death, but not in research funds
For every dollar available to lung cancer researchers in this country, (my) colleagues who study prostate cancer can divide up $6. The disparity is even greater for breast cancer, where $9 is spent by the government for every one spent on lung cancer research.
Yet, for the 20th consecutive year, more women will die of lung cancer this year than of breast cancer.
The disparity between funding and mortality is consistent with a lukewarm commitment from the scientific community to study lung cancer as well. The number of investigators studying rare cancers such as those derived from bone marrow far exceeds the number studying lung cancer. State governments also miss the boat on this issue, as many use their tobacco settlement money to balance their budgets — or worse — and not to address the tobacco-related illnesses this money was intended to combat.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 10:23 am and is filed under Research, Education, Other News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.