Benjamin Franklin famously remarked that only two things are inevitable: death and taxes. In this era of superior diagnostics, timely treatment, miracle drugs, and breathtaking medical innovation, he might have been tempted to add a third item to the list — serious long-term illness.

Almost every family experiences one: the sort of reverie-piercing, life-rending health event or diagnosis that smacks you upside the head without warning, challenging your finances, belief system, priorities, and plans — frequently when you’re on the phone with your health insurer.

Jennifer Windrum’s video to President Obama asking for a “Beer Summit” – a beer and 15 minutes of his time to talk about the NEW lung cancer. The lung cancer that ANYONE can get. The lung cancer that is no longer a smoker’s disease. The lung cancer that is the #1 cancer killer and the least funded. The lung cancer her mom, Leslie Lehrman, has. No her mom never smoked. The lung cancer that took 22 year-old Jill Costello’s life last month. Jill was coxswain for Cal Women’s Crew and led her team to 2 national championships. The lung cancer Bonnie J Addario, a survivor, has prompted her to start the Bonnie J Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and the Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute, where research advances are taking place. Jennifer borrows Jill Costello’s motto of “Ask. Believe. Receive,” in her appeal to meet with the president, saying she she respectfully asks he meet with her, her mother and Bonnie J Addario for 15 minutes…

Yes, I am respectfully asking President Obama for a beer and 15 minutes of his time to talk about lung cancer – the NEW lung cancer – that ANYONE can get.

Please spread the word by posting this video to your personal Facebook profiles and sending to your friends.

When it comes to advocacy and research money, the leading cancer killer in the United States — lung cancer — clearly gets short shrift. People with the disease are commonly assumed to have brought it upon themselves by smoking. And the 10 percent to 15 percent of lung cancer patients who never smoked are typically tarred with the same brush.

There are two things wrong here, according to clinicians who treat this killer of nearly 160,000 people a year — more than deaths from cancers of the breast, prostate and colon combined.

One is the element of blame, as if all smokers who get lung cancer began smoking and continued to smoke knowing the possible consequences.

Oncimmune offers a blood test for the early diagnosis of lung cancer.

Reporting in the New York Times, Jane Brody notes that the leading cancer killer in the United States — lung cancer — gets short shrift in both advocacy and funding. “People with the disease are commonly assumed to have brought it upon themselves by smoking. And the 10 to 15 percent of lung cancer patients who never smoked are typically tarred with the same brush.”

Analyzing the genes expressed by cancer cells allows for a better understanding of that patient’s specific disease and in turn, a more personalized approach to treatment. But obtaining the RNA from a tumor in the lungs in order to conduct the genetic analysis is a challenging prospect. Currently, lung cancer researchers are limited to using RNA extracted from early-stage tumors removed during surgery. The small quantities of tissue extracted during routine diagnostic biopsies have not been useful to researchers, due to their small size and the variety of ways they have been processed.

Since oftentimes surgery is not an option in advanced lung cancer, genetic analysis of the tumor is critical, there is a need to obtain good quality RNA samples from tumor tissue taken via biopsy, no matter how the biopsy procedure is conducted.

To determine how arsenic increases the risk of lung cancer and to identify potential treatments, a Michigan State University researcher will use $1.7 million in federal funding during the next five years to examine why certain genes disrupt cells, leading to the disease.

Chengfeng Yang, a physiology assistant professor with the College of Veterinary Medicine and MSU’s Center for Integrative Toxicology, will be studying the role of very small ribonucleic acids called microRNAs. These microRNAs regulate genes, which control how a cell behaves.

The research project, which will study those processes in cultured human cells and mice, is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The blame that society puts on lung cancer patients could seriously impede attention and research funding on the disease, a local expert says.

“It gets 3 per cent of the total research funding for all cancers, and yet it is the No. 1 killer,” says Dr. James Gowing, a Flamborough doctor and cochair of the Cancer Advocacy Coalition of Canada (CACC).

WAYNE, N.J. and EMERYVILLE, Calif., June 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals and Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ONXX) today announced that the final analysis of the Phase 3 NExUS (NSCLC research Experience Utilizing Sorafenib) trial evaluating Nexavar® (sorafenib) tablets in patients with advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) showed that the study did not meet its primary endpoint of improving overall survival in the first-line setting.  NExUS evaluated Nexavar versus placebo in combination with two chemotherapeutic agents, gemcitabine and cisplatin.  A positive secondary endpoint of progression-free survival (PFS) was observed in the trial.  The safety and tolerability of the treatment triplet was as expected and did not show any new or unexpected toxicities.  Data from this study are expected to be presented at an upcoming scientific meeting.

Nexavar is currently marketed worldwide for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), or liver cancer, and advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), or kidney cancer.

In both her professional and personal lives, Ann Dudurich’s voice touched many.

The purest evidence of that came with a speech Dudurich delivered in early 2009 at a that sales conference organized by OSI Pharmaceuticals — the company which created the cancer treatment pill Tarceva.

“She spoke to a roomful of people, off the cuff, for about 20 minutes. I’m a bit biased, but it was just a tremendous speech,” said her husband, Michael Dudurich. “I still cry every time I see the DVD of it.”

Ann Saul Dudurich, 50, of Greensburg, died in her home Sunday after a four-year battle with lung cancer.