LungBlog

Last month, I made a trip to Washington, D.C. to speak with legislative assistants of Congresswoman Chellie Pingree and Sen. Olympia Snowe regarding the Lung Cancer Mortality Reduction Act Bill.

I recently have learned that both Snowe and Pingree have agreed to co-sponsor this history-making piece of legislation. Congressman Mike Michaud signed on as co-sponsor after I spoke with him last fall.

Maine is surely leading the way on this crucial piece of legislation, which is in both the House and Senate and calls for a 50 percent reduction in the mortality of lung cancer by 2016.

Funding for a program to control hazards caused by lead-based paint was amended March 31 into a bill originally calling for a lung cancer study.

As introduced by Omaha Sen. Bob Krist, LB987 would have required the state Department of Veterans Affairs to contract with the University of Nebraska Medical Center for a study to validate diagnostic technology for the early detection of lung cancer. To fund the study, a transfer of $650,000 to the department from the Nebraska Health Care Cash Fund was proposed.

Omaha Nebraska Senator Bob Krist is proposing the state spend approximately $650,000 to research a test that analyzes sputum to inexpensively screen for lung cancer. Krist’s bill, LB987, would primarily use funds from a tobacco settlement for the study. Krist became more actively interested in early lung cancer detection when his father was diagnosed with lung cancer. His father died from the asbestos related lung cancer less than two years after the initial diagnosis.

The state Department of Veterans’ Affairs would receive funding to conduct a lung cancer detection study under a bill receiving general file consideration Feb. 17.

LB987, introduced by Omaha Sen. Bob Krist, would require the department to contract with the University of Nebraska Medical Center Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer and Allied Diseases for a study with a sample of up to 500 veterans to validate diagnostic technology for the early detection of lung cancer. The department would be required to report the results of the study to the Legislature no later than July 1, 2011.

Omaha Senator Bob Krist’s father died of lung cancer in 2004. The cancer was linked to exposure to asbestos, a carcinogen which can cause both lung cancer and mesothelioma, a cancer that may affect the lungs as well as other major organs and tissues. Now, Krist is hoping to translate his loss into a study that could benefit hundreds of Nebraskans at risk for developing lung cancer.

Cancer doesn’t know any boundaries or borders; the disease affects all of us worldwide.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 12 million people are diagnosed with cancer each year. Cancer kills more people than AIDS, malaria, and TB combined, but the good news is that approximately two out of five cancers are potentially preventable.

In recognition of World Cancer Day, which takes place every year on Feb. 4, the WHO is supporting the International Union Against Cancer to promote ways to ease the global burden of cancer.

Omaha Sen. Bob Krist’s father died of lung cancer in 2004, less than two years after it was diagnosed.

The cancer — from asbestos exposure as an electrician and Navy veteran — was diagnosed late, as are many lung cancers, Krist said.

Lung cancer is a death sentence if detected late.

But it can be treated if detected early enough, Krist said. In fact, 92 percent of those with early-stage lung cancer are alive after five years.

Cancer diagnostics company Biomoda, Inc. (OTCBB: BMOD) (www.biomoda.com) today applauded Nebraska State Sen. Bob Krist and his co-sponsors for introducing legislation to screen up to 500 Nebraska veterans for early-stage lung cancer.

“The Nebraska Legislature has taken another step toward saving lives,” said Biomoda President and CEO John Cousins. “Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer killer, primarily because it is too difficult and too expensive to diagnose in its earliest stages when it is most treatable.”

One out of 14 Americans will be diagnosed with lung cancer during their lifetime. Unfortunately only 16 percent will survive, because the majority will be diagnosed too late, when the cancer has already spread beyond the lungs. Lung cancer remains the country’s number one cancer killer. It is expected to take the lives of more than 160,000 Americans this year, more than prostate, breast, melanoma, liver and kidney cancers combined.

Most people do not even know that lung cancer takes more lives than all the other major cancers combined. It will kill more than three times as many men as prostate cancer and nearly twice as many women as breast cancer.

Yet lung cancer receives only a small fraction of research funding.

All patients are stigmatized whether they smoked or not and no one seems to care that over 60% of new patients are former smokers or people who never smoked at all.