How have the trends in lung cancer deaths changed?
For many years, most of us felt that lung cancer was a disease of smoking men in their ’60s and ’70s. But starting in the 1980s, a vast number of women were diagnosed with lung cancer. If you really look back, so there’s been a 600 percent increase in death rates from lung cancer in women since 1930. In 1987, the lung cancer death rates in women exceeded breast cancer death rates and have been climbing since then. Most recently, we’ve found that more women die from lung cancer than from breast and ovarian cancer combined. Are women who have never smoked more likely to develop lung cancer than men who’ve never smoked? Absolutely. We don’t have good numbers from the United States, however, when you look at Asian countries, we find that women who’ve never smoked and are diagnosed with lung cancer represent about 90 percent of lung cancer never-smokers. So women outnumber men in this category almost 9 to 1. Does lung cancer affect women who are former smokers? Lung cancer now affects forme
