'Enormous Progress' in Reducing Cancer Does Not Include L...( WASHINGTON Feb. 25 -- Lung Cance...),Health

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Lung Cancer Alliance (LCA) cautioned today that recently released cancer statistics indicate that lung cancer continues to kill more people each year than all the other major cancers combined.

Last week, in issuing its annual review of government statistics entitled Cancer Facts and Figures for 2008, the American Cancer Society cited the "enormous progress that has been made against cancer over the past 15 years."

Laurie Fenton Ambrose, LCA President & CEO said, "Sadly this is not true for lung cancer, which is still the biggest cancer killer and its 5 year survival rate is still only 15 percent."

In the 2003 report, ACS started using the 2000 census for its age adjusted statistical analysis.

Since that time, the incidence rate for lung cancer in men rose from 86 new cases per every 100,000 of population to 89, and incidence rates for women went from 51.4 to 55.2.

While the death rates for men have gone down in that time period, death rates for women continue to rise.

In its 2005 report, ACS claimed that lung cancer in women had "reached a plateau." That was changed to "reaching a plateau" in the 2006 and 2007 reports, and changed again to "approaching a plateau" in the just released 2008 report as the number of women being diagnosed and dying of lung cancer continued to climb.

"There is no way to put a happy face on these numbers which will continue to go up until we fund lung cancer research with a sense of urgency and at a level commensurate with its public health impact," Fenton Ambrose said.

In research dollars per death, lung cancer is receiving a fraction of the amounts given to breast, prostate and colon cancers. The five-year survival rate for breast cancer now stands at 88 percent, prostate cancer 99 percent and colon cancer 65 percent while lung cancer remains at 15 percent.

In addition, ACS credits screening as a major co
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