It is just one of those things, I used to think, that the only two people personally known to me who have died of lung cancer were non-smokers – of course I have known & accepted since March 1962 that smoking causes lung cancer.
Most smokers do not get lung cancer – the last time I saw an estimate (a very long time ago now) the figure was 1 in 8 (the quoted lifetime risk for breast cancer, just from being a woman, is now 1 in 9). But I never knew, until this week, that non-smokers account for about a quarter of all cases of lung cancer world wide.
A new study from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, published in Lancet Oncology & reported in The Times, gives hope that the gene responsible for this vulnerability may have been identified.
Of course, as Steve Jones pointed out, if everybody smoked, then lung cancer would be accepted as a genetic disease.
But I do sometimes wonder reading, as I must usually, just reports of the ‘relative risks’ involved, whether we are really very much further forward than was Eysenck with his theories on smoking, health & personality.
Most smokers do not get lung cancer – the last time I saw an estimate (a very long time ago now) the figure was 1 in 8 (the quoted lifetime risk for breast cancer, just from being a woman, is now 1 in 9). But I never knew, until this week, that non-smokers account for about a quarter of all cases of lung cancer world wide.
A new study from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, published in Lancet Oncology & reported in The Times, gives hope that the gene responsible for this vulnerability may have been identified.
Of course, as Steve Jones pointed out, if everybody smoked, then lung cancer would be accepted as a genetic disease.
But I do sometimes wonder reading, as I must usually, just reports of the ‘relative risks’ involved, whether we are really very much further forward than was Eysenck with his theories on smoking, health & personality.
Links
Scientists identify common gene linked to lung cancer in non-smokers
Why Some Smokers Get Lung Cancer--And Others Are Spared
Smoking, health and personality - Eysenck
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