About Lung Cancer

When the Densen family first learned about lung cancer, they had no idea that hundreds of thousands of families are affected by the disease each year. As soon as they saw the statistics and misperceptions around the disease, they knew they had to do something – and when it comes to lung cancer, there is a lot of work to be done.

There will be upwards of 225,000 new lung cancer diagnoses in 2011. Sadly, given the current state of lung cancer research, diagnosis and treatment, the vast majority of Americans diagnosed in 2011 are unlikely to live more than five years.

Lung cancer will kill 160,000 of us in 2011. That's three times more than any other cancer and more than the total for breast, colon, ovarian, melanoma, brain and leukemia COMBINED.

And while most of us think breast cancer is the leading killer of women, the fact is that lung cancer will kill close to 80% more women this year.

It's not easy to be optimistic about the future. While research efforts have significantly raised the five-year survival rates for most other cancers, the survival rate for lung cancer remains at 15 percent, where it was decades ago.

A large part of the problem is that the disease has not received public attention or research dollars proportionate to its prevalence or virulence.

There are a number of reasons for lung cancer's low profile. It's not a particularly compelling or "media-genic" disease. Because it's so virulent, lung cancer patients and their families are, understandably, more focused on survival than advocacy. Finally, given the relationship between smoking and lung cancer, there is a tendency to "blame the victim."

We need to change that. Leaders of the Lung Cancer Free World was created with one goal in mind: to raise public awareness, elevating lung cancer to an issue of urgent national concern.