WASHINGTON -- Even before the death of ABC anchorman Peter Jennings, advocates and scientists were organizing to combat lung cancer's image as a smoker's comeuppance and increase government research funding to match other equally deadly forms of cancer.
But they were perfectly willing to capitalize on the flurry of attention from Jennings' death from lung cancer Aug. 7 and the news a day later that Dana Reeve, widow of the late Superman star Christopher Reeve, also has the disease. There's a general recognition in Washington that funding for medical research is not driven by science alone.
"It's a story about disease politics in this country," said Cheryl Healton, president and CEO of the American Legacy Foundation, a lobbying and education group established from the proceeds of a government settlement with the tobacco industry.
While it's still too early to say whether the latest attention will have a long-lasting impact on lung cancer research, advocates see a small but welcome sign in the government's decision last week to increase funding by $80 million over several years.
The main source of federal dollars, the National Cancer Institute, said it would support more research into smoking cessation, early detection of lung cancer and possible drugs and treatments. The announcement was part of an initiative to prevent disease or develop treatments for various forms of cancer by 2015.
"Reducing the burden of lung cancer is absolutely essential to achieving our overall 2015 goal," NCI Director Andrew von Eschenbach said in a statement.
The agency, which is working out the details, says the increase had long been in the works and wasn't driven by recent events or lobbying.
But researchers and advocates blame public attitudes for the fact that lung cancer research doesn't get as much federal funding as studies involving breast and prostate cancer, even though lung cancer kills far more Americans.
"We just haven't had the same level of patient, doctor and family advocacy," said Walter J. Curran Jr., clinical director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson University and co-chair of a new association of scientists established to coordinate research and lobby for more money.
Advocates and researchers hope the recent attention surrounding Jennings' death and the diagnosis of Reeve -- a nonsmoker -- will help change that.
