Lung Cancer

The death of ABC news anchor and longtime smoker Peter Jennings this week has drawn new media attention to an old and brutal killer - lung cancer. "It's a very tough disease, really a collection of diseases ... and you don't want any of them," said Dr. Michael J. Thun, head of epidemiological research at the American Cancer Society. Today it kills more people in the United States than any other form of cancer. On Monday, the day after Jennings' death, actress Barbara Bel Geddes, former star of the soap opera Dallas, died of lung cancer at 82. The disease has been one of the hardest forms of cancer to cure, among the most difficult to survive and least likely to win public sympathy.

The National Institutes of Health has granted researchers and Genetic Therapy Inc. approval to try to treat lung cancer patients by inserting genes into their tumors.The experimental treatment, which is expected to begin on two dozen patients at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, is designed to discover whether inserting a synthetic gene into patients with a certain type of cancer can slow the growth of tumors.The Gaithersburg biotechnology company is supplying the researchers with vectors, which act as a transportation system that will allow scientists to deliver a specific gene to the correct tumor cells in the lung.

A new generation of CT scanners that can detect cancer in the lungs as small as a grain of rice - when the tumor is still highly curable - is raising hopes that screening may drastically reverse the grim outlook for lung cancer just as mammography did for breast cancer. A large, long-term study reported in yesterday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that at least 88 percent of patients whose early-stage lung cancer was detected through CT screening would survive for 10 years after the tumor was surgically removed.

A biologist reported the discovery of a gene yesterday that may be a key player in lung cancer, one of the nation's leading killers.If the discovery is borne out by further studies, it could lead to treatments and diagnostic tests for a disease that is expected to kill 143,000 Americans this year, said Carlo M. Croce, a molecular geneticist at Temple University in Philadelphia and a member of the scientific team that made the discovery.Mr. Croce is internationally recognized in the rapidly expanding field of molecular genetics, which in the years ahead appears likely to solve a host of medicine's long-standing mysteries.

Should I get scanned? That is the question some current and former smokers have been asking themselves in the wake of widely publicized findings on the benefit of early lung cancer screening. The study, reported last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, concluded that heavy smokers who undergo spiral computed tomography (CT) scans significantly improve their odds of catching cancerous lesions in the earliest and most curable form. Screening for lung cancer sounds like a no-brainer.

Dana Reeve, an actress whose days of sunny fame with her star husband, Christopher, turned into an odyssey of tragedy and hope, died Monday night of lung cancer. Mrs. Reeve, 44, gave up her entertainment career to care for her husband during his 10 years of almost complete paralysis, when she and Christopher became fighting symbols for those who refused to give up, even against the most desperate odds. She used her celebrity to campaign for stem cell and other medical research to treat spinal cord injuries like the one that paralyzed her husband, best known for his Superman starring roles.

A steady stream of old friends -- maybe 200 in the past months -- have been visiting Kenneth Jernigan at his home in Irvington.Pals who followed the old fighter for the blind as he tenaciously led fights for jobs, for access, for independent living, for Braille and for civil rights have come to say thank you and goodbye to a dying blind man they say expanded horizons for thousands of people.James Omvig, a 63-year-old blind lawyer, and his sighted wife Sharon flew from Tucson, Ariz., to visit with the president emeritus of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB)

The former Anne Arundel County teacher whose sexual relationships with students embarrassed school officials and prompted statewide reforms has terminal cancer and wants to die in a hospice instead of a prison.Ronald W. Price is asking an Anne Arundel County circuit judge to release him from prison so that he can be moved "for humanitarian purposes."Price, 53, is dying of lung cancer.The former Northeast High School teacher was convicted of sexually abusing three female students in 1993.His case drew widespread attention after he said on the nationally syndicated "Geraldo!"

Cal Ripken Sr., a tough and tireless baseball man who spent 36 years in the Orioles' chain as manager, coach, scout and player, is battling lung cancer, his family has disclosed.Ripken, 62, was diagnosed last week at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he is receiving cancer treatment as an outpatient, his wife, Vi, told The Sun."Doctors found a tumor on Calvin's lung, came up with a plan and started the wheels moving. That's the nuts and bolts of it," Vi Ripken said.Ripken, father of Orioles third baseman Cal Ripken Jr., began receiving chemotherapy several days ago, his wife said.

Last night in a dramatic address to viewers at the end of World News Tonight, ABC anchorman Peter Jennings told viewers in a wavering and gravelly voice that he has lung cancer. "Finally this evening, a brief note about change," the 66-year-old newscaster began. "Some of you have noticed the last several days that I was not covering the pope. ... I have learned in the last couple of days that I have lung cancer. Yes, I was a smoker until about 20 years ago, and I was weak and I smoked over 9/11.