An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh (Part 2)

Since we’re dealing with early detection, I want to insert a fact that many of your listeners may not know. Approximately half of new lung cancer diagnoses are in former smokers, the majority of whom quit smoking more than a decade before their diagnosis, like me.

The lung cancer smoking stigma

I quit smoking 26 years before my diagnosis. So, I would not have met the eligibility criteria for screening, even if it had been approved back then, which it wasn’t. Comments about your “formerly nicotine-stained fingers” suggest you may fall within this same category.

In addition to former smokers, approximately 15 percent of diagnoses are in people who never smoked. There is no current screening protocol for these people. However, researchers are trying to discover a safe, accurate, cost-effective way to screen everyone for lung cancer. We’re just not there, yet.

Rethinking what causes lung cancer

Regardless of smoking history, everyone diagnosed with lung cancer deserves quality care.

I think it is very important to mention the number two cause of lung cancer -- radon. This odorless, invisible, radioactive noble gas is a byproduct of uranium, which is in the soil and bedrock. As uranium decomposes, it creates a radioactive gas that can get trapped in homes and offices. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, an estimated 20,000 Americans die from lung cancer as a result of radon exposure. (Those with a history of smoking are at significantly greater risk.)

There’s more good news, though. It is inexpensive to test a home for radon and relatively cheap and easy to mitigate a home that has high radon levels.

Think of the lives that could be saved just from awareness about lung cancer screening and radon testing.

Positive news from groundbreaking treatment advancements

Perhaps the best news regarding lung cancer is precision medicine, including targeted therapies. Targeted therapies attack the cancer in a highly strategic manner that minimizes damage to healthy cells and effectively kills the cancer. Biomarker testing determines whether a patient is a good candidate for targeted therapy. Immunotherapy is another relatively new treatment that builds up the patient’s own immune system to fight the cancer.

Cancer is often referred to as a battle. The comparison with targeted therapy versus traditional chemotherapy is like a military battle. Chemotherapy can be compared to carpet bombing. Carpet bombing may indeed strike its target but can also do significant collateral damage. Likewise, chemotherapy can be very effective killing the cancer, but it also damages healthy cells -- collateral damage -- so we may lose our hair or experience other side effects from that treatment. Strategic targeted therapy is not without its side effects, but they are usually milder than chemotherapy.

Next, the not so good news...

Continue reading Dusty's An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh, Part 3.