Word: lungfuls
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Smoking seems to bring out the inner statistician in people. Sure, smokers know their habit can lead to lung cancer, but what are the odds it actually will? How does smoking a pack a day for 20 years compare in risk with smoking two packs daily for 40 years? And if you quit, how much do your odds improve? The results of a study published last week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute offer smokers some help--at least with the math. The tricky part is knowing what to do with the answer...
...might expect, the risk of lung cancer varies according to when you start to smoke, how long and how much you smoke, and when you quit. By tracking the incidence of the disease in 18,172 men and women ages 50 to 69 who had been or still were heavy smokers, researchers at New York City's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center devised a mathematical model that predicts the likelihood that lung cancer will be diagnosed in a smoker within 10 years. You can find the model on the Web at www.mskcc.org...
Consider the case of a 51-year-old woman who smoked a pack a day from age 14 until she stopped at age 42. The model puts her chances of getting lung cancer in the next decade at less than 1 in 100. Compare that with a 68-year-old man who has smoked two packs a day for 50 years and hasn't quit. He has a 1-in-7 chance of getting lung cancer by his 78th birthday. If he quits, his 10-year risk drops...
...what's a smoker to think? A 1-in-7 chance of getting lung cancer will scare some folks into quitting, but you might be tempted to shrug off a 1-in-100 chance and think to yourself, As long as I quit by 42, I'm O.K. Think again. More smokers die of heart disease than lung cancer--not to mention that smokers have greater susceptibility to emphysema and other chronic illnesses...
When John Edwards succumbed to lung cancer two weeks ago at the age of 53, his acquaintances in the sleazy Thai beach resort of Pattaya remembered him fondly. "John Edwards was down to earth, genuine and loyal to his friends," says Ian Read, owner of Le Caf? Royale, a piano bar in a Pattaya strip known as Boyz Town where Edwards was well known...