A Chilling Reminder of Danger
Peter Jennings death a few days ago was a chilling reminder of the awful toll that smoking takes on our world. It is insidious and devastating.

Newsman Peter Jennings' death Sunday from lung cancer, four months after he revealed he had been diagnosed with the disease, hammers home the overwhelming health threats posed by smoking -- even to ex-smokers, experts say.

Jennings, the face of ABC News for more than two decades, quit smoking 20 years ago. But he admitted starting again after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

According to the American Lung Association, about 87 percent of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking, and 40 percent to 50 percent of new cases may occur in former smokers.

As an ex-smoker this reminds me of how I may have permanently damaged my own life. I started smoking on a regular basis at age 18 and quit for the last time when I was 42. It has been 15 years but Jennings' death reminds me that I am not out of the woods. With either cancer or the power of addiction.

Lung cancer as my own family found out last year with the death of my nephew at age 26 is a real killer. It is usually not found until it is too late to operate and can progress in many different fatal directions. It is one of the most avoidable of cancers in most people who get it.

Because most lung cancers are diagnosed at a late stage, the five-year survival rate is only 15.2 percent, compared with 63 percent for colon cancer, 88 percent for breast cancer and 99 percent for prostate cancer, according to the lung association.

In 2005, lung cancer will take about 163,500 American lives and will maintain its place as the number one cancer killer, outpacing deaths from the second, third, fourth and fifth most common causes of cancer deaths combined, Dr. Bill Solomon, and associate professor of medicine at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York City, told HealthDay last spring.

Addiction- and cigarette smoking is an addiction as powerful as addiction to heroin- is cunning, baffling, powerful. Conventional wisdom is that addiction continues even when you stop living it and, should you start up again, the addiction acts like you had never quit. That is part of why, even after 15 - 20 years, one must always know that they can start up again without warning. And that may bring about the other deadly side-effects.

Experts advise that if you're an ex-smoker with a cough, get to a doctor and get screened.

If you're a smoker, stop.

"Quitting is good. It's always good to quit, no matter how long you've smoked," Edelman said. "You'll reduce your risk of lung cancer, reduce the degree to which you have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, reduce your risk of other types of cancer and of heart disease. The data is very clear. Even if you're 75, you can benefit from stopping."
--Blockqoutes from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Health page.

Now with the announcement from Dana Reeves, a non-smoker, that she has lung cancer there has been an increase in news information about lung cancer. It IS the deadliest and most common of cancers, yet, probably because of the stigma of being self-caused by smoking, still gets little research money when compared to other cancers or even self-caused diseases.