The high overall survival rate indicates that mammography, a widely used screening test for breast cancer, really makes a difference. The medical system is catching the vast majority of women with breast cancer in the earliest stages of disease, which allows surgery, chemotherapy and radiation to work. Not so for lung cancer. The overall five-year survival rate for lung cancer is 14 percent. That figure includes a 50 percent survival rate for early-stage disease and a 2 percent survival rate for those with advanced disease at the time of first diagnosis.
People see it as a self-inflicted disease.
That includes people like Mrs. Groh. Like an estimated 40 million ex-smokers in America, Mrs. Groh listened to the health police. She quit smoking 16 years ago. I was in college. You don't think about these things when you're young.