Preventing lung cancer is easier than curing it, and any
barriers that inhibit blacks from full access to care must be
removed, emphasize two doctors at the University of California ,
San Francisco. In an editorial in the current issue (October 14)
of The New England Journal of Medicine, UCSF co-authors Talmadge
E. King, Jr., MD, and Paul Brunetta, MD, analyze study findings
that suggest racial attitudes may contribute to the fact that
blacks have a higher death rate from lung cancer than whites.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer in the
U.S. and, overall, the five-year survival rate for the disease
is 14 percent among whites and 11 percent among blacks. The
title of the editorial is “Racial Disparity in Rates of Surgery
for Lung Cancer.” The comments by King and Brunetta relate to
new research results, reported by a team from Memorial Sloan-
Kettering Cancer Center and the National Cancer Institute, that
appear in the same NEJM issue. The study covers surgical
treatment and survival of clos