Rates of lung cancer among people who have never smoked is increasing worldwide, a new study has found. Several factors are contributing to the rise.
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00:00Good afternoon, Lorna, and thanks for having us on. No, it doesn't. I think lung cancer
00:07is very misunderstood across Australia. If we had 10 women in front of us right now,
00:16four of those being diagnosed with lung cancer would be never smokers. And what we do know
00:21and what the research has told us is there are a whole range of factors which are contributing
00:26to the substantial increase in lung cancer diagnosis, not the least of which is the air
00:32that we breathe, the type of occupation we might have if we are working in heavy industries
00:39or dusty environments, or it may just come down to jet poor genetics, bad luck in your
00:46genetic makeup.
00:47That's really interesting, but I'm guessing that cigarette smoking is still the major
00:52causal factor of lung cancer.
00:54Yeah, that's right. I mean, smoking and an addiction to tobacco is a leading contributor
01:00to most cancers. It is really important that we acknowledge that lung, of course, has been
01:07associated with smoking for over 50 years. And that's not an individual's fault. Smoking
01:13is an addiction like any other addiction. And the message on World Cancer Day today
01:19is that we need to treat all cancers equal, obviously, and lung cancer doesn't deserve
01:25the bad rap it sometimes gets.
01:28Mark, with a decline in smoking rates here in Australia, have the instances of lung cancer
01:35overall gone down?
01:37No, indeed, we're at the top of a curve and that curve will continue as many Australians
01:45who elected to smoke in the 50s, 60s and 70s and 80s, where we began to see the sharp
01:52decrease in tobacco smoking. We're now beginning to see those individuals enter their twilight
01:58years, so their 50s, 60s, 70s, and those are the ages that are overrepresented in lung
02:04cancer. So we're not surprised that we're heading to the top of the bell curve. I think
02:10what many of us have looked at globally is this trend, as you say, of the increasing
02:15number of women, particularly women in South East Asia, who are never smokers, who are
02:21now being diagnosed with lung cancer. And whether that's as a consequence of family
02:25history or some exposure, we'll need to do much more research on that.
02:30Yeah, it's interesting. Do you think the World Health Organization, the ones that commissioned
02:34this study, the likes of your organization, need to adapt the messaging then somewhat?
02:40Yeah, very much so. I think, as I said, lung cancer is plagued by the stigma of tobacco
02:47addiction. We need to create, as a community, much greater empathy towards people diagnosed
02:54with lung cancer. I mean, a diagnosis of cancer is incredibly traumatic and devastating for
02:59anyone regardless of how they've contracted their cancer type. I mean, I go to great lengths
03:09to explain that we don't say to women, for example, that are diagnosed with breast cancer
03:15that you drank too much wine, or we say to people diagnosed with bowel cancer, it's as
03:19a consequence of your poor diet, or if you have a melanoma, you didn't wear enough sunscreen.
03:25There are numbers of causal factors for lung cancer, and it's really important that Australians
03:32show much more empathy, that they really focus in on a diagnosis being an incredibly traumatic
03:40event rather than how you got to that.