Regina Vidaver Quotes (6 Quotes)

To me the fact that we don't have a screening test for the biggest cancer killer in the nation is the best indicator of how little resources have been put toward this disease. It is absolutely abhorrent to me that we don't have a screening test for this disease.

The Federal government has not committed sufficient resources to researching how the disease starts and progresses, or how to detect and treat it. When accounting for all Federal funding on specific cancers, the U.S. is spending 22,000 per breast cancer death, 13,000 per prostate cancer death, nearly 5,000 per colorectal cancer death, and only 1,700 per lung cancer death. Considering that lung cancer is the leading cancer killer in this country -- with only a 15 percent survival rate after 5 years -- this level of funding is unacceptable.

Dana Reeve's death highlights the fact that lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in women in the U.S., claiming 30,000 more lives annually than breast cancer. It is not unique that she developed lung cancer as a non-smoker -- at least 1 in 5 women with lung cancer have never smoked.

It's a sad thing that it takes a celebrity's death to highlight that this is the leading cancer killer of both men and women.

We don't understand very much about this at all. It's primarily due to the federal government not providing funding commensurate with this disease's death toll. We need to have more research done. That's the only way that we are going to end up saving lives.

We need to understand why younger women are more likely to get the disease, why there are molecular differences in lung cancer between men and women, and why there are treatment differences between men and women.