Why Some Smokers Get Lung Cancer--And Others Are Spared

This article is about why some smokers get lung cancer and others are sparred. Smoking is the most potent known cause of lung cancer. Two new studies link a variation in a gene residing on chromosome 15 (of a person's 23 pairs of chromosomes) to a heightened risk of developing lung cancer; a third study suggests that the same mutation affects a person's tendency to become addicted to smokes and, by extension, develop the dreaded disease. Lung cancer is diagnosed in some 200,000 Americans and kills more than 150,000 each year. people with this genetic flaw have a 30 percent greater chance of developing the often-fatal illness. But the studies differ on the potential added risk of addiction. individuals with two copies of the altered gene had a whopping 70 percent greater chance of developing lung cancer; those with one copy had a 30 percent higher risk. "There's not a public health message here that you can find out what version of the gene you have and decide whether to keep on smoking or not," he says. "You have to bear in mind that there are so many other disease[s] that are caused by smoking."