WASHINGTON -- The stigma attached to cigarette smoking hurts efforts to marshal support for fighting lung cancer, even though it kills more women than any other cancer, advocacy groups told members of Congress on Thursday.

In fact, the disease leaves few survivors to stage marches or rallies to raise research money and public awareness. "The fact is that lung cancer cannot pressure Congress from the grass roots up," said Sheila Ross, a two-time lung cancer survivor and representative for the Alliance for Lung Cancer Advocacy, Support and Education. "The people who get it are dead or dying." An estimated 68,800 women will die of lung cancer this year, according to the American Cancer Society. The number exceeds the combined total of deaths from breast cancer, uterine cancer and ovarian cancer. "Survivors are an endangered species," said Priscilla Dewey Houghton, an arts consultant, who has twice overcome lung cancer. "There are few of us around." The National Cancer Act of 1971 increased spending on cancer research and launched a "national crusade" against the disease. Since then, survival rates for most types of cancer have risen significantly. The five-year survival rate is 63 percent for colon cancer, 86 percent for breast cancer and 97 percent for prostate cancer. But the five-year survival rate for lung cancer is only 15 percent, a 3 percentage point increase from 1971. Lung cancer advocates said the stigma attached to smoking has limited research funding and support for fighting lung cancer. Cigarette smoking accounts for 87 percent of lung cancer cases, according to the American Lung Association. Quitting smoking reduces lung cancer risk but does not eliminate it. "Even if everyone stopped smoking today, lung cancer would still be very serious and a very big killer," Ross said. Most new lung cancer patients are former smokers, who quit smoking as long as 20 years ago, said Professor Jill M. Siegfried, co-director of the Lung Cancer Program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Her research reflects other studies showing that women are more susceptible to lung cancer than men. Siegfried noted that lung cancer is also a problem among nonsmokers. People assume that lung cancer patients are smokers who brought the disease on themselves, said Houghton, who has never smoked. "They hate you for having it. . . . They think you deserve to have it," she said. Houghton, who is married to Rep. Amory Houghton (R-N.Y.), said mortality rates for lung cancer are "daunting, devastating and defeating," but she is encouraged by new scanning technology that could lead to earlier detection of the disease. "The world of the possible is changing," said Dr. James L. Mulshine of the National Cancer Institute. He said newer, faster scanners can better show the size and shape of small lesions. Mulshine and other cancer researchers are confident that lung screening tests could help increase survival rates of lung cancer patients. But they said more trials are needed to prove that the technology works. In the meantime, lung cancer advocates plan to continue to pressure Congress to give more money to lung cancer research. For the rest of November, they will pin clear ribbons on their lapels. "This is an invisible disease," Houghton said. "That is why the ribbons are clear."

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