by Dr. Maria Werner-Wasik, M.D.

As a radiation oncologist, I treat patients with lung cancer every day. One of them is a 31 year old woman now receiving palliative (temporizing) treatment for her widespread small cell lung cancer compressing blood vessels in her chest and making her very short of breath. She has preschool children at home. She did not smoke very much but had started young. When I look at her in the waiting room she appears like a teenager herself.

It seems that a lesser amount of smoking is necessary for women than men before they develop lung cancer. A few years ago, lung cancer became the most common cause of cancer death in women here in the United States, well ahead of breast cancer. Such is the price women are paying for the Virginia Slims campaign. The cigarettes indeed make those women quite slim.

I endorse WhyQuit's message and wish it luck. The idea of showing, publicly, people dying of lung cancer to deter others from doing so may be repulsive to some, but I support it. People who do not see those patients find it hard to believe that cancer can strike them personally. If "Saving private Ryan" can show blood pouring from the intestines and film severed extremities on the battlefield to show the truth about war, so can we - anti-smoking activists - show people suffering from cancer, who are willing to share their experience.

Please feel free to quote my letter on your web page. Good luck again.

Maria Werner-Wasik, M.D.
Radiation Oncologist
Assistant Professor
Thomas Jefferson Medical College
maria.werner-wasik@mail.tju.edu

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• WhyQuit.com   Founded in July 1999, WhyQuit is the Internet's oldest forum devoted to the art, science and psychology of cold turkey quitting, the nicotine dependency recovery method that each year produces more successful ex-users than all other methods combined.
  
  
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• Joel's Library Joel Spitzer devoted nearly 50 years toward teaching why smokers should quit, how to quit, and how to stay free. Joel's Library is home to Joel's "Daily Quitting Lesson Guide," Joel's 100 Reinforcement Articles, to his free ebook Never Take Another Puff, and his collection of nearly 500 video stop smoking lessons.
  
  
• Freedom from Nicotine - The Journey Home Written by John R. Polito, a former 30-year heavy smoker, WhyQuit's founder and Turkeyville's director. While there are hundreds of quitting books, only one was cited by the Surgeon General's 2020 Quit Smoking Report, Freedom from Nicotine - The Journey Home.
  
  
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