Lung Cancer in Non-Smokers

The death of actress Dana Reeve in 2006 gained a great deal of attention, not just because she was the widow of Christopher Reeve, who played Superman and was paralyzed from a horse-back riding injury, but because Dana Reeve died of lung cancer and she was not a smoker. This is a very important point because this is a study which really has looked at smoking and non-smoking and found that yes, certain people can develop lung cancer, even if they don’t smoke. Now, I want to stress a point. Far and away, cigarette smoking is the greatest risk for lung cancer. That being said, there are people who have a gene which increases their risk of lung cancer, even if they don’t smoke. The bottom line is, you want to get tested if necessary, if you have the gene in your family. But, don’t smoke anyway because that would still increase the risk above the regular average.