Women are twice as likely as men to devdop lung cancer from smoking, scientists have found.New research has suggested that gender can determine whether a smoker contracts the disease – which kills 80 per cent of sufferers within a year of diagnosis.
A woman smoker’s risk of lung cancer is just over double that of a man, once age and cigarette consumption are taken into account, according to preliminary results from Cornell University, New York.
But some experts, however, were sceptical of the figures. which are based on 77 cases. Sir Richard Peto, of Cancer Research UKs Cliinical Trials Service Unit in Oxford, said: “This is a very small study and its conclusions may well be wrong, Its simply not true that men and women who smoke have very different lung cancer rates.”Women have been smoking almost as much as men for some time in Britain and North America, but while the national death rates from lung cancer early middle age are now nearly as high among women as among men, they are not higher”
In 2001, 2O,350 men and 13040 women died of lung cancer. It is the second most common male cancer (after prostate) and the third most common female cancer (after breast and bowel), and the biggest killer of both sexes.

Source: The Times, 2 December 2003