Smokers 'deserve equal cancer treatment'

The poll said lung cancer patients deserved the best treatment

Lung cancer patients are suffering because the disease has such a poor public profile, say cancer charities.

Seven out of 10 UK people surveyed by Mori for the Cancer Research Campaign (CRC) said that lung cancer patients who smoked had brought the disease on themselves.

There has been a wall of silence surrounding lung cancer for too long.

Dr Richard Sullivan, CRC

The CRC's director general Professor Gordon McVie said: "If you think it's your own fault that you've got lung cancer, you're more likely to 'put up and shut up', and that's exactly the attitude we need to change.

"We want people to start demanding better treatment and better resources for the disease - particularly as the overwhelming majority of people do not want lung cancer patients to be discriminated against."

But three-quarters of those surveyed said that patients with lung cancer had as much right to a hospital bed as those who develop other forms of cancer.

Poor survival rate

Lung cancer continues to have a very poor survival rate compared to some other cancers, and there has been little improvement over recent years, despite some potential advances in chemotherapy and radiotherapy coming to light.

It is the most common cancer in the UK - nine out of ten are reckoned to be caused by smoking.

33,400 died from the disease last year, compared to breast cancer which killed 12,680.

Dr Richard Sullivan, from the CRC, said: "There has been a wall of silence surrounding lung cancer for too long.

"We need to break this down and show that we do care for patients with the disease regardless of whether or not they developed it because of smoking."

The CRC has designated January as Lung Cancer Awareness Month to try to raise the public profile of the disease.