Lung cancer lowest in US federal funding

While lung cancer causes one in three cancer deaths in the USA, the National Cancer Institute invested less than 5% of its $4.8 billion budget for research in 2007, according to updated statistics from the Lung Cancer Alliance. The two other federal agencies with significant cancer research programs - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Defense - had no money earmarked for lung cancer in 2007.

Expressed in dollars per death, research funding through these three federal sources in 2007 totaled $23,754 for breast cancer, $11,959 for prostate cancer and $5,500 for colon cancer. Lung cancer research spending was $1,414 per death in 2007, a 23% drop from that in 2005.