Her death --just seven months after she was diagnosed with the disease -- has brought new attention to a cancer that kills more Canadians every year than breast, colorectal and prostate cancer combined.

Lung cancer specialist Dr. Yee Ung told CTV's Canada AM the disease appears to be on the rise, especially among women.

"Firstly, we know the incidence of lung cancer in women is increasing primarily in relation to smoking, but about 10 to 15 per cent of lifelong non-smokers do get lung cancer," Dr. Ung said.

Statistics show that smoking causes more than 80 per cent of lung cancer cases, but one in five women who develop lung cancer have never smoked.



Experts are still largely mystified as to why female non-smokers are developing lung cancer. Dr. Ung said it could be related to second-hand smoke or genetic factors that make women more susceptible.

And although lung cancer is one of the most preventable forms of cancer, it is also difficult to diagnose and treat. Patients generally don't develop symptoms of the disease until it is too late to do much about, Ung said.

"The key is that often times the lung cancer is diagnosed unfortunately late. And once lung cancer has spread outside of the lungs we unfortunately don't have a cure for it," Ung told AM.

The best course of action, he said, is to maintain regular checkups with a doctor and immediately report any symptoms that develop, such as shortness of breath or coughing up of blood.

New cancer treatments are offering hope to some cancer patients, Ung said, allowing physicians to better diagnose the disease and improve treatment with chemotherapy, radiation and "newer targeted therapies."

But despite progress, about 60 per cent of people with lung cancer still die within the first year of being diagnosed, statistics released by the American Cancer Society reveal.

Most lung cancers occur in older people, the society says, with just three per cent affecting people under the age of 45, regardless of smoking status.

Globally, lung cancer is the world's leading killer, with more than one million new cases each year, and an equal number of deaths.

In 2006 there were about 1.2 million new cases of lung cancer and about 1.3 million deaths worldwide, the ACS says.

About 49 per cent of patients are estimated to survive when the cancer is detected before spreading outside of the lungs.

Once it has spread to the chest, the survival rate drops to 16 per cent, and once it has spread to other organs the survival rate plummets to just two per cent.

Surgery is the preferred form of treatment, but chemotherapy and radiation are also often used.

Reeve's form of lung cancer was rare and difficult to diagnose, continued Ung.

Reeve, a singer-actress, was renowned for her unwavering support of her late actor-husband, who was paralyzed in a horse-riding accident in 1996 and died in 2004.

Reeve fought for better treatments and possible cures for paralysis through the Christopher Reeve Foundation, which she led after her husband's death.

Some people called it a folly of know-nothing Luddites. Others praised it as an important blow against technological hubris. But no matter where you stood on the 2004 ballot measure in California's Mendocino County that banned the cultivation of GMO crops, it's generally agreed that the initiative represented all that is best about local democracy -- citizens coming together to address an issue that's important to them. And in the Mendocino case, it was an issue that is well-made for local governance, given how intimate food is, how uniquely attached to our sense of place.

The idea of food as a local resource is now under assault [PDF] from a congressional measure that would sharply restrict the ability of states and cities to establish their own food safety standards. If the proposal becomes law, nearly all of the decisions about the quality of our food will be made in Washington. For anyone who values a measure of local control over the food we eat, this is bad news.

For 100 years -- since the 1906 establishment of the Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act -- the federal government has set most of the safety standards for the food that ends up in grocery stores and restaurants. States and cities, however, can also make rules governing food safety, and as health consciousness has increased, many local governments have passed food rules in areas that federal regulations overlook.

For example, grocery stores in California are required to post information warning pregnant women to avoid certain fish, such as swordfish, that have high levels of mercury. Minnesota candy bars must disclose if alcohol is an ingredient, and Michigan bulk foods made with sulfites have to carry an allergy warning. In Rhode Island, shellfish is required to carry a sign saying whether it's been frozen.

Consumers may appreciate these rules, but the food conglomerates and the grocery chains do not. For the food corporations, the divergent federal, state and local rules are an annoyance that complicate selling the same exact products across the entire country. Especially irritating to Big Food is California's Proposition 65, which requires that consumers be notified about ingredients known to cause cancer or birth defects. The food companies fear their operations would be further complicated if other states passed similar laws.

So the food lobby is forcefully but quietly pushing the "National Uniformity for Food Act," a bill that would annul standards like those in California and set a single set of food labeling rules. Under the proposal, states would not be able to create any food regulations that go above and beyond the national standards. Though there has been hardly any debate on the law, the House is set to vote on the legislation March 9.

Consumer groups are strongly opposed to the bill. They say the legislation would eliminate some important safeguards, and they worry that the law will end up taking away a key avenue -- state action -- for raising food safety standards. This is indeed worrisome. State rules have often had the beneficial effect of compelling food makers to improve their practices, not only in the state where the rule is enacted, but across the country. California's Prop. 65, for instance, prompted food corporations to make changes nationwide, since no company wanted to create a separate package for food sold in the most populous state. Because many companies felt it would look better to simply remove some ingredients than to say their products contained carcinogens, the law has led to the phaseout of some 750 chemicals, according to California's attorney general.

The threat to food safety is real. But there's a larger issue at stake, and that's whether we want to continue prioritizing national food production and distribution, or if we should instead be lending support to local and regional food networks that provide fresher, tastier, healthier food. Placing all review of food standards at the federal level would cement concentration in the already highly concentrated food industry. Keeping some powers at the state level would help defend the ideal that at its best food is produced locally -- close to your home, by people you know.

On this issue, Congress is going against the grain of popular taste. In the last 15 years, the local food movement has grown wildly. Tens of thousands of families have enrolled in Community Supported Agriculture programs in which they receive weekly deliveries of fresh produce from individual farms. The number of U.S. farmers markets more than doubled from 1994 to 2004, according to the USDA. The public embrace of regional foods reveals one of the biggest problems with the pending legislation: As more and more food returns to a system of local production for local consumption, the need for state and municipal food safety regulations will increase not decrease. Congress is taking a step in the wrong direction.

The very name of the food corporations' bill should raise some concerns: "Uniformity for Food" sounds like a recipe for spoiling much of the fun in eating. What we enjoy most about food is precisely that it's not uniform; variety and novelty are what give local flavors and regional cuisines their spice. If the Alabama government wants to give consumers assurance that the grits they buy meet certain nutritional standards, it should be allowed to do so.

Tonight millions of Americans will go home and ask a simple question: "What's for dinner?" The fate of the bill before Congress will play a huge role in deciding who gets to provide the answer.

21% of the world's managers are female

62% of unpaid family workers are female

9% of judges, 10% of company directors and 10% of top police officers in the UK are women

Women comprise 55% of the world's population aged over 60 years old and 65% of those aged over 80

£970,000 is the difference between lifetime earnings of men and women in the UK finance sector

85m girls worldwide are unable to attend school, compared with 45m boys. In Chad, just 4% of girls go to school.

700,000,000 women are without adequate food, water, sanitation, health care or education (compared with 400,000,000 men)

Women in full-time jobs earn an average 17% less than British men

Women in part-time jobs earn an average 42% less than British men

67% of all illiterate adults are women

1,440 women die each day during childbirth (a rate of one death every minute)

1 in 7 women in Ethiopia die in pregnancy or childbirth (it is one in 19,000 in Britain)

In the US, 35% of lawyers are women but just 5% are partners in law firms

In the EU, women comprise 3% of chief execs of major companies

12 is the number of world leaders who are women (out of 191 members of the United Nations)

Men directed 9 out of every 10 films made in 2004

It's getting harder and harder to drive out of cell-phone range -- that is, if you really want to. And judging from scenes at countless remote locations, many people would rather not forfeit 24/7 phone access for conversations that involuntary eavesdroppers hear half of. (Virtually always, it seems, the more boring half.)

These days, mainstream media fascination with blogs and the bloggers who love them often seems to assume that the very use of the Internet enhances the content or style of what has been written. It's a seductive cyber-fantasy. Speed is useful, and so are hyperlinks and visuals-on-demand, but -- fortunately or not, depending on your point of view -- there's no digital invisible hand that can move any piece of writing very far along the road to worthwhile reading.

A central paradox of the rapid advances in media technologies is that the quantum leaps in computer hard drives and software have been accompanied by an approximately zero boost in human mental capacity -- or in what we refer to with such words as "insight," "wisdom" and "compassion." You can't visit a local mall or an online site and pull out a credit card to purchase an upgrade in gray matter or human connection.

The momentum of digital communications has conveyed a sense of inevitability. As last year's cutting-edge gizmos become old hat, resistance appears to be futile. But the question is not whether we're "pro" or "anti" technology. More pertinent are inquiries like: What's the point of all this hyper-computerized stuff? How does it relate to the most important meanings of life?

To explore the answers to such questions, even the finest desktops and search engines are unlikely to be much help. Mega-outfits like Microsoft and Google offer incredible ease and speed. When we're seeking information or images, they can do almost everything better and faster than we can -- except think and reflect, feel and create, love and mourn…

A half-century ago, there was much talk about the fear that machines would replace people in the workplace. Now, "automation" has an almost quaint ring to it. But the high premium put on speedily moving a business agenda goes back many decades. "In an age of advanced technology," Aldous Huxley foresaw, "inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost."

In recent years, the corporate emphasis on the efficient use -- and, let's face it, exploitation -- of human beings has become more overbearing. By now, no one expects a big company to exhibit much loyalty to employees in the long run. And the ubiquitous presence of media technologies in the workaday world, from computer to cell phone to BlackBerry, has facilitated chronic employer demands for greater "productivity." While a new digital gizmo may serve the worker, that worker is still expected to serve management's often-insatiable drive for profits -- more efficiently than ever.

News outlets routinely provide breathless accounts of the latest digital dazzles. But precious little media attention focuses on the deeper qualities of the human experience, the content of the lightning-fast communications or the ultimate end-product. Data streams move faster than the eye can see. Information doesn't flow, it rockets. But what's it all for?

Even the most wondrous media technologies can't supply an iota of meaning. Yet the prevalent media discourse keeps equating digital breakthroughs with human breakthroughs. But that's a very dubious proposition.

Nicholas Humphrey, evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, told The Times the discovery opened "an extraordinary window on our past".

"I do not think they were designed to be quadrupeds by their genes, but their unique genetic make-up allowed them to be," he said.

"It has produced an extraordinary window on our past. It is physically possible, which noone would have guessed from the [modern] human skeleton."

The siblings, the subject of a new BBC documentary to be aired on March 17, suffer from a genetic abnormality that may prevent them from walking upright.

Instead, they use their palms like heels with their fingers sticking up from the ground.

The BBC said the documentary would contribute to fierce scientific debate and raised profound questions about what it is to be human.

Humphrey, who has contributed to the documentary, believes the style of walking may be a throwback to a form of behaviour abandoned by humans more than three million years ago.

Two sisters and one son have only ever walked on two hands and two feet, while another daughter and son occasionally walk on two feet.

All five are mentally retarded and have problems with language as a result of a form of underdevelopment of the brain known as cerebellar ataxia.

However Humphrey told the Times their behaviour may be partly the result of their parents tolerating the behaviour in childhood.

They are aged between 18 and 34 and live in southern Turkey, athough the makers of the documentary have not disclosed their exact location.

"They walk like animals and that's very disturbing at first. But we were also very moved by this family's tremendous warmth and humanity," Jemima Harrison of Passionate Productions told the Times.