Foundation fights to end stigma and awaken public concern
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Your support makes all the difference.It is 10 years since the entertainer Roy Castle was diagnosed with lung cancer. The charity set up in his name is now claimed to be the only one in the world exclusively dedicated to researching the disease and supporting those who are diagnosed with it.
Roy Castle never smoked, but a life spent touring nightclubs caused him to succumb to cancer as a passive smoker. This spared him one of the common features of the disease – guilt.
"It is very much perceived as a self-inflicted disease – you smoked and it's your fault," said a spokeswoman for the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.
"The stigma makes it harder to raise funds. We have not received any money from the National Lottery, which we find quite incredible, and we get no money from the Government."
The foundation aims to raise £3m a year from public and corporate donors and spends an estimated £1.6m on research, much of it in its own laboratories in Liverpool.
In addition, a patient care network based in Glasgow runs 20 support groups around the country and five specially-trained lung cancer nurses. For the 40,000 new cases of the disease diagnosed each year, that is a drop in the ocean, the spokeswoman admitted. But that is the pattern for lung cancer. In total there are 200 lung cancer nurses in Britain, compared with 1,500 specialist breast cancer nurses.
The charity aims, through its showbusiness links, to bring a little glamour to a disease associated with the poor and the elderly. In 1997, an international Tour of Hope took the foundation to 12 cities on five continents meeting patients, carers, doctors and world leaders including Nelson Mandela. In 1998, the Roy Castle Centre for Lung Cancer Research was opened by Sir Cliff Richard.
Research projects under way include the Liverpool lung project, in which individuals at risk of lung cancer because they smoke are monitored with the aim of developing a screening programme.
The charity also runs a stop smoking course, Fag Ends, for young people, but it takes a realistic view of the chances of success. "Smoking prevention campaigns," the charity says on its website, "have made little impact on the number of people starting to smoke."
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