I just returned from a four-day LiveStrong Summit held at Ohio State University.

Lance Armstrong spoke about the financial disparities among the various cancer research programs, emphasizing the underfunding of lung cancer research.

He spoke about how the five-year survival rate had not changed for lung cancer patients in the last 40 years and that it remained the No. 1 cause of death from cancer in the United States.

On Thursday night, the foundation organized a town hall with Sen. John McCain. Armstrong asked him some tough questions about health care and research funding. McCain said he believed that smoking cessation programs would help and that he would leave the financial decision-making up to the experts.

Unfortunately, we are leaving it up to the experts to determine where cancer research funding will be directed and it is not working.

Further, simply not smoking will not make this disease go away; 60 percent of all new diagnosed lung cancers are of people who never smoked or those who stopped smoking decades ago.

I would like to extend my appreciation to Armstrong for taking a stand for the lung cancer community.

Debra Violette, state chairwoman

Lung Cancer Alliance

Augusta