The rise of lung cancer in America mirrors the rise of cigarette
smoking that causes most of it.  The disease rose from relative
obscurity in colonial America, when the diagnosis of even one
case warranted an article in a scientific journal.  As late as
the 1930s, lung cancer still was among the least common, said
Samuel Lesko, M.D., medical director of the Northeast Regional
Cancer Institute.  Leading cause of death  Decades of cigarette
smoking since have elevated lung cancer to the leading cause of
cancer deaths in the United States.  Deaths peaked in the early
1990s, about 30 years after cigarette smoking peaked in the
1960s, Dr. Lesko said. Thirty years of smoking is about how long
it takes on average for lung cancer to develop.  Nationwide,
more than 174,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer and more
than 162,000 die each year, according to the American Cancer
Society.  In an average year, 603 people in Northeastern
Pennsylvania are diagnosed with lung cancer, and 476 die of it,
according to the Nor