Cancer kills Disco Queen Donna Summer
Summer’s career peaked in the mid- to late 1970s with a string of dance hits including “Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girls” and “Love to Love You Baby.” Her career dipped somewhat during the anti-disco backlash of the early 1980s, but she had another huge hit in 1983 with “She Works Hard for the Money,” CNN reported.
In America, where Summer lived, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths. In South Africa, lung cancer is also very common, and besides prostate cancer, is the most common cancer in men.
Survival rates of people with lung cancer are low. Only about half of people diagnosed with early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (the more common type) survive five years or more after diagnosis; many lung cancer cases aren’t discovered until late in the disease’s progression, however, because symptoms often don’t arise until the disease is advanced.
The risk of developing lung cancer increases with age, but it’s not unheard of for relatively young people to die from the disease.
Smoking is the leading risk factor for lung cancer, causing about 90% of the cases. However, it is unclear whether Summer smoked or not. The Los Angeles Times reported that Summer believed she developed lung cancer after breathing in dangerous particles in the air in the aftermath of New York’s September 11 attacks.
Sources: HealthDay News, CNN, Los Angeles Times
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