As a result, women’s respiratory ailments frequently go undiagnosed, sometimes with the worst kind of results. Rates of lung cancer, for which the imagined “standard” patient is a male smoker in late middle age, have risen 84 percent in women since the late 1980s, even as they drop in men. Women are more likely to suffer from lung cancer despite never having smoked, as well as remain at greater risk even after quitting smoking.
