I wrote on June 29 about the serious health condition of Opera singer Beverly Sills. At the time, Sills -- sick with cancer -- was in a Manhattan hospital, gravely ill, with her daughter by her side. I didn't name her cancer because I didn't know of her specific condition. Now, as I've just learned of her death, I know more about her illness.Sills, described in this news story as "the Brooklyn-born opera diva who was a global icon of can-do American culture with her dazzling voice, bubbly personality and management moxie in the arts world," died on Monday of inoperable lung cancer at the age of 78. She died at her Manhattan home with her family and doctor by her side. She was a non-smoker.
Sills' illness was revealed just last month.
Nearly 20 percent of women and eight percent of men with lung cancer have never smoked, say researchers involved in a study of one million people in the United States and Sweden. The likely culprit in these lung cancer cases is secondhand smoke.
