Celebrities With the Lung Disease COPD

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Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein had one of the great careers in American music; he was a longtime conductor of the New York Philarmonic, and the composer of the scores for West Side Story and On the Waterfront. Sadly, the maestro’s life was cut short at just 72 years old, when he died of a heart attack brought on by progressive lung failure.

Bernstein smoked throughout his life, developed emphysema, and had been fighting off pulmonary infections before his death.