[quote=svelte] I suspect the public at large thinks lung cancer is often caused by actions of the person, but the public doesn’t think the same thing about breast cancer.
I say this because lung cancer is actually more common than breast cancer, yet breast cancer gets all the attention via walkathons, pink ribbons, etc.
My wife worries much more about breast cancer than lung cancer, but I attribute that to her being a 38DD.[/quote]
Very astute observation, svelte. Thanks largely to highly successful public service advertising, lung cancer has become synonymous with smoking. Not only are the commercials omnipresent, but the content of many have had a shock effect on viewers. And the fact is that the epidemiological evidence is overwhelming in the indictment of smoking as a causal agent in most lung cancer cases. Unfortunately, it’s human nature for people to have less sympathy for those who they believe to be culpable in causing their own illnesses.
As for breast cancer, if there was as strong a link for some causal agent with breast ca as there is for smoking and lung cancer, you’d better believe it’d be all over the media. But the fact is there is none. Certain things have shown up in epi studies, but not in the right numbers to implicate them. Because there isn’t anything to “blame”, breast cancer advertising takes a different tack and goes for the sympathy vote. It gets people to bug their friends and mothers and sisters to get mammograms, and it also gets them to contribute.
In reality, the numbers of breast cancer cases is virtually equal to those of lung cancer (about 200K per year). However, the lung ca mortality rate is much higher. The reasons for this are complex; lung cancer is an entirely different disease on a molecular level from cancer of the breast. But would it improve if there were tons of walkathons, colored ribbons, etc.? Who knows? But there’s no question that many of the funds being raised for breast cancer are diverted to lobbying efforts, and far more taxpayer money is being spent on breast ca research than on other cancers and public health risks.
A lot of the “pinkwash” started with the Komen Foundation. At the time of it’s inception, there was almost no publicity about the disease, and relatively few research dollars were dedicated to it. Komen changed all that, and demonstrated real brilliance in their early marketing. The timing was also right, as the women of baby boomer generation were reaching an age when breast cancer was a concern, first for their mothers and later for themselves. Several copycat groups sprang up: some were wonderful, others not so much. Recently, Komen has been criticized on their use of funds and also on their seemingly indiscriminate agreements with marketing partners.
Unfortunately, other cancers and diseases, for whatever reason, didn’t get the message, and sat by idly while Komen achieved unparalleled success in fundraising. Some of them have picked up on it in the past 5 or 6 years, but I think that the public may have reached the point where they have “ribbon fatigue”.
