Cancer awareness is a trendy topic monopolized by pink ribbons and products focusing on breast cancer, drawing attention away from the many other dangerous kinds.
When I woke up this morning my coffee cup and yogurt had pink ribbons on it; then when I went to work I saw countless products hocking trendy cancer awareness from golf clubs to exercise bikes and everything in-between.
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, as you may know. Every major cancer has an awareness month, yet every major cancer is trumped by breast cancer and its pink ribbons. Without Google, can you name two cancer awareness months besides breast cancer?
There were 230,480 new breast cancer cases and 39,520 deaths in 2011, according to the American Cancer Society. In the same year, 532,430 people died from other cancers. Breast cancer research is definitely a just cause, but there are thousands of other victims not getting even close to the amount of awareness they need.
Did you know September is National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month? I didn’t until I wrote this. Prostate Cancer has a tremendous impact on men over the age of 65, affecting 198,100 people in 2011 with 31,500 deaths according to the ACS. In the NFL we see barbaric men trying to take each others heads off while wearing pink for all of October. But I did not see one athlete with blue ribbons, one commercial, one advocate or one campaign for prostate cancer awareness in all of September.
Breast cancer gets an entire month of sellable merchandise while prostate and lung cancer get no love from corporate America. This seems a bit unbalanced. Awareness for breast cancer can never be a bad thing except when it completely engulfs the spotlight, and other equally important causes are almost ignored.
Politics seem to be one reason for the monopoly on spending. Breast cancer outspends any other cancer by leaps and bounds in awareness and research. According to the National Cancer Institute, from 2008-2010 breast cancer racked up an astounding $1.8 billion in research compared to $776 million for lung cancer and $880 million for prostate cancer. The breast cancer lobbyists spent $450,000 in 2011 alone according to opensecrets.org. In contrast lung cancer lobbyists spent $10,000 in 2009 and prostate cancer lobbyists spent $40,000 in 2011. Breast cancer awareness has the most powerful lobbyists, most public support and spending in all facets.
America’s fixation with breasts causes breast cancer to hog the spotlight. America is obsessed with the boob. No one fixates over the respiratory system. We don’t see young teenage girls tack pictures of the exocrine gland of the male reproductive system (Prostate) to their walls the way teenage boys pin up pictures of voluptuous women with big breasts. I am not exempt from such fixations but think wider distribution of awareness is needed.
There is a more pressing need for overall awareness for cancers that we can control or prevent. If you want a cure for almost one-third of cancer, billions of spending could go towards the prohibition of cigarettes. Of course this is an utopian, unrealistic outlook of how the money should be spent, but theoretically, if that were to take place, the ACS stat of 161,250 people who die from lung cancer could possibly be reduced.
As a son of a breast cancer survivor, I am sympathetic to the cause. As a son of a parent who succumbed to lung cancer, I am stuck wondering why more is not being done to support awareness in other areas of cancer. The last thing I would want to be perceived as is un-sympathetic towards a cause that affects millions of Americans.
But the commercialization of breast cancer awareness needs to be better distributed to other much-needed causes.