The Marketing of Breast Cancer
By Mary Ann Swissler (September 16, 2002)
---------snip-----------
Now held year-round in 110 U.S. cities and abroad, the festivities offend Brady and the group Toxic Links Coalition. The races, they say, merely focus women on finding a medical cure for breast cancer, and away from environmental conditions causing it, the problems of the uninsured, and political influence of corporations over the average patient.
To drive this point home, Brady and the coalition have, since 1994, helped organize a vocal and visible presence most years at Komen's San Francisco race.
Sometimes leafleting, and sometimes holding up hand-painted signs and banners, they always face stiff competition from the typically uplifting and euphoric Race atmosphere. Up to 1 million participants in 2000 alone were greeted as they crossed the finish line with live music, inspirational speakers and acres of colorfully adorned corporate booths. Pink, the chosen color of the international breast cancer movement, is everywhere, on hats, T-shirts and ribbons. A sense of community and camaraderie pervades the celebration by hundreds, sometimes thousands, of breast cancer survivors and friends of survivors.
"What's missing is the truth," wrote Brady in a Spring 2001 newsletter article for the Women's Cancer Resource Center, a support services center located in Berkeley, Calif. "There's no talk about prevention, except, in terms of lifestyle, your diet for instance. No talk about ways to grow food more safely. No talk about how to curb industrial carcinogens. No talk about contaminated water or global warming." . . . .
Source: http://www.alternet.org/story/14014/?page=1
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thanks for this post. I just found an article on this over at KOS.
