Commercial involvement in breast cancer campaigning has drawn criticism from organisations such as US group Breast Cancer Action (BCA), which works to raise awareness of the more questionable cause related marketing activities by businesses, known as “pinkwashing.”
Lynn Ladbrook of Breast Cancer UK hits the nail on the pink head by drawing attention to causation and prevention.
- The issue underpinning all the pinking is the question “why?” Why are women so preoccupied with breast cancer? Answer is because they have a 1 in 10 chance of getting it in the developed world.
- And the next question is why are they getting it in such big numbers and at such relatively young ages? The answer to that is because they must be exposed to some particularly human-female risk factor, because no other mammal (including men) do not get invasive cancer in such numbers at such young ages.
The attached book – THE SCREECH OWLS OF BREAST CANCER – describes the battle lines more graphically and even dramatically.
Eugene G BREEN, Physician/psychiatrist, bmj. 13 October 2015
Sources and more information
- THE SCREECH OWLS OF BREAST CANCER, How the demographic social and medical ill omens highlighted by breast cancer are being ignored, Eugene Breen.
- Big business is keen to jump on the breast cancer awareness bandwagon but do its messages around screening do more harm than good? Meg Carter reports, bmj.015;351:h5399, 12 October 2015.