Author argues that breast cancer awareness has led to lots of corporate-sponsored events, but not a lot of cure or prevention.
On my vacation in Canada, I heard a report on CBC about a new book critical of breast cancer philanthropy. Pink Ribbons, Inc.
Prof. King teaches at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. She is not the Canadian country singer.
In some ways, breast cancer philanthropy consciously followed the patten of AIDS philanthropy in the 1980s and 1990s, with the pink ribbon the first deliberate copy of the AIDS red ribbon. The commercial marketing group Pallotta Team Works came up with the for a time highly successful AIDS rides that combined fund raising with personal development. The Pallotta Group was also responsible for the original Avon Breast Cancer walks. But Dan Pallotta fell from favor in 2001 amid claims that too little of the money raised went to AIDS causes. (The abandoned Pallotta Team Works web site is still available.)
But other breast cancer events and promotions have proliferated, unaffected by the criticisms that brought down the AIDS rides. The San Francisco group Breast Cancer Awareness (EIN 94-3138992 Form 990) is a tiny group with income of less than a million dollars that promotes public awareness of the limitations of fundraising related to corporate marketing.
Perhaps this book will generate a useful dialog about the merits of tying serious causes to events and marketing. But that will require more news coverage than the CBC.
And reviewing the promotional materials available (the Q&A with the author, a fact sheet, and an book excerpt), it appears that the author has some valid points of criticism of the current methods of disease-related charities, but it is tightly associated with a broader ideological perspective that will probably keep the mainstream press at a distance, which is too bad.
The connection between personal fulfillment and broader causes is complex, because people don't tend to give to causes they have no personal connetion with. It may be that breast cancer 5K runs proliferate because they create the ideal personal connection between cause and event for a huge and widely disbursed group (women). The AIDS rides didn't survive because the group that could connect personally with both the cause and the event (gay men who ride bicycles) wasn't large enough outside of a few major urban areas.
Samantha King's book sounds fascinating. I am definitely lanning to buy it!
There are many excellent articles out there that give a similar, also interesting perspective on the topic of the "pinking" of breast cancer awareness. I link to three of them from my website, http://www.honestmedicine.typepad.com.
To access these three articles, please go to the links on the left side of my site, and look under “CANCER." (There are also other interesting links under "PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES.")
The three articles are:
1)"Welcome to Cancerland: A Mammogram Leads to a Cult of Pink Kitsch," by Barbara Ehrenreich. A classic.
2)"Chemo Concession" (contains some surprising information about the chemotherapy industry)
3) “Vaccine Against Cancer,” about a really interesting cancer treatment being used by a doctor in Germany.
All three articles (and many of the others I link to, as well) support Samantha King's perspective on the “think pink” phenomenon. I hope you will find them informative. Thanks very much for giving them a look!
In closing, when WILL these "pinking" organizations ever raise money to find, as Ms. King suggests, less toxic treatments?
Sincerely,
Julia Schopick
http://www.honestmedicine.typepad.com
Posted by: Julia Schopick | October 28, 2006 at 07:24 PM