By SARAH LOW
It’s October, which means the annual onslaught of pink and pink ribbons is upon us — it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
This is a time when pink is everywhere. You can find anything from food items to automotive supplies, kitchen utensils to your favorite football team’s gear, in pink or at least emblazoned with that ubiquitous pink ribbon. In some places you can even have a pink garbage truck come and haul your trash.
Breast cancer is terrible. As far as cancers go, it is second only to lung cancer in the number of women who die from it every year, so what could be wrong with raising awareness and supporting organizations that are trying to fight it?
The majority of organizations that promote breast cancer awareness push the message that early detection and screening saves lives. But this is not conclusively supported by research. In November of 2012, the New England Journal of Medicine published a large scientific survey that looked at the results of three decades worth of screening data. The survey showed that mammograms are not quite the lifesavers everyone had hoped they’d be, and beyond that, they could be causing more problems than they’re solving.
As it turns out, mammograms are really good at finding non-lethal and treatable tumors, and not so good at detecting the deadliest and most aggressive type of breast cancer. The National Institutes of Health does not even recommend yearly mammograms for women in their 40s due to the disproportionate number of both false negatives and positives that occur in younger women.
This is not the information we are fed by these campaigns.
Another large survey found that for every 2,000 women screened annually over a decade, 10 healthy women will be diagnosed as having cancer and unnecessarily treated. Chemotherapy itself has life-threatening side effects and increases the risk of developing other cancers, while surgery carries various risks and complications of its own.
Mammography can be both beneficial and harmful, and we should be aware of the realities, not just the hype.
Because of the overstated benefits that are promoted so heavily, many women believe that screening early and often will actually prevent them from getting breast cancer, an ironic misconception given the potential dangers.
The scientific community suggests that screening every other year starting at age 50 would be more effective and less problematic, and those falling outside of these parameters who want to be screened should be made aware of the potential risks and lack of reliability to make more informed choices.
Along with an outdated and misleading message, breast cancer awareness has spawned a juggernaut of corporate greed.
Cashing in on the public’s desire to help, corporations manipulate us in to spending money on anything for the cause.
Unfortunately many of the companies that offer awareness items have a predetermined limit on the amount that they will donate, regardless of how many items they sell. It’s possible that they reach that amount within days of beginning the campaign, but they continue to sell the products beyond that, leading consumers to believe that they are contributing to the charity when making a purchase, when in reality they are not.
There are companies that lie about being affiliated with cancer charities or organizations, with last year’s most egregious example being the pink-trimmed handgun that Discount Gun Sales claimed was affiliated with the Komen Foundation, when no such relationship existed.
Others, being at best ignorant and at worst disingenuous, are the companies that sell awareness products that can potentially increase the risk for cancer or contain ingredients that can cause it. Good examples of this are alcohol (Mike’s Hard Pink Lemonade), some cosmetics and perfumes and Yoplait Yogurt (before they removed recombinant bovine growth hormone from their products.)
And I would be remiss for not mentioning the NFL and the corporate behemoth that is their Crucial Catch campaign. You don’t see the sea of pink on the field during Thursday night games. There’s a small ribbon on a coach’s jacket, a mention at the end of the game, but on Sundays and Monday nights, the big viewing days with the biggest sponsor payouts, it’s like someone threw Pepto Bismol over everything. They also divert attention away from prevention strategies that could affect their corporate relationships — on their campaign information page, they talk about healthy lifestyle choices and preventing cancer, without a single mention of alcohol. Cut to beer commercial in 3, 2, 1…
All of this being said, money is still being put in to research by most of these organizations, and for every 10 of those 2,000 women that are diagnosed and treated unnecessarily, there is one whose life is prolonged. So at the end of the day, you might think as long as these charities are still getting money and some people’s lives are still being saved, what does it matter?
It matters that there is misinformation and potential harm. It matters that so much of the focus is on early detection and almost none on those with active, metastatic disease. It matters that while money is going to research, the majority of funds raised by many of these campaigns goes straight back into the awareness campaigns themselves, making that the default goal.
We’re aware. What we need is to shift the money to where it’s really needed: effective treatment, support services for those with lethal disease and their families and breast cancer prevention.
We are aware. Are they?
— Sarah Low is a reporter at The Beachcomber.
