Rethinking Pink Charlotte Haley has watched her grandmother, daughter, and sister all cope with breast cancer. In the early 1990's, inspired by the AIDS red ribbon campaign she started one of her own. She pinned peach-coloured ribbons on to postcards with the message, “The National Cancer Institute annual budget is $1.8 billion, only 5 percent goes for cancer prevention. Help us wake up our legislators and America by wearing this ribbon.” Her campaign attracted the attention of Self Magazine. Together with cosmetics giant Estee Lauder, they offered to help Charlotte market her peach ribbons. When she told them that she wasn't interested in commercializing her project, they went ahead without her. They just changed the colour of the ribbons. Peach became pink and the corporate world lined up to tie a cure for breast cancer in with a purchase of their products and services. And what's wrong with that? A lot of things, according to Barbara Brenner. She's the executive director of Breast Cancer Action (BCA), a grassroots organization of breast cancer survivors and their supporters. Based in San Francisco, Barbara describes their organization as “the bad girls of breast cancer.” Members of Breast Cancer Action don't wear pink ribbons. They wear buttons that say “Cancer Sucks.” Not as nice—But then neither is the disease. The woman who designed the button was only 45 when she died of breast cancer. Brenner was in Montreal recently at the invitation of Canadian sister organization, Breast Cancer Action Montreal. Her talk, entitled “Think Before You Pink: Breast Cancer Corporations and You” challenged the audience to “follow the money. Ask how much a company is actually raising.” (American Express, in their “Charge For the Cure” campaign, donated a whooping penny from every credit card transaction to breast cancer). “Demand to know who gets that money and what percentage of it is used for breast cancer research.” Some companies, like Cineplex Odeon's “Spotlight on the Cure” campaign and Hush Puppy's pink promotion, won't reveal what portion of sales they are donating to breast cancer research. But it sure looks good on their advertising. BCA is concerned that as long as consumers think they're doing something meaningful about breast cancer by participating in cause-related marketing campaigns, the real work that needs to be done around treatment, access to care, and true prevention will continue to be under-funded and ignored. But Brenner's most provocative question of the evening was this, “Are the products manufactured by these ‘pink' corporations killing us?” In Canada, a new case of breast cancer is diagnosed every 25 minutes. Since 1988, there has been a 46 percent increase in the incidence of the disease. An ever-increasing body of research is pointing to the crucial role of toxins in our water, our food, the air we breathe, and the pharmaceuticals we ingest as causes of the disease. The relationship between environmental factors, such as exposure to radiation and to toxic chemicals, and the increasing rate of cancer in the industrialized world make a compelling case for governments to start taking action to control the use and production of identified environmental pollutants. Consider the Avon Corporation. It got on the pink bandwagon a while back with its pink ribbon pin. It's called “cause marketing”, tying a product to a social cause. It's a win-win situation for the company, building good will while increasing sales. And breast cancer has become the “poster child” of cause marketing, exploiting the conventional stereotypes of women as “good little shoppers” while capitalizing on the sexual/social fascination with women's breasts. But Avon's pink ribbon campaign takes on an entirely different complexion when you consider the fact that their cosmetics contain both phthalates and parabens, two chemicals that are being investigated as possible causes of breast cancer and other health problems. Breast Cancer Action describes this kind of behaviour as “pink washing” and Avon is not the only culprit. (Yielding to pressure, Avon recently announced it was removing all phthalates from their products.) The Ford Motor Company is the featured vehicle at the “Run For The Cure” events. But their “Car of Hope” as with all internal combustion engines, is responsible for producing two known toxins linked to breast cancer, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs and 1,3 butadiene. The major American and Canadian funders of breast cancer research—including the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the American Cancer Society, and the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Foundation—support and fund research that focuses extensively on molecular biology and genetics, giving much less priority to the environmental factors that may in fact be among the major causes of cancer. A recently released report, "State of the Evidence 2004: What Is the Connection Between the Environment and Breast Cancer?" documents that fewer than one in ten cases of breast cancer occurs in women born with a genetic predisposition for the disease and that as many as fifty percent of breast cancer cases remain unexplained by personal characteristics and other traditionally-accepted risk factors. Epidemiologists and other scientists increasingly believe many cases are linked to environmental factors. Given what we know about the impact of chemical pollution on human health, it seems a bit contradictory that the Dallas Texas headquarters of the Komen Foundation, the largest private breast cancer foundation in the U.S. and the financial beneficiary of most of the “pink” campaigns, should be located in building space donated by the Occidental Chemical Corporation, a company that has had their fair share of investigations against them launched by the Environmental protection Agency. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But as Brenner points out, “We have been aware of the problem for twenty years. Now what are we going to do about it?” Like BCA, Breast Cancer Action Montreal takes a different tack. When they mobilize women out on the street, it's not to “ Race for the Cure", a slogan that the Komen Foundation hold the copyright on, but to march with the conviction that “Prevention is the Cure”, and to demand the kinds of real social and environmental changes that will have to be made in order to see a reduction in incidences of the dreaded disease. Written by: Gwynne Basen Director of Communications E-mail: news@cwhn.ca October 19, 2004 Canadian Women's Health Network Remember we are NOT Doctors and have NO medical training. This site is like an Encyclopedia - there are many pages, many links on many topics. Support our work with any size DONATION - see left side of any page - for how to donate. You can help raise awareness of CAM.