I gotta get something off my chest (DH is chuckling as he reads this because he's thinking of getting to second base...) I'm sick of pink. October is a reminder of what I had to go through last year (not much fun). But it is what it is, and I'm not hating on pink for that reason.
I'm hating on pink because money is just being thrown by the gobs at breast cancer awareness. And lots of people buy the pink ribbon without knowing whether their purchase is actually doing anything more than making the pink ribbon seller beaucoup money. You can't spit in a public place in October without hitting something or someone sporting a pink ribbon.
Read the fine print, assuming you can find it, on a pink ribbon product. My pink ribbon envelopes say "a portion of the profits will be donated to support breast cancer research and education." I got on their website, I found the exact same thing. How much of the profits? What kind of research and education? I'm still wondering.
Many pink ribbon products don't even claim to do anything for breast cancer, other than raise awareness. Duh. We are all aware of it now...kids are getting in trouble for wearing "I Heart Boobies" bracelets to school.
I believe consumers are well meaning and it's certainly easy to buy something you were going to buy anyway and pay a little more for a pink ribbon on it, assuming the "little more" will go to help people with breast cancer. The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation is the most well-known breast cancer fundraising group. Did you know they spend $0.21 of every dollar raised on administrative and fundraising costs? That sounds good until you realize everyone at each of the 3 Day for the Cure events is a volunteer and the ones walking have each raised over $2000 and paid $90 plus their own transportation for the privilege of walking 60 miles. I was planning to participate in the Atlanta 3 Day for the Cure event and then I had to put off my final surgery and I wasn't able to train. In the meantime, I did more research and pondering and came to some conclusions. If I spend over $500 to raise $2000, that's pretty wasteful. And if I give it to an organization that plans to keep most of it in Atlanta, I'm not helping local women with breast cancer (not that I have anything against women with breast cancer in Atlanta!) Did you know that Susan G. Komen for the Cure also supports Planned Parenthood? Planned Parenthood does mention on their website they offer breast cancer screenings, but guess what? They don't do mammograms!! I called Planned Parenthood clinics in Columbia, Springfield and St. Louis Metro (North County) and none of them offer mammogram services. They don't even offer a free breast exam if you are low/no income. So I wonder what they are doing with the money they get from Komen for the Cure?
In defense of Planned Parenthood, the ladies who answered the phone were VERY nice and gave me phone numbers of places to try and information about programs they knew about (Show Me Healthy Women, Barnes-Jewish, and Breast Cancer Foundation of the Ozarks were suggested and they all have programs to get women free mammograms if they qualify).
I think I'm getting off subject again...
Here's the reason I'm sick of pink. I looked back at breast cancer death rates since 1975. That's 36 years, people. And guess what? The death rate is pretty flat. There was a steady rise in small and localized tumors through the 70s up to the turn of the century and now that rate has flattened out as well. (Those numbers were courtesy of mammography). Regional and distant breast cancer rates are essentially unchanged. All the money, all the awareness, all the screening...and women are basically dying at the the same rate as they were when I was born. A lot of the survivors are surviving small localized cancers that may not have spread and caused harm anyway. And women are dying of fast growing metastatic disease in spite of frequent mammograms. How many women who are doing just what they are supposed to, getting their boobs squashed yearly, getting a clear mammogram and then finding a lump 6 months later? Going through aggressive surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, only to die anyway.
Roughly the same number who were 10, 20, 30 years ago (per 100,000 population).
And how many of us have had aggressive surgery and chemotherapy for cancer that may have never caused a problem? There is no way of knowing if my cancer would have formed a lump, spread outside the chest, presented any symptoms whatsoever. Psychologically it would be impossible for me to live with a tumor inside me and wonder if it's growing. Wonder if the test next month will be the one that says we now have to do something. Wonder how long I have to live.
We've thrown BILLIONS at breast cancer. It's not changing much. WHY?
Is is because cancer is big business? How much money do drug companies make off of this incurable disease? What about new technology? I had a breast MRI after my mammogram and biopsy. Why? Theoretically it was so we could see if there was cancer in the other breast and make a decision whether to do a unilateral or bilateral mastectomy. In reality, I had already made up my mind to get both removed. And finding out I would have to get serial mammograms and breast MRIs to look for cancer in the remaining breast was enough to make me want the bilateral. I would have been hard pressed to have done either in a year, much less in 3 months. And again in 3 months. For 5 years.
But the hospital got to bill for the MRI and the radiologist got to bill for reading it. And it didn't change what we did. Had I decided to keep my right boob, they would have been billing my insurance for 10 more MRIs and 10 more mammograms. And probably for a two week vacation at the loony bin at least once or twice.
And the drugs, not just the chemo drugs but the nausea meds. OMG they were so expensive. One prescription was over $300 for 3 pills!! Yep over $100 per pill! That is MAD money! And the pharmacy was barely making anything (like $6 on the script). I don't even know how much the chemo drugs were but I'm guessing exorbitant. And the surgery. I did get a bill for that, at least the first one. $30,000 just for the hospital. Obviously my health plan didn't pay that much, but that's what was billed. Even if they only paid half...over $300/hour to be in the hospital. Wow. Steep.
Now of course, the drug companies have research expenses. They get government money and also spend their own. They have employees. The hospital has employees and plenty of patients who don't have insurance or the insurance doesn't pay as much as it cost to provide the care.
But drug companies need to have a good return on their research money. They are NOT spending money looking for a cure for cancer. If someone actually CURED cancer, what would the drug companies make money on? Well, there's still heart disease, AIDS, diabetes, lupus, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety, pain...I think they would survive. But they are not going to fund studies that will get rid of their profits. That's not good business.
And I don't expect them to. But if Merck and Walgreens are sponsoring Komen for the Cure they may stand to lose money if there was actually a cure found. I'm not saying the researchers who are being sponsored by Komen for the Cure aren't actually looking for a cure for cancer, but it does beg the question: how are researchers chosen? Is there research out there that could go on if it was only funded but big business is getting in the way?
How bad would our economy be if one of our biggest sectors, health care, was suddenly not needed because people got healthy, cancer was cured and chronic diseases were eradicated? Really, we can trace a head of lettuce from a supermarket in Chicago, IL to the field where it grew in Salinas, CA, we can build an international space station and keep it manned, we can determine what cow in what barn in Texas a T-bone served in a restaurant in New York City came from, yet we can't figure out cancer? Even if we don't cure it, at least cut the death rate? At least prevent metastasis?
Maybe we could if we didn't spend all this money painting the world pink.
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