The Big Business Of Breast Cancer

Marie Claire:

Some $6 billion a year is committed to breast cancer research and awareness campaigns. Is it any wonder that the disease has become a gold mine for pink profiteers and old-fashioned hucksters?

Aside from the slow-rolling hot dogs at concession stands and the sideline billboards for Hubba Bubba bubble gum, you'd be hard-pressed to find a hint of pink at any of the National Football League's 31 stadiums, where, during most of the six-month season, the decor tends to match the distinctly masculine nature of the game. Not so in October, when pink becomes the de facto color of the sport. Players bound onto the field sporting pink cleats, wristbands, and chin straps, and punt pigskins emblazoned with pink decals under the watchful eyes of refs with pink whistles. It's all part of the league's massive sponsorship of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which by October's end will have seen the distribution of 650,000 pink ribbons at stadiums across the country.

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Comments

[N Timothy Aho]

11:59 PM on 10/24/2011

Guess there are suckers for sexist marketing out there

[JadedNY]

10:22 PM on 09/28/2011

Good story in Marie CLaire this month on the same topic. How it's gone so far that people associate ANYTHING pink with benefitting breast cancer, when often, something will be pink and simply say on it"Cure Breast Cancer." THat in and of itself doesn't help the cause, but people think that purchase helps the cure.

[BlackYowe]

06:13 PM on 09/23/2011

It went too far a long time ago. It is so over done it no longer has meaning. I give to many charities that fight different cancers. If you want to work on awareness check into the thousands of women who die of lung cancer who never smoked and get the word out on that!

[syllcurie]

06:58 AM on 09/21/2011

Look no further than the estrogen mimicing chemicals that pollute out environment as well as the hormones that women take that get excreted into the waste stream and back into the food and water supply. What do you think is causing girls to reach puberty as early as eight years old and the feminization of boys as evidenced by sperm counts declining in men by ten per cent per decade? Holy cow, Batman! Something looks mighty strange to me! We need to identify the cause and correct it - not focus only on the symptoms.

[Sandra Larsen]

09:21 AM on 09/21/2011

Gee, too bad all of that just gets in the way of our corporate bottom line: stockholder profits. Didn't you know that cash is more valuable than human life?

I mean, how are they supposed to make any money off of us if we are healthy and eat whole, live foods from the garden rather than the crap they put on shelves and call 'food'?

[ecotopian]

12:28 AM on 09/21/2011

I think it was the Breyer horse breast cancer stallion which made me realize that something wasn't quite right. Shouldn't it have been a mare?

[signgrrl]

08:26 PM on 09/20/2011

i think emphasizing the pink is counterproductive. too many men still think only women get breast cancer.

[Tulka2]

07:17 PM on 09/20/2011

Many more women die of heart disease than from breast cancer, is the fact.