Pink Is The New Green

Image via WikipediaDid you know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month?

How could you not?  The color of pink seems to be everywhere.  From yogurt cups and lipstick to NFL football players and the Sunday comics, the concept of being aware about breast cancer is at an all-time high.  Sometimes it gets to the point where you need another kind of pink--Pepto Bismol.

There's no mystery about why we're hearing more about breast cancer.  It's one of the leading killers of women.  So it shouldn't take much for them to self-examine themselves, then go to their nearest health professional if they find anything wrong, particularly if they're over 40 and/or have a family history of the disease.

Companies, even those who don't normally cater to women, have seized upon the pink and the ribbons not just to raise awareness, but to line their own pockets while making themselves look good.  Because breast cancer affects women.  And women buy stuff, thinking the money raised will help speed along the promise of a cure.

(If you're a man, seeing one of those products with a pink ribbon on it would have the same effect as a best-seller with the "Oprah's Book Club" label on it, or most of prime time TV.  You tend to stay away from them.)

It makes you wonder about all those other diseases besides breast cancer that have been begging for money for decades in the name of "research".  How come we are no closer to a cure for any of those than we were before, as millions more die every year?  Why the tease?

No matter how the new federal health care laws shake out (or even if the Republicans carry out their promise to gut them once they take over Congress after the elections), the insurance and pharmaceutical companies still have the upper hand.  Why, there could be cures for so many diseases that may have already been discovered.  But Big Insurance and Big Pharma could be keeping them under wraps because, with the money rolling in for so-called "research", why mess with a good thing?  Besides, if these cures were really available, the cost would be so exorbitant that few could afford them.

Thanks to social media, nearly everybody knows somebody who may or may not have survived breast cancer.  What we don't need are corporations and organizations who exploit and trivialize the seriousness of the disease just to make a buck.  Don't these women and their loved ones deserve better?