The Journal

Issue date: 10/25/07 Section: Opinion/Editorial

October is breast cancer awareness month and pink is in vogue. It has overthrown the traditional Halloween color scheme of orange and black as the seasonal choice of local retailers and grocers, who are stocking their shelves with pink merchandise and smothering their cupcakes in pink frosting. Companies from Nike to Yoplait are hyping the virtues of breast cancer research in their product lines. Wilson golf balls, Polaroid digital cameras, Everlast boxing gloves and Sony laptops - customers can purchase all of these in a pretty shade of pink and rest assured that their consumerism is funding a good cause. Most of these products come in varying degrees of pinkness - from powder puff to neon, there is a shade for everyone. Even Webster University jumped on board, encouraging faculty to donate $5 to the cause for the privilege of wearing jeans on Oct. 5. To top it all off, on Oct. 10, the National Park Service lit the St. Louis Gateway Arch - you guessed it - pink.

Breast cancer research is a noble cause, but it is not the only one - and it is certainly not the most pressing. Patients struggling to overcome other types of cancer deserve the increased opportunities that private and federal funding have made available to breast cancer patients.

According to the National Cancer Institute - the agency which distributes cancer research funding from the U.S. government - breast cancer has one of cancer's lowest mortality rates. Ninety percent of white patients and 77 percent of black patients survive breast cancer five years after the initial diagnosis.

Though breast cancer has a fairly high rate of occurrence, it is not the most widespread of cancers. That title belongs to prostate cancer, which had an estimated 234,460 new cases in 2006, as opposed to 214,640 new breast cancer cases.

Breast cancer - the "women's disease" - isn't even the leading cause of cancer death among women. In 2006, lung cancer killed 30,000 more women than did breast cancer, despite the fact that breast cancer, in the same year, had twice as many new cases.

Yet year after year, the National Cancer Institute ignores the facts it publishes, giving disproportionate amounts of funding to breast cancer research and handing out the leftovers to victims of less "popular" cancers. In 2006, the NCI spent approximately $14,100 on breast cancer research for every death attributed to the disease that year. By the same standards, other diseases received far less: $10,700 per death to prostate cancer, $1,500 to lung cancer and $2,300 to pancreatic cancer.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools