HYSTERIA IS NO EXCUSE:

Marketing Hypocrisy and Breast Cancer (Peggy Orenstein, October 9 2002, LA Times)

The first time pink ribbons made me see red was a couple of years back, when I was stopped short by a sign at a gas station. Cunningly placed next to a pump, it sported the ubiquitous pink bow and read: "Be a driving force against breast cancer."

For me, who had finished treatment for the disease three years earlier at the age of 35, that tore it. Corporations know that those pink ribbons translate into green cash: According to a 2000 Opinion Research International poll, more than two-thirds of women said they would purchase a product linked to the fight against breast cancer.

But how many of them will ask how their money is actually spent or how corporate donors may themselves "drive" the breast cancer agenda?

Consider Breast Cancer Awareness month, which is every October. Its founder, the drug maker AstraZeneca, manufactures the breast cancer drug tamoxifen and other chemotherapies, but until recently it made agrochemicals as well.

It's a perfect profit circle.

Though the NY Times tends to catch most of the grief, the LA Times may actually have the worst Op-Ed section in America. Since Maureen Dowd started writing sentences and paragraphs as if she were sending telegrams, and every word counted, you can at least make it through one of her snarky screeds. But no one who has a functioning intellect and a modicum of self-respect has ever finished a column by John Balzar or Robert Scheer.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 14, 2002 8:58 PM