re: Breast Cancer Awareness in Football. Think Pink

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The thing about the whole breast cancer awareness drive is that it originated in a time where womens' health issues were given severely short shrift. They weren't being ignored as such, but most tests and studies involved mostly male participants with diseases that affected males more than females. So it's hard to begrudge breast cancer activists, especially since the topic was such a culturally sensitive one (it's hard for younger people to believe now, but there was a time when people just Did Not Discuss such topics, which meant women weren't getting screened or educated on it.) Obviously things have improved enormously since then, but what do you expect breast cancer awareness organizations to do? Pack it in and stop spreading the message because they've had success? And women are still dying from undetected breast cancer all the time.

As far as I'm concerned, kudos to them for learning savvy marketing. The relative lack of publicity about other cancers isn't their fault -- they had a purpose and didn't allow themselves to be diverted. Someone should ape their model and do the same with their own cause (like the testicular cancer you advocate for.) People have done it for AIDS, for heart disease, for various ailments related to smoking, etc. It's not a zero-sum game. If you're thinking that there's only so much money to be spread around, well, yeah. But none of this is really going to find a cure with donations. These causes are more about raising awareness and encouraging people to catch the problem early. No 5K race or pink ribbon is going to contribute to finding a cure, regardless of what well-intentioned participants think. The donations rarely find their way into the hands of the actual scientists working on the problem. Most of them are used to continue the program or funneled into prevention rather than the cure (and the whole bit about of prevention = pound of cure has lots of truth to it.) And that's not a zero sum game.

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