About Those Pink Ribbons…

I’ve always been suspect of the Susan G. Komen foundation, simply because I felt it to be too….big. Big in the sense that monetarily, it receives a lot of support and had it’s fingers in many different advertising avenues.

My feelings were further cemented when the partnership between KFC and Komen materialized. I don’t know about you, but fast food fried chicken and a foundation committed to breast cancer awareness, seemed like an odd, if not unholy, alliance to me.  Adding to my unease was the knowledge that breast feeding has been shown  to lower the chances of  breast cancer significantly. If Komen was serious about awareness and detection, they would at least support, display or even encourage breast feeding. However, their message relies very heavily on getting expensive tests.

Read my post: Is Breast Cancer Awareness Really Helping Women?

Naturally, the fall out from the wishy-washy display of political games on Komen’s part, came as no surprise to me.  Have you ever wondered about those pink ribbons? How they came to existence and who thought it up? Natural News has an interesting story to share about those pink ribbons.

Little known to many, for instance, is the fact that the original breast cancer ribbon was created by a woman named Charlotte Haley, now 68 years old, as an awareness tool to expose the fact that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) spent virtually none of its budget on cancer prevention. Today, that ribbon, which was originally a salmon color, has been hijacked by corporations and turned pink for the purpose of raising gobs of money in the name of "finding a cure."
"Raising money has become the priority, regardless of the consequences," said one woman interviewed for the film, concerning what all the breast cancer hullabaloo is really about. "If people actually knew what was happening, they would be really pissed off," added another woman. Read More

The film mentioned in the quote is titled, “Pink Ribbons, Inc.” You can watch the two minute trailer at this link: http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=A6850654D4A85F4EA97EE37046D074F3