Pink vs. Blue

Before I begin, let’s all take a deep breath.

Okay, are you ready?

Let me start by saying that I’m glad so many people are active in raising awareness of diseases. This tends to happen when someone we know is afflicted with the disease, so it’s natural. Runs/walks for the cure for ________ are great.

There is, however, one aspect of this increased visibility of disease that bothers me, and that’s the trendiness of certain causes. The best example of this is breast cancer.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Breast cancer is a horrible disease, and it kills a lot of women (around 25,000 in the U.S. in 2004, which is the most recent statistic I could find). I would be overjoyed to hear there is a 100% effective treatment for it. But you know what killed 25,000 men in the U.S. in 2004? Prostate cancer.

Here’s a fun experiment. Go to your local grocery store and count the number of pink ribbons you see on products. Then count the number of blue ribbons you see.

A comparative search using googlefight.com shows 44,000,000 hits for the term “breast cancer” vs. just under 12,000,000 for “prostate cancer.”

Now, before someone runs me down in the street, I will cheerfully acknowledge the many double standards in society which favor men, including comparative earnings, entertainment focus, and the availability of clothing with pockets (seriously, that’s worth a ton right there). So I guess I can’t really justify my opinion on the cancer awareness issue, but it does bother me. The end.