Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez - If You Want To Fight Cancer, Turn Those Pink Ribbons Green

I'm going to make a confession. I never could stand those pink ribbons. I've never done a "Walk for the Cure" or bought daffodils for cancer victims or even picked a cancer-cure-themed postage stamp.

I'm glad to hear that the Komen Foundation has bowed to pressure and is restoring funding to Planned Parenthood, a worthwhile organization if there ever was one. But in general, the idea of putting the energy and effort of well-meaning citizens behind "the search for a cure for cancer" just irritates me, because let's face it, we know what causes cancer, and therefore we can do better than cure it, we can prevent it! Maybe not 100%, but we can take it back to the modest rates that previous generations of human beings enjoyed.

For my grandparents' generation, a diagnosis of cancer was frightening because it was so often a death sentence, but it was rare. Not one of my four grandparents came down with cancer, and I don't believe their parents did either. This isn't due to some genetic serendipity, it's just a fact that cancer rates in the first half of the 20th century (and every century before that) were way lower than they are now.

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http://countercurrents.org/hernandez060212.htm