Breast Cancer

dalin80 said:
a little OT, but it is true that breast cancer gets more funding then all others combined in the uk but is responsible for only a fraction of deaths?

iam not sure if its urban myth or not.

edit- just done some googling 8% of deaths but cant find any funding figures.

would just be interested to know is all.
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The massive emphasis on breast cancer alone bothers some people in the UK, including me, because it seems possible, even likely, that it's killing more people than it's saving. There are many other things people die of and limited resources for healthcare (state funded and charity alike).
 
We are having a pink day Friday at work :p but I'm off that day, although I'll probably still wear my fav. pink polo shirt! :cool:

£2 donations + a lot of people in my works = Excellent news for BC Awareness.
 
goldilocks said:
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now take lung cancer for example, when was the last time you saw a lung cancer charity advertised?
breast cancer is a hot topic, people know people who have had it, people survive after treatment and campaign for its cause.
where as with lung cancer, survival past 5 years is minimal, it has one of the lowest survival outcomes of any cancer - people do not often 'live through it' and go onto campaign. it is also seen as a disease with 'blame' - smokers get lung cancer, if they hadn't smoked, they wouldn't have it...

funding cancer research is very very important *click* but i would always advocate donating money to a charity which looks into every cancer, and not just breast cancer :)
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Same here. People who die of other cancers are just as dead and a more broadly focused approach might well increase understanding of cancer in general and thus help reduce the extent of all forms of cancer. My mother's had two different kinds of cancer (cured of both, wonderfully), but neither were breast cancer. It therefore irritates me on a very personal level when breast cancer is pitched as the only form of cancer that should be fought, or the only form that exists.

Prostate cancer might be a better example than lung cancer. 35,000 cases of prostate cancer a year, compared with 44,000 for breast cancer. 10,000 deaths compared with 12,000. In terms of suffering and death, it's definitely comparable. The funding, media coverage and social awareness definitely isn't.

I think "how can we save as many peoples' lives as possible with the resources we have?" is a better question than "how many women can we save from one disease only?"

EDIT: Your sig is brilliant. I wouldn't have thought to apply the laws of thermodynamics to the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. Inspired comedy.
 
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I think the point about breast cancer is that it's so easy to detect and treat in early stages if women just go for a mammogram. They're just getting the quick, easy wins.. which matters quite a lot when you're talking about peoples' lives. Breast cancer awareness has improved the survival and detection rate quite a lot. I really do think that testicular cancer deserves a lot more focus though, because it's quite common amongst men, and they're less likely to go to the doctors about it.

Also, many people think that the Women's only "Race for Life" is all about breast cancer. It's not actually - the money goes to Cancer Research UK.
 
I think that the "Race for Life" is all about excluding male people, as that's the main point of it. There are no end of charity runs, so the defining feature of that one is the deliberate exclusion of people of the "wrong" sex.

It can't be "just getting the quick, easy wins", given the enormous amount of money involved and the almost complete focus on fighting one cancer only.

I think it's about politics a lot more than it's about medicine.
 
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