The piece on Breast Cancer Awareness Month in The Independent and Daily Mail arose because I was trying to interest the Indy in the concept of SCAM – the ‘alternative’ cancer awareness month of April 2011, arbitrarily designated by me as Sceptics’ Cancer Awareness Month.
In SCAM, anyone of a sceptical i.e. questioning stance takes a step back and looks more objectively at how cancer awareness is done, just how many meanings cancer awareness has, who it’s actually for and how, in some cases, it could be done better. Then there’s the bit asking ‘Which is tail?’, ’Which is dog?’ in the big corporate link with breast cancer for example, whether cancer activism is losing the plot, and, by the way, why only cancer ? – why don’t we fret so much about heart disease, which is a massive killer? I didn’t mention breast cancer much, if at all, but I was asked to, subsequently.
I go back to BCAM for a moment and reflect on the impressions I have of the direct responses I have received so far. As a general rule I am selective about reading on line comment in any media sources on any news item as, by the third comment (anecdote rather than empiricism, I agree) there’s usually some wearying kind of dropping left behind by a
‘spEAk You’re bRanes’ aspirant – witless but deeply unpleasant accusations of gayness, stupidity or dress sense. These I don’t need to read. As a result I haven’t yet engaged with the online comments on my BCAM piece, but I will do so eventually, in order to grasp the tone of rational argument out there.
Not being a devotee of the passive aggressive I have, however, responded to anyone who contacted me directly, as I was easy to find via Google. One person disagreed with me. Just one. And he was polite and reasonable under difficult circumstances since his mum died of breast cancer when he was six and he is 18 now. Everyone else who contacted me also had close cancer connections - having had a diagnosis, or a bereavement, more than one sometimes, or a close connection to a spouse or child with cancer. No one was immoderate. One or two had breast cancer. Most had other cancers. Some were actively fundraising.
All agreed that the balance on cancer awareness was out of whack and no one attacked the breast cancer lobby, preferring to speculate about how to promote ‘their’ cancers to better effect. I had assumed, wrongly, that anger would drive people to respond and any agreement would be mostly silent – and therefore impossible to tell apart from indifference.
Things have quietened down but I guess now the pieces are ‘out there’ I will get random responses now and again, forever, since the internet is eternal.
