Don't fall for cancer envy

Sadly some cancer charities have openly attacked the amount of funding and attention breast cancer receives instead of finding a way to communicate their own message.

This was best illustrated when a UK group, Pancreatic Cancer Action, devised a campaign that shocked many and was labelled ‘cancer envy.’

The ad may have had the best intentions but all it did was raise outrage by showing pancreatic cancer patients, many of them close to death, saying "I wish I had breast cancer."

The point may have been to highlight the grim prognosis of those suffering from the deadliest form of cancer — one that kills four in five sufferers within a year of diagnosis — but all it did was upset people including the families of those lost to breast cancer.

 

In 2011 the leading cause of the 43,221 cancer deaths in Australia was lung cancer (8,114), bowel cancer (3,999) prostate cancer (3,294) breast cancer (2,937) and pancreatic cancer (2,416.) But it’s brain cancer that kills more children in Australia than any other disease and is the biggest cancer killer of people under 40. In 2011 there were 1,272 deaths attributed to the condition.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/dont-fall-for-cancer-envy-everyone-needs-funding/story-fnpug1jf-1227347409696