The Cancer Cartel at work again

I don’t know how many of you are women’s basketball fans, but just in case you missed last weekend’s action, most of the top-ranked college teams played their games bedecked from head to toe in pink uniforms, compliments of Nike. The Think Pink initiative is a global, unified effort of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) to raise breast cancer awareness on the court, across campuses, in communities and beyond. More than 800 universities participated in some capacity in the event which happened to coincide with ESPN’s ‘February Frenzy’ of games. Fans of the game were encouraged to don pink in support of the cause.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve seen a typical women’s basketball fan, but I can assure you that pink is not her favorite color. However, like the rest of us, she’s always willing to do her part in the fight against breast cancer.

During last week’s action, in addition to the play-by-play reminder of breast cancer, fans were repeatedly encouraged to give generously to the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund. We were told that we must band together to stop this ruthless killer of women. Yes, we surely surely must.

My question is why didn’t Nike just write a big check to the fund and be done with it? We could’ve actually WATCHED the Rutgers-Tennessee game, a rematch of last year’s NCAA final; the fund would have its money; more “research” could be done; big Pharma and their minion-surgeons could have their pin money; big Food could keep fucking with the food supply so that these fundraisers will always be necessary. And Nike will be at the ready to supply gear for each of them, swoosh color negotiable.

Even more importantly, more women would be convinced to cough up money for an annual mammogram, more biopsies of benign tissue would be done and, in the process, even more of them would get cancer from the large, very unnatural and unhealthy, doses of radiation they regularly receive. I mean, let’s forget that one of the world’s foremost authorities on radiation, John W. Gofman, (MD, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Molecular Biology at UC-Berkeley–no hack, this guy), estimates that 75% of breast cancer cases could be prevented by avoiding exposure to the ionizing radiation of mammography and x-rays. I'm sure the number would be even higher if our mainstream healthcare professionals knew anything about health.

The Think Pink campaign sounds like a win-win for everyone. Except, of course, the women who are supposedly benefiting by thinking pink.




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