Breast Cancer Talk

In class on Thursday, September 18th, we listened to a radio clip where a woman discussed the marketability of Breast Cancer. While listening to her talk about how companies use "pink" to promote their products and raise profits, I was both amazed and appalled by the strategies employed by these corporations. I was at first almost impressed by the "win-win" situation presented to anyone marketing a product: by supporting breast cancer and donating a percentage of profits to research, the producer can increase their revenue almost instantly. However, as she stated how companies celebrate the marketable breast cancer while hiding the "incurable" domestic violence, my attitude began to turn sour. The relentlessness of capitalism reared its ugly head when the woman informed us all that chemotherapy is more "profitable" than preventing breast cancer. Although health care firms profit from chemo, it is appalling to know that a cure, whether already found or close to being discovered, has to be hidden from society to keep the consumers (in this case, dying patients) producing profits and money flowing in. The victim in all of this, however, is all "incurable" problems; in this radio clip the focus was domestic violence, but there are plenty of things that could be supported and possibly solved by the big corporations which, apparently, just aren't marketable. The issues of poverty, domestic violence, hunger, and other prevalent problems in society today are ignored by people who have the funds to help fix them. Overall, I was shocked by how ruthless capitalism can and has become in the United States, and am very curious what other kinds of resources are being held from the public eye.