7 Facts about Changing Breast Cancer

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As most of you will know October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. There is a huge amount of information, activity and merchandise around this campaign but the two most important facts at the heart of this month are:

1) Learn how to examine your own breasts for lumps and bumps - most are completely harmless but for many women who can catch their breast cancer early it saves their life.

2) Breast cancer needs a cure (in fact several as there are many different types) and this means we need to make finding the cause and cures a priority.

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BCAM - The Good and The Bad 
I like that Breast Cancer Awareness month is a superb opportunity to leverage the media to remind women how important it is to check their breasts. What I don't like is that we've become immune to the impact of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and forget that this disease happens every day to women across the world.

The insane abundance of PINK during this month has literally got in the way of two crucial facts:

1) Research is needed to find the cause and cure for breast cancer

2) Governments of the world need to commit to transparency in uncovering the causes and funding cures for breast cancers. 

The public donating money is a vital part of fund-raising but in reality medical research requires the public spending power of governments and for this to happen the political leaders of the world have to make finding cancer causes and cures a priority. It's not hard to work out that those products and industries that are linked to cancer are also the ones pumping money into the economy and political donations so it's going to take a huge amount of public pressure to move governments into taking a proactive stance on cancer research.

3 Practical Things You Can Do in the Battle Against Cancer
There are three things you can do this Breast Cancer Awareness Month (or any month in fact) that will make a difference to beating this dreadful disease:

1) Check Your Breasts

2) Donate any money DIRECTLY to cancer research (either to Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, Canadian Breast Cancer Network, American Cancer Society or to the Susan Love Foundation ) all the 'Walks for the Cure' or '2% of this lipstick goes to cancer research' won't make as much financial impact as just mailing a cheque to a Cancer Research Organization directly.


3) Use your power as a citizen to let your government know that you want breast cancer research to be prioritized in your country. In the US you can do this using Breast Cancer Action's Online Petition or by visiting American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network website. In Canada visit the Prevent Cancer Now petition page.

Like most people breast cancer has affected my family and friends and the reality is that it looks nothing like a Pink Ribbon so we need to do more than just light up the White House with pink lights, we need the people inside it to hear us and put an end to this devastating disease. I hope you find this post helpful xx

Useful and Interesting Links
Elisabeth Dale - A New Approach to The Cure
Worldwide Breast Cancer Site with Tools and Information
Think Before You Pink
Breast Cancer Action
American Breast Cancer Foundation
Breast Cancer Action Network