Breast Cancer Awareness Month on October, 2024: Breast cancer awareness month?

October, 2024 is Breast Cancer Awareness Month 2024. Breast Cancer Awareness - FAQs, Risks, Signs, Stories‎ Learn Facts. Get Support. Win the Fight.

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Because the adoption of putting on a pink ribbon by cancer of the breast children running within the 1990 New You are able to marathon and also the subsequent formation of the charitable organisation which aims to provide 90% from the money it boosts towards the support of research and awareness from the disease, huge amount of money have ben contributed. The Brand New You are able to based charitable organisation Pink Ribbon Corporation. promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month where like-minded, affiliated worldwide groups take part in fund raising while using pink ribbon motif. The sponsors are urged to make use of the pink theme and it is quite normal to determine municipal fountains gushing with superbly coloured shows. Within the United kingdom, a current campaign saw media presenter and celebrity Chris Evans offering a pink Comes-Royce Ghost services each day anywhere in the united states, filled with chauffeur and champagne, using the entire hire fee well over £5,000 being contributed towards the charitable organisation.

Different governments and organisations have declared different months as AIDS Awareness Month. The most frequent choice is December, as World AIDS Day is on December 1st each year.

Lung Cancer Awareness Month, and Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month are both November. Yes, they share a month - but there are only 12 months in any given year. Take a look at this Cancer Awareness Month calender :

You'll see that, for example, breast cancer shares its awareness month with liver cancer.

But there's a reason that breast cancer has a higher profile than other cancers, and Tarkarri has explained it - sheer hard work.

People have limited time for campaigns; those who campaign around illnesses are usually concerned with the illness that's affected them or their family. I know a couple who have a child with a very rare and life-threatening condition. Much of their time is now taken up with campaigning around this condition - fund raising, agitating for more funding for research, more education, more awareness etc.

They're doing what what the women who started the breast cancer awareness campaign did. Breast cancer awareness campaigns and Awareness Month started as a campaign by ordinary women, most of whom had breast cancer or had lost someone to it, to raise awareness so that people knew the symptoms, examined themselves regularly, attended their routine mammograms etc. It caught the public imagination and enthusiastic participation and hard work by women made it grow into something nationally, then internationally, recognised.

And it's as a result of the hard work by those women that breast cancer is no longer the automatic death sentence it once was (but don't lose sight of the fact that in the US an average of 112 women die from breast cancer every day; in the UK.that average is 33 a day - I don't have statistics for other countries).

There is nothing to stop anyone working as hard as they did to raise awareness and funds for other cancers or other conditions

Breast Cancer?

Breast cancer awareness campaigns, including Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October), were started by ordinary women to raise awareness so that people knew the symptoms, examined themselves regularly, attended their routine mammograms etc. Any group of people can start such an awareness campaign for any illness.

There are other cancer awareness months, ribbons etc, for example there is a prostate cancer awareness campaign and a ribbon, but as men are generally less open and less willing to talk about their health and well, their prostates, it gets less publicity and support.

Enthusiastic participation by women made breast cancer awareness grow into something nationally, then internationally, recognised - especially Breast Cancer Awareness month. And then big business cashed in.

Now I have had breast cancer and I agree that there are extremely irritating things about Breast Cancer Awareness month, or Pink October as the more cynical of us call it. Support for a deadly disease that kills on average 1,300 women a month in the UK alone (and I believe well over 3,000 in the USA) has been turned into a marketing opportunity by big business, with

around 1% of the cost of specially made pink stuff going to breast cancer charities, the rest into the retailers’ pockets.

The pink fluffy stuff infuriates me, and I'm not at all 'tickled pink' by Asda's (Walmart's) trivialisation of an illness that may yet kill me. Magazines, especially in October, carry stories from cheerful survivors who claim to have the all-clear (there is no all-clear with breast cancer), and often say cancer has changed their lives for the better - very different from anybody I know who's had breast cancer.

Also I believe that the marketing and fund-raising aspects of breast cancer awareness and in particularPink October, by trivialising a deadly disease, are leading people to believe that breast cancer is

a) not very serious, certainly not as serious as many other cancers (many women with breast cancer have been told - by people who don't have it - that it's a 'good' cancer to get)

and

b) curable. (my neighbour said to me 'they've just about got breast cancer licked, haven't they?' Really? Why are they still cutting women's breasts off then?)

And on this forum people often respond to those concerned about a diagnosis of breast cancer by saying ‘People don’t die of breast cancer any more’, or 'Don't worry, you'll be fine. Breast cancer is easily curable'.

I've even heard it said that it's a ‘fashionable’ or 'sexy' cancer - my sexy prosthesis and sexy one-breasted body are evidence that it's no such thing.

I agree with you that awareness needs to be raised about other cancers too, and while I hate 'competitive illness' I can see why there is some resentment about an imbalance in awareness raising and fund raising. Yes, other cancers need awareness campaigns (many have them as I’ve said, but they don't receive so much support - or have as much work put into them). But don't lose sight of the fact that breast cancer is a killer disease with disfiguring surgery, gruelling treatments and so far no cure, or that in the UK one in nine women will be diagnosed with it at some point in their lives, and I think that percentage is about the same in America.

Why is it only breast cancer awareness month?

At the beginning and middle of the 20th century, breast cancer was usually discussed in hushed tones, as if it were shameful. As an example, the New York Times refused to publish an advertisement for a breast cancer support group in the early 1950s, stating that it would not print either the word "breast" or the word "cancer". Later, however, several celebrities publicly disclosed their own health challenges, and the resulting publicity reduced the stigma. One of the first was Shirley Temple Black, the former child star, who announced her diagnosis in 1972. In October 1974, Betty Ford, the wife of the then-President of the United States, openly discussed her breast cancer diagnosis and mastectomy. Two weeks later, the wife of the then-Vice President also had a mastectomy for breast cancer. The next year, journalist Rose Kushner published her book, Breast Cancer: A Personal History and Investigative Report, which she had written while recovering from a modified radical mastectomy. The media reported these women's health and their treatment choices, and even invited some to appear on talk shows to discuss breast cancer frankly.

The breast cancer movement has resulted in widespread acceptance of second opinions, the development of less invasive surgical procedures, the spread of support groups, and other advances in patient care. The movement successfully separated diagnostic biopsy from mastectomy surgery; before about 1980, it was common to perform the biopsy and, if a quick review of tissues indicated a probable need, a mastectomy in the same surgery. The one-step surgery prevented women from seeking different opinions about their treatment, and sent them into the surgery without knowing whether their breasts would be removed that day. In response to women's concerns over lymphedema after routine removal of lymph nodes during mastectomy, the more limited approach of sentinel node biopsy was developed. Advocacy efforts also led to the formal recommendation against the routine use of the Halsted radical mastectomy in favor of simple mastectomies and lumpectomies.