Breast cancer is one of the most common illnesses around the world. It is also one of the deadliest illnesses, as 627,000 women died from breast cancer just last year (WHO). As the years have gone past and more research has been conducted, there is more reasoning and data that explains how women are impacted by this disease, as well as steps to take in order to prevent from getting breast cancer. Also, as the years progress, more support and organizations have invested in these national centers that are solely dedicated to finding the cure of breast cancer. Some benefits of the breast cancer movement include the awareness of breast cancer, the funding of breast cancer treatments, and more awareness of personal checks. Some weaknesses of the breast cancer movement would be that it’s not very inclusive for men, and that some people use the breast cancer movement by taking money and support from people who want to help with research but pocket the money instead.
As scientists and doctors have realized the increase of women and men who get breast cancer every year, the awareness for the disease has increased. I have seen many commercials and online advertisements that promote the funding and research of breast cancer, as well as commercials that just inform the general public about the amount of people who go through this disease and how deadly it is. The breast cancer movement has shed light on the relevance of breast cancer and has increased the amount of support that these health centers receive in order to treat people with breast cancer.
As awareness increases in breast cancer and research, more funding has been available to increase the amount of research that is conducted. The funding also is available to help people who have trouble affording the expensive treatments. Being able to fund the patients who have trouble affording the treatments is the best benefit, because as I mentioned before, many people are diagnosed per year, and many of those people are unable to afford the treatment.
As awareness increases due to the breast cancer movement, so does the act of early detection. Self-check videos and tutorials are promoted at a huge rate. It is critical to teach people how to do self-checks in order to catch it as early as possible.
A weakness of the breast cancer movement is that it’s not inclusive for men. Men do not have breasts, but they still have cells in their chest that can become cancerous. The amount of men that do get breast cancer is slim to none, but it is still important to inform men that they too can get breast cancer.
Another weakness of the breast cancer movement is that it is so huge now, that people do not know that some horrible people pretend to be involved and scam the funders out of their money. We are so naïve about trying to do something positive, that we tend to forget to do our research before we commit to something like this.
In Barbara Ley’s article, she discussed one of the strengths of the breast care movement, which was awareness. Although breast cancer itself is receiving awareness, the environmental breast cancer movement is not receiving as much. She mentions that a letter was written from some of the biggest contributors to breast cancer, but even then, not enough research is being conducted to successfully evaluate the impact of environmental issues on the diagnosis of breast cancer.
- https://www.who.int/cancer/prevention/diagnosis-screening/breast-cancer/en/
- Ley, Barbara. Chapter 5 – “The Cultural Politics of Sisterhood”. In From Pink to Green