All Cancer is Bad

Okay, I'm going to write something kind of... well... I'm not supposed to say it. It's something unspoken, something that is staring everyone in the face but no one wants to say.

Something came up in school today, and I can't get it out of my head. I was listening to some of my classmates talk about what they would do if they were millionaires who could give away money to any charity. A couple of girls all agreed that they would give millions to breast cancer research. When I joined the conversation and said I would also donate to cancer research, they were shocked that I wouldn't donate explicitly to breast cancer. Yes, I'm female, but does that limit me to only donating to breast cancer? Women can get other truly-female-only cancers too, you know!

Then I started thinking.

Why are we giving so much funding to breast cancer?

Yes, it's a terrible cancer. Yes, lots of people die from it every year.

But it's not the only killer, people. Let's put this in perspective.

We hear about lung cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, and pancreas cancer sometimes (these are apparently the biggest killers/most common). We hear about how smoking causes lung cancer, how old people should get colonoscopies, and read the occasional story (like Steve Jobs)  about pancreatic  cancer (though what Steve Jobs had was different, it still cast a bit of spotlight on pancreatic cancer).

And hey, let's throw aside the whole gender thing with breast cancer and prostate cancer and whatever and think. Lung cancer is killing more people every year than the two of them combined, but it receives significantly less funding. Just a thought. And no, it's not a smoker's disease at the end of the day, considering like 80% of the people who get it have never smoked, or haven't smoked in at least 10 years. But it's totally okay that it gets so much less funding than breast cancer even though it kills more people every year and stuff... yup...

There is pink everything for breast cancer. You can find pink mugs, pink bathroom supplies, pink you-name-it-and-it-exists. All are sending some, or all of their proceeds to breast cancer research. Yes, some of that money just goes to "cancer research", but more money is being poured into breast cancer research than any other type of cancer research.

What ever happened to skin cancer? Ovarian cancer? Blood cancer? Lymphoma? Bone cancer? Brain cancer?

Why don't those get as much funding for research? Ovarian cancer is known as the silent killer, because often times when its detected, it's too late to save the woman's life. Blood cancers are super common, but they don't receive nearly as much funding-per-case as the big five (breast, colon, prostate, pancreas, lung).

I could keep making examples like this, but I think you get the point. I don't think it's fair that everyone is so keen on finding a cure to breast cancer and just leaving thing else in the dust. Even prostate cancer, which can be considered the male equivalent (though men can and do get breast cancer sometimes), gets less funding. I just don't get it.

So going back to my classmate's discussion today, I realised something. Maybe it's really the general hype about breast cancer that makes funding it so popular. Everyone at some point has read an article about someone dying from breast cancer. Several famous people have gotten breast cancer and made their stories very public. It's not that other cancers are inferior to breast cancer, it's that they don't get the attention they need.

I don't want it to seem like I'm putting down breast cancer, or advocates for breast cancer research/treatment here. Because while it may seem that way, I'm really not. I just think that every cancer needs funding. Everyone deserves the chance to fight for their life.