Movie slams pink-washing in breast cancer campaigns.

painterly

The documentary film "Pink Ribbons Inc."  scheduled for release in Toronto February 3rd, raises the question about where the money is going. I look forward to seeing the film.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/17/us-toronto-pinkwashing-idUSTRE78G18D20110917

dlb823

Me too!  I hope it will be available in the US very soon, and I hope it makes it very clear that breast cancer research and prevention still need major funding and donations.  It's just the pinking and awareness that are out of hand!     Deanna

painterly

Here's a review of the film. Looks like the s***** will hit the fan when this documentary comes out!!!!

The director, "Lea Pool, working from Samantha King's book, won't be making any friends with her full-frontal attack on the corporate co-option of the breast cancer cause, which could limit Stateside circulation of this Canadian production. But there are plenty of women who'll want to see it. And they'll be seeing red, not pink."

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117946099/

You can google "Pink Ribbons Inc". and watch on UTube some of the comments.

Stratford

Clip of the film:

http://www.nfb.ca/playlists/pink_ribbons_inc/viewing/pink_ribbons_inc_clip/ 

cp418

Thank you for the clip.  I hope it will be show here.  Interesting with the Dr saying we don't know why except for being female. The previous article link states in 1940 that 1 in 22 women and today it is 1 in 8.  I guess she is unaware of the men with breast cancer from the military base in NC..............  (hint - environmental toxins are "partly' to blame IMO.)

sewingnut

I hope it gets a fair shake in the US. I think if they had Michael Moore associated with it there would be a lot more attention given.

CorinneM1

I am looking forward to seeing this.  I started telling friends/family about the pinkwashing and advising that if they want to donate to do directly to an organization or breast cancer center.  It is very clever and deceving marketing. 

When people see the pink ribbon on some products, they assume that if they purchase that part of their purchase is going towards research--so perhaps they purchase more.  They are not aware that the contribution has already been made by the company or organization as part of their foundation/philanthropy contribution.

Don't even want to get into the cosmetic, plastics, dairy etc that wave their pink ribbon flags when studies show that their chemicals and hormones contribute to cancer.

lago

Corinne if it comes to the landmark century centre or Gene Siskel Film Center want to go together (and invite a bunch of  other ladies from the Illinois thread)?

pupmom

How timely is the release of this movie!!

LtotheK

Lago, yes!

painterly

More information about the movie coming out today: 

Documentary dissects breast cancer fundraising campaigns

 

Director Lea Pool was astonished at some of the things she uncovered in film

  BY JEFF HEINRICH, POSTMEDIA NEWS FEBRUARY 1, 2012    

When she got the call from the National Film Board asking her to make a documentary about how money is raised for research into breast cancer, Lea Pool was skeptical.

Like a lot of people, the Montreal filmmaker knew what a pink ribbon symbolized, knew that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, was aware of the many corporate campaigns to get people to donate. She'd even had close friends who had breast cancer or who had died from the disease, which kills 59,000 North American women a year and which has no known cure.

But fundraising? Where was the story in that? And more importantly, if there was one, would there be enough visual material to make a movie? At first, Pool didn't think so.

Then she did a bit of research. She read Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy, a revealing book written in 2006 by Samantha King, a professor of kinesiology and health studies at Queen's University. Then she read the first-person piece "Welcome to Cancerland: A mammogram leads to a cult of pink kitsch," a scathing 2001 feature article in Harper's magazine by feminist writer Barbara Ehrenreich.

Before long, Pool decided to go ahead and make the movie.

"I was really convinced there was a great subject for a feature film, something that had never been done before," the Swissborn director recalled this week from her home in Montreal's Mile End district.

"It was an opportunity to give another voice, another point of view, and to start, perhaps, a new conversation about this subject."

The result is Pink Ribbons, Inc., a 97-minute documentary that borrows the first part of King's book title but takes a more populist tack than the author's academic dissection of the issue.

"I needed to find a way to make (the fundraising issue) more attractive to a large audience," explained Pool, 61, who's best known for her feminist dramas Anne Trister and Emporte-moi.

In her documentary, she employs a variety of tricks:

. She interviews people against a digitally animated background and has them speak directly to the camera. "It's not a new idea, but it works well - it engages the viewer," said Pool.

. She eschews any formal narration in favour of factoids written across the screen. Example: "Around the world, every 23 seconds someone is diagnosed with breast cancer and every 69 seconds someone dies."

. She throws in the unexpected: some playful animation (by Francis Gelinas) and a rare archival TV clip of Alfred Hitchcock directing William Shatner as a doctor telling a patient she has breast cancer.

. And Pool makes maximum use of the colour pink. It's everywhere in the picture: in clothing, in marketing paraphernalia, in floodlit monuments like Niagara Falls and the Empire State Building.

But what really makes the movie compelling is the subject itself.

A whiff of scandal has a way of concentrating the mind, and Pool - aided by producer Ravida Din and writer-researchers Nancy Guerin and Patricia Kearns - brings that to the screen over and over. There's the stunning fact that a pharmaceutical company - AstraZeneca - that makes the anti-cancer drug tamoxifen also makes an agricultural crop spray linked to - you guessed it - cancer.

There's the yogurt company - Yoplait - that sponsors breast-cancer fundraising marches but has used milk from cows dosed with growth hormones that, again, are linked to cancer.

There's the car company - Ford - whose plastic tail lights have given off fumes in the manufacturing process and some of whose mostly female plant workers have died of - yes, ma'am - breast cancer.

There are cosmetics companies - Estee Lauder, Avon, Revlon - that raise millions for breast-cancer research while deflecting criticism their hair dyes, lipsticks and hand creams have carcinogenic ingredients.

And there's the fast-food chain - Kentucky Fried Chicken - that launched a "pink bucket campaign" for breast-cancer research. Junk food for health research? "What the cluck?!" the critics cried.

In her film, Pool sets these facts and arguments amid a parade of talking heads: authors like King and Ehrenreich, doctors, activists, fundraisers, company executives and women who have breast cancer or survived it or know someone who did. And she returns again and again to ordinary people wearing pink and participating in mass marches organized by corporations to raise funds for research.

"I was moved by what I saw, and I also had to be careful, because each story is special and all these women are doing these walks for a reason I can understand - the solidarity between women is very strong, and I didn't want to destroy that," Poll recalled. "But I did need to show that the image of this disease that's being projected is not the right image."

And that image is clean and as comforting as the colour pink that symbolizes it, the film argues.

Donors are told money will go to find a "cure" for breast cancer, they're told that companies are involved because they care, they're told that cancer "can be beaten," they're told it can be prevented by a healthy lifestyle and proper diet. In fact, as Ehrenreich and King and others argue on camera, there's nothing "pretty" or inspirational about breast cancer. It's just a nasty, merciless disease.

Worse, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been raised since the mid-20th century to research its causes and fund its treatment, women are still dying of breast cancer today at the same rate they were 60 years ago. And they're still offered the same treatment options they were 40 years ago: surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, a three-pronged whammy that one U.S. physician in the movie, Susan Love, bluntly calls "slash, burn and poison."

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

Denise2730

Very interesting - can't wait to see the whole documentary.

Denise

lago

Well they are offering  some treatment that wasn't available 40 years ago. There are the ALs, Herceptin, Tamoxifen. Not sure I'd be NED right now if it weren't for Herceptin.

LtotheK

To Lago's point:  it is important to acknowledge that death rates for breast cancer are going down.  This is due to the medications she lists, better screening like digital mammography, and probably even some greater understanding of general health, like the role of Vitamin D.

painterly

Here are the movie listings for Pink Ribbons Inc.

http://firstrunfeatures.com/pinkribbons_playdates.html

Charles_Pelkey

I am among those who are quite skeptical of the Pink Ribbon crew, as I am of the Yellow Wristband crowd. For anyone that knows me in my other life - in which I tried to aggressively cover the subject of doping in sport - you might recall that one cyclist and I don't exactly get along.


That said, I do want to contribute to organizations that use our donations for research, early detection and basic medical services for those who cannot afford them. I would appreciate any suggestions as to where those donations might be directed.

painterly

An interesting article from "The Guardian" newspaper on the movie, Pink Ribbons, Inc. that was recently shown in England: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/mar/25/cancers-not-pink-women-rebelling

BreastCancerSuperComputer

I think Pink Ribbons Inc will be released in the U.S. soon, as it was just released in Canada.  

You can donate your unused computer cycles to help find a cure for Breast Cancer. If you have a computer that sits idle, you can use your computer to find a cure by crunching research data.  Instead of donating $$$, use your computer.  http://breastcancersupercomputer.com/thankyou.html    FREE.

Wabbit

I have reported the above post as spam.  A visit to that site tells you that for only $6.99 you can sign up for this program ... first 50 are free.  The site also calls it rosetta @ home.  A Google search brought up an old Craigslist ad offering $5 for every person you signed up.  This is marketing and I hope the mods will investigate it before allowing it to stay.

jenrio

The only way to cure breast cancer is to cure the stage IV patients.   2 years ago, I had a mammogram that was fine.   So i was comfortable enough to get pregnant at 36.   midway through pregnancy, an aggressive IDC is found.   mammograms and screening and awareness has inherent limitations, that throwing billions of well intentioned donations won't fix.    

Government research budgets are being cut these days. The future of personalized medicine is when clinical trials can be smaller scale yet results in better drugs for smaller but well targetted subset of people. Examples are:
1. xykori for small minority of ALK positive lung cancer patients. gleevac and Herceptin
2. TDM-1 is recycling an old highly toxic chemotherapy drug and attach it to Herceptin for better delivery and targetting of cancer cells. There are many cytotoxins that kills cancer cells, but majority are eliminated during phase I because of unacceptable toxicity. Imagine a future, where every subtype of cancer patients can use any toxins effectively delivered to cancer cell without systemic toxicity.
3. At the same time, cost of genomic analysis are dropping. When genomes can be effeciently sequenced at <$10000 (it is now!), there's no excuse not to collect the tumor samples and run sequence and collect information to better target. Old clinical trials for all drugs can potentially be re-evaluated for information on which subset of people responds better to certain therapies. That's why it's important that patients donate their samples and clinical records to make sure good data is available in future.

I don't want to read more costly studies like "a needle in the ocean is an environmental factor in breast cancer occurence", I don't want to see more awareness/screening campaigns that costs billions of dollars, or pay $3000 for a commercial BRCA1/BRCA2 test.

If every patient participate in 1 noninterventional research study and share 1 patient record and participate in >=1 well targetted interventional clinical trials, I have no doubt there will be a 95% cure for MBC and other MCs in 5-10 years.