The Marketing of Breast Cancer

The Susan G. Komen Foundation and its fundraiser, the 5K Race for the Cure, have done much to raise awareness of breast cancer. Grassroots breast cancer advocates, however, are offended by the annual event, according to journalist Mary Ann Swissler in an in-depth article on the Komen Foundation for Southern Exposure Magazine. "The races, [critics] say, merely focus women on finding a medical cure for breast cancer, and away from environmental conditions causing it, the problems of the uninsured, and political influence of corporations over the average patient," Swissler writes. She uncovers Komen's direct connections with the pharmaceutical industry, corporate boards of private cancer treatment companies, habitual polluters, conservative lobbyists and George W. Bush as well as Komen's active support of an HMO-friendly version of the "Patients' Bill of Rights."