25th Anniversary of Breast Cancer Month Nothing to Celebrate

In case you have been wondering why pink has been such a prominent color lately the answer is this, October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This October is in fact the 25th anniversary of this very important awareness campaign that has managed to gain more attention every year it has been recognized.

The sad fact is that despite the fact that there is more awareness than ever of the disease a flat out cure is still a long ways off. In fact the cause of the disease is still not known despite a myriad of different theories as to its origin. Some awareness advocates point to this as reason to dedicate even more money to Breast Cancer research. Fran Visco, who is the President of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, wrote an editorial on the popular political blog Huffington Post in which she stated she wasn’t in the mood to celebrate the anniversary. “”Twenty-five years ago, in the United States, 110 women died of breast cancer every day,” she included in her posting, “Twenty-five years and billions of private and public research dollars later, that number is 110. Every day.”

That posting is a bit misleading, since Visco isn’t taking the growth of the American population into account. The death rate from Breast Cancer is actually around 15 percent lower than it was in 1985 but it is still a disease which is claiming far too many victims. Still awareness campaigns like the “I Like It…” campaign on Facebook seem to be the best way to get the plight of Breast Cancer survivors into the public eye and awareness is the only thing that will eventually lead to a cure.