Some major corporations make products that cause breast cancer while marketing their companies as fighting for people’s heath, a breast cancer advocate said Monday.
“It’s actually a pretty nice profit picture,” Barbara Brenner told 100 students and community members in 180 PLC. “You make the cancer and you make the treatment.”
Brenner, executive director for the outreach and lobbyist group Breast Cancer Action and a breast cancer survivor, spoke as part of a presentation with the Oregon Toxics Alliance. The presentation, “Behind the Pink Ribbon,” focused on marketing techniques corporations use to mask products that actually cause cancer. Brenner used examples of corporations that produce cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, cars and food.
In 1964, Brenner said, 1 in 20 people had breast cancer at some point in their lives. In 2004, the risk jumped to 1 in 7.5, she said.
“A woman hears the words ‘you have breast cancer’ every 1.9 minutes,” Brenner said.
Several major corporations employ “cause marketing” to sell products, Brenner said. Cause marketing, she said, ties a product to a social cause. It builds goodwill, increases sales and sometimes, she said, covers up cancer-causing products.
“More companies tie their products to breast cancer than any other disease in the world,” Brenner said.
Brenner said corporations are “producing toxic products and putting pink ribbons on them.”
Brenner said the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, the largest breast cancer organization, and sponsor of the Komen Race for the Cure, depends heavily on corporate donations from offending corporations.
“A lot of us are a little tired of racing for the cure,” she said. “We’re encouraging real change and we’re not talking about what’s in your pocket.”
Several major cosmetics companies use chemical preservatives in their products that mimic estrogen and affect hormone functions, Brenner said.
“This is not public information,” Brenner said in an interview. “Nobody labels their products.”
“The increase in cancer is so clearly a direct result of what we have been doing to ourselves and our environment,” she said.
Members of the Oregon Toxics Alliance, a statewide grassroots
organization, shared Brenner’s sentiment. President David Monk said. Cancer-causing pollutants have contaminated the ground water in the area and the government refuses to act quickly to change the problem.
OTA founder and breast cancer survivor Mary O’Brien said car exhaust and fumes from factories and autobody shops pollute the air. O’Brien said pollutants fill the Willamette River.
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