Inspired Metastatic Breast Cancer
Advocacy
Thousands are still having to live with Metastatic Breast Cancer. We need to campaign for more awareness of this stage of breast cancer and for funding to find treatments that can truly turn this into a chronic disease; and ultimately for a cure.
Please join us.
http://www.causes.com/actions/1699502-change-october-to-metastatic-breast-cancer-awareness-month
This petition will be presented to the NBCAM Collaborating organizations to change October to Metastatic & Breast Cancer Awareness Month. There is NO CURE for Metastatic Breast Cancer (Stage 4 or MBC). One person dies every 13 minutes from Metastatic Breast Cancer. Every October there is a group that goes unnoticed in a sea of pink. That group is composed of the men and women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) or stage 4 breast cancer where the disease has spread primarily to the bone, lungs, lymph nodes, liver and brain. Ironically, Susan G. Komen died of MBC, yet very few people even know that MBC is different from Early Stage Breast Cancer. The median survival after diagnosis is 3 years, with no statistically significant improvement in the past twenty years. Only 2-3% of research funds goes to finding a cure for MBC, yet 30% of Early Stage Breast Cancer patients develop metastases and die. By referring to October as Metastatic & Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it will raise awareness of MBC and encourage more research funding for Metastatic Breast Cancer (ideally 30% for 30%) and ultimately raise standards of care for ALL stages of Breast Cancer and end this horrible disease.
Campaigns
Petition
This project is in the final stages and the blocks are being sewn together in time for the Metastatic Breast Cancer Network conference in Houston TX in September.
Every year about 40,000 people in the US, 11,000 people in the UK and over 400,000 worldwide will die of Metastatic Breast Cancer.
The purpose of this Quilt is to remember those whose Inspiration has been lost to their family and friends. To do this we need to show the personal face of MBC in the form of those individuals whose lives have been taken by this deadly dis-ease.
The Quilt will also represent those of us living with MBC. If you want more information please go to our facebook page. We look forward to hearing from you.
The important thing is the message!
http://www.facebook.com/groups/420238644721017/
Lost Inspiration Quilt
Komen & Kohl
Dr. Judith A. Salerno,
c/o Komen’s HQ,
5005 LBJ Freeway,
Suite 250,
Dallas, TX 75244.
Dear Dr Salerno,I am writing to register my disappointment that Komen, in their partnership with Kohl’s department stores, has chosen to use the imagery of an elephant for their campaign, in what would appear to be a clear rip-off of the image used for the last few years by METAvivor in an attempt to get METASTATIC breast cancer to be the centre of the breast cancer debate. This is compounded by the campaign making no mention of METASTATIC Breast Cancer which actually IS the elephant in the room, and not the Pink Ribbon form of breast cancer that Komen has done so much to promote over the last 32 years.It is especially disappointing as those of us who live with METASTATIC Breast Cancer had finally begun to think that Komen was waking up to our existence by becoming a part of the Metastatic Breast Cancer Alliance; the stated goals of which are increasing knowledge and understanding, and making progress with research; though this would seem to be just within the METASTATIC Breast Cancer community. Why is this? For fear of offending or scaring the ‘survivors’? Because it is not good for the Pink Ribbon Image of breast cancer? Because it might offend survivors, or maybe more importantly your corporate sponsors?Here in the UK there has been a recent campaign by Pancreatic Cancer Action where people with Pancreatic Cancer use the tag line “I wish I had breast cancer” because of the false impression that breast cancer is highly ‘curable’. I wonder how often anyone in organisations such as Komen actually think about those of us with METASTATIC breast cancer; who have to live with a disease that is killing us, and yet is trivialised as a pretty pink ribbon for ‘survivors’. But do we matter to such organisations? Not really, because you know we are going to die and so will not be a problem for too long.I hope that you will reconsider this campaign, partly because Komen will be accepting Pinkwashed money from a company which stands to make a profit from it, but worse that you are using imagery that is already linked to METASTATIC Breast Cancer which only receives about 3% of research funding, with the other 97% going to early stage breast cancer which does not kill the patient.
http://inspiringmetastaticbreastcanceradvocacy.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/letter-re-komen-and-kohls-campaign-imagery/
