The Public Tit

Why is breast cancer the public women's issue par excellence? Even Canada's national banks are on side, with CIBC selling pins and sponsoring The Run for the Cure.

Now first, let me be clear: I'm not against breast cancer research AT ALL. I do think the research is limited (how many studies do you think are designed to figure out if lesbians are at higher risk of breast cancer than hterosexual women?). But I'm all in favour of the research that is being done.

What I wonder about is why this is the most visible women's health issue? Why the commodification of one disease?

One of the most disturbing effects of the focus on breast cancer is that many younger women are now being encouraged to get mammograms. At the union conference I attended last weekend, one woman got up and told all the young women to go have a mammogram. She was an authoritative speaker, this woman. I wonder how many of the younger women are about to follow her advice. Vigilance and breast self-exams are good, I think, since they enable women to check regularly for, well, irregularities in breast tissue. But pumping yourself full of radiation at a young age seems to me to be fraught with problems, too.

Can this type of prevention not be undermining its own potential benefits?

And what about other "female" diseases? How much research funding are they getting?

What, in the end, is the effect of advertising on disease management and on healthy solutions? Perhaps we are fixated too much on that Great Maternal Breast, as if the health of the breast itself were symbolic of the health/disease of our family values.

God knows, Bush Whackers love their breasts. But perhaps we need to to be weaned off, just a little, so as to gain some perspective.

Posted by Bush Whacker at May 7, 2003 11:32 PM