Breast Cancer Awareness Month

I was hoping to post this thought during the actual month of Breast Cancer Awareness, but there will be a BCA month next year so it is still applicable today.

Theorem 20: Awareness for a disease is an inefficient use of our marketing efforts

I can definitely not claim this thought as my own, and I would like to explicitly give credit to people such as Bobby and Steier who have discussed this topic with me. Nonetheless, I will be the one to present this innovative idea to the blogosphere.

So I am sure everyone noticed all the various places the color of pink was used in pro sports, on campus, and pretty much everywhere. This color pink caught my attention and I quickly became aware not of breast cancer itself, but of the fact that it was breast cancer awareness month. Therefore, I think if we keep things how they are now, we should call it Breast Cancer Awareness Month Awareness Month. That could get complicated so I say we make changes. Here's why:

I assume many people know someone who has been affected by Breast Cancer or know someone who knows someone who has been affected. Now, when you find out that someone you are close to has just been diagnosed with Breast Cancer (and I do not mean at all to make light of this issue), an adequate response is NOT, "Oh, I am aware of that disease." Rather, I want my answer to be, "Oh, lucky for you, I just developed this new medicine to cure that disease."

So here's what I propose. I want October 1st to be Breast Cancer Awareness day, in which we would target the audience of people with amnesia, alzheimer's, newborns,etc., really anyone that may not know about breast cancer. The following 30 days will be called Breast Cancer Educational Month, in which every school across the country will be forced to offer 1-credit courses only in cancer research or other science fields. Everyone writing sonnets and doing psychology research and learning Chinese will be forced to sit through useful lectures and learn science. Some people will say, "Oh, wahhh wahhh wahhhh, I hate science, wahhh wahhh" (sound of a baby crying). That's fine. Those people can spend their time in a lab doing the dirty work that they are told to do (by some scientist). Metoxen volunteers 50 hours a week of pro bono work cutting up deadly mosquitoes in an effort to cure this deadly disease we call cancer while we sit in our rooms doing math problems. He needs all the help he can get and we need to give it to him. He cares.

If nothing else, we should educate ourselves on the female breast. Channel 198 (It is a premium channel so you may or may not have to pay for it) is airing educational videos on the female breast 24/7. If you are wondering, it is that fuzzy channel that never really comes through no matter how you situate your antenna. We need to learn about the breast before can spend our time protecting it. So please, do something to help out this cause.

* * But really, breast cancer and cancer in general is a serious issue. I apologize for trying to make a funny out of it.