Pink Ribbons vs Red Dresses

Many health charities are jealous of what they call 'Pinkwashing". You can find evidences in recent Wear Red Day comments from cardiologist like DrWes and DrJohnM even though DrJohnM is quick to point out that addressing both diseases is important, and he is quite right. It has been my experience that many of the women who are active breast care advocates are also heart health advocates. The reason is simple. Adriamycin, which is used as a first line treatment for breast cancer is also a cardiac toxin and can cause cardiomyopathy during treatment and many years afterward. We must potentially sacrifice our heart health to keep ourselves alive. Thus promoting healthy lifestyle and finding more awareness for women's heart disease among the medical community is vitally important to us. We who wear pink tee shirts also wear little red dresses. For this reason I find bizarre the kind of tit for tat relationship that has developed between Komen for the Cure and  The American Heart Association.

In October, 1985 the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month was founded by a partnership of the American Cancer Society and Imperial Chemical Industries (now part of AstraZenica) The focus of the partnership was to promote mammograms as the most effective weapon in the fight against breast cancer. In the years that have followed, the month has been consumed with awareness walks and fundraisers and corporate sponsorships. There is almost no one on earth who doesn't know the pink ribbon will be tying up the month.  In 2008 congress designated October as Sudden Cardiac Arrest Month. I haven't been able to find any defining reason why October was chosen when at the time the pink tide was already more than well established. February would have made a appropriate choice as Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness could more easily  piggy back on February being American Heart Month as set aside by congress on December 30, 1963. But really, prior to recent years did anyone even know that February was American Heart Month? Now that I think about it, until 2008 when UPS celebrated  Wear Red Day, if I'd heard about it at all it sparked the same response as "today is national hot dog day" Oscar Meyer might get excited about it and give out hot dogs from the Wieniemobile, but that's all. I don't think I've ever seen the men, who American Heart Month was established to serve do one thing in an effort to gain any awareness for the cause. So it's not surprising that the Heart Rhythm Society and Congress might not be so excited about February. That changed in 2008 when the women got involved and the Red Dress campaign started making noise. Suddenly, Heart Health month is all the fashion, and as you can see especially in DrWes's blog, the men are jealous.

Click here to see the campaign

Not only the men are jealous, but now it appears that the Pink Tide is looking to get even for Sudden Cardiac Awareness Month's recent positive campaign that took away some of the October steam. I think the timing of the Komen announcement to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood breast screening programs and reversal on Wear Red Day was if nothing else, suspect. For those of us who have feet in both causes the argument is an embarrassment. I must give Nancy Brinkler this much of a nod though, This little spat has drawn much more attention to Wear Red Day than anything the Red Dress has done for itself. Thanks Nancy.