OT: Oregon to Wear Pink Helmets...Uniformz!!!
Against Wazzu this weekend (and socks and cleats, duh). I think we can all agree a nice uniformz debate would help temper things around here. Why not discuss Oregon's methods in supporting breast cancer. Also, they'll be auctioning 25 helmets off to raise funds for the Kay Yow Cancer Fund. Read more in the following link.
Annnnd there it is...
October 17th, 2013 at 5:29 PM ^
October 18th, 2013 at 10:43 AM ^
Without telling them where it's going, and that makes THEM assholes? That's kind of the point of the whole thread; that people would like to see the money go to helping the cause, not all the peripherals that line people's pockets. I'll gladly give to organizations that can show they're doing good work and the overhead is kept to a minimum. (And most that do are proud of the fact and don't hide it). That's compassion, and not a feel good jesture.
The fact that you've had some tragic circumstances that has universally been met with condolences and sorrow in this thread doesn't give you a license to be a dick to others.
October 18th, 2013 at 11:14 AM ^
People in tragic situations aren't known for thinking 100% rationally. I agree that he's been a little rude in this thread, but my advice would be to let it go. You're obviously not getting anywhere with the discussion, and now you're just arguing with a guy who's too emotionally involved to see your side. Just walk away.
October 18th, 2013 at 12:21 PM ^
October 18th, 2013 at 1:17 PM ^
Quite possibly I have been. You wouldn't be the first. Whether it was deserved or not is neither here nor there. But I asked for the info because I thought you were being snarky, but also sincere about having a team. And if it had some legitimacy, yes, I would donate to it in support of MGoBlogBrotherhood. I don't have any problem with the cause. I just like to know what organization is sponsoring events to know where the money is really going. People have pointed out organizations on here that don't do such a good job. In the spirit of positivity, if not exactly on point, an organization like MDA usually goes to great lengths to keep administrative costs down and tries to get as much of the money in the hands of people who will do good (or at least it has in the past). If you were trying to garner support for such an organization I wouldn't object to it.
And good advise Magnus. I'm out.
October 18th, 2013 at 12:32 PM ^
October 18th, 2013 at 12:30 PM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 10:21 AM ^
This "raising awareness" of this or that is getting to be a tiresome schtick. Stop blowing money on producing pink shit and start putting ALL of that money into cures and support. Not one single coherent person on this earth is "unaware" of breast cancer.
October 17th, 2013 at 10:46 AM ^
And very few people are unaware of the existence of condoms. But there are still awareness campaigns. The message is "Uhh... you should probably wear this here thing or you'll contract herpes and make a baby."
Awareness does not just mean "So, there's this thing called cancer and it is a bad thing." It's more "Get checked, here are symptoms, please do not overlook this." While wearing pink does not convey this, the simple fact that its in the general discussion may cause women to look more carefully at the disease.
Are there more direct ways to help fight this battle? Yes. But there is no zeroing out these contributions. You can say that this money should have directly funded something, but that is to assume Oregon or anyone else would have done that as a replacement to this. If this goes away, there's likely no contribution from them at all. Also, think of the secondary effects of the campaign. How many $20 donations from some shlub Bills' fan can be attributed to it?
There are so many better battles to choose, I'm not sure why this one gets so much resistance.
October 17th, 2013 at 11:01 AM ^
Here's the thing: this is not the only battle worth fighting. There are many, many other worthy causes. The Susan G. Komen Foundation is an incredibly effective lobby group, but it should not make us forget that most human beings die of causes other than breast cancer. Many of those causes could also use more funding and research.
October 17th, 2013 at 12:33 PM ^
Here's the thing: this is not the only battle worth fighting.
And that's really the crux of it right there.
People are not tired of this because they think breast cancer is not a worthy cause. People are tired of this because they feel amount of attention paid to it has begun to come at the expense of other worthy causes.
A perfect case in point, I think, is this: When UVA played FSU a couple years ago, the game was used to promote bone marrow drives and donor registries. Unfortunately, you wouldn't have known this unless you happened to be watching the game at the exact time the announcers talked about it. (Or you saw the publicity efforts of the school, which went largely ignored by the media outside of local newspapers.)
Yet everyone now knows about Oregon and they are being widely praised for their charitable efforts, etc. Shouldn't there be at least as much publicity when a team tries to promote a more obscure cause? Maybe a heck of a lot more?
But pink sells. That is what bothers people. Ignoring a long list of very worthy causes while the 250th team to wear something pink gets heaps of praise.
October 17th, 2013 at 1:01 PM ^
If that's the case, then those people need to read a little bit more. But 40,000 women still die each year from it which means a lot of families and friends are affected. It is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women, which is also large. And unlike some diseases that can be caused by our own vices, such as lung cancer or emphesyma (smoking), the causes of breast cancer are not as easy to identify.
For those who have short memories or just weren't around 20+ years ago, breast cancer was not talked about much. You heard more about the Cystic Fibrosis foundation back in the 80s and early 90s. The Detroit sports teams did a lot of work with them. HIV got more publicity in the mid-to late-90s.
While people want to complain about coverage given to this disease, breast cancer death rates have gone down over the years which is where the focus should be. Now if people feel breast cancer gets the lion share of the publicity, then stop sounding like a neanderthal and do something about those other causes you support.
October 17th, 2013 at 3:48 PM ^
Every year, 1.2 million women die in the United States, so 40,000 from breast cancer represents a pretty small portion of that total.
You're basically making the same argument as the guy above, only more crassly ("stop sounding like a neanderthal"), and I'll give you the same response: breast cancer is just one of several maladies that are common in our culture - and not by any means the most lethal - but it now receives far more publicity and funding than all the others. That isn't right. This shouldn't be a zero-sum game. Make October "Medical Causes Month" or something. Don't fixate on one cause and starve the others of publicity.
October 18th, 2013 at 11:28 AM ^
I don't believe in just making someone a statistic like you are doing. I've had a father and multiple grandparents die recently from cancer and it was not breast cancer. Instead of sitting behind a computer and getting all whiny about breast cancer getting all this attention, I support those other causes in whatever ways I can.
It may not be right that breast cancer has a whole month for a major fundraising drive. Life isn't fair. Getting breast cancer isn't fair. NBCAM isn't going away until there's a cure. So do something to publicize those other causes out there. There's 11 other months right?
It's like voting. If you're not going to vote, don't complain about who's elected. If you're not going to work to publicize another cause, don't whine about breast cancer coverage.
October 17th, 2013 at 11:08 AM ^
At this point are women really unaware of the need to to self exams, etc.? I'd say more than 99% of women are aware and those that choose not to be proactive are not going to be pursuaded by NFL players wearing pink gloves for 3 games a year. For women that aren't going to be proactive, a much more powerfull reason that will get them in gear is actually knowing someone who has to fight the battle.
I don't like the over-pinking of October for three reasons: (1) to me it does more to make the people donning pink feel good about themselves than anything for the actual cause; (2) some organizations (cough nfl cough) use it mostly as a marketing ploy; and (3) it so greatly overshadows other worthy causes that it's a fair argument that the breast cancer awareness month does more harm than good for the public as a whole.
October 17th, 2013 at 11:27 AM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 11:43 AM ^
I feel really terrible for your wife and your entire family. But I don't think your current position makes my post ignorant.
October 17th, 2013 at 1:46 PM ^
You can only make someone so aware. Yes, initially it was a good cause to get someone to go out and get checked regularly. But it's to the point that it's so common and trite that not only are they not really encouraging anyone to get checked, people are more likely to ignore it for donations and such, because it's starting to get forced down people's throats.
October 17th, 2013 at 11:09 AM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 11:37 AM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 12:10 PM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 12:28 PM ^
but he's 100% spot-on. Pink sells because sex sells and boobs are sexy and it's a gross reflection of our society that breast cancer is the only cancer that gets this much attention--for all the wrong reasons.
But the problem purely of being aware about breast cancer is that our screening methods are not great. If all women ages 30-40 were to get mammograms or breast exams every year, the number of false positives would be astronomical. It's an imperfect science, and blindly handing them out to everyone is not a positive change.
When breast cancer awareness first started in the 70s or 80s, it was necessary because older women didn't, as a population, do enough regular checking. Now, that's not an issue--women, as a population, have vastly improved. So now, we just have an oversaturation of "awareness," and all this pink gear doesn't really improve outcomes.
October 17th, 2013 at 1:01 PM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 1:50 PM ^
He says it's an inexact science, and you're saying she was checked regularly and it didn't show up. You're proving his point.
October 17th, 2013 at 2:31 PM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 12:49 PM ^
Look, man. I'm sorry about your family situation. Really. I can't pretend to imagine what it might be like, as I'm not married myself and don't have kids.
But in your anger over people not wanting to jump on the breast cancer bandwagon, that might help you understand where people are coming from here. You're not happy because you take it as insensitivity to your situation. OK, well, maybe think about it this way too: I had a little 7-year-old cousin who died of cystic fibrosis. The disease took a great little guy far too soon and ruined a marriage besides. It is different from your situation but not appreciably "better" or "worse."
But where are the teams wearing purple for cystic fibrosis? Where are the cereal boxes, 5-hour Energy bottles, bumper stickers, races for the cure, helmetz, NFL merchandise, and publicity campaigns? Do you think that people who've been affected by other diseases (of which there are far too many to count) might be a little bit offended by the total silence about them and the massive laser-focus on one particular cause only?
I'm not saying this because I want to be special here, just the opposite, I'm saying this because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other causes, which affect nearly everyone. And people will start to get understandably upset over being called an asshole for not supporting breast cancer when there is nobody jumping up to support the causes that affect their own family.
October 17th, 2013 at 1:15 PM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 4:29 PM ^
that you've been touched by the shittiest form of the disease, and in multiple people who mean the most to you. It's also come up in a rare way.
But, if you look at the problem of screening in a public health, "how do we best treat the entire population?" standpoint, the answer is not to start giving mammograms to younger women. And while false negatives can and do happen--as you experienced--the overwhelming trend of mammogram errors is to produce false positives. Either way, it is an inexact science, so much so that it would be unwise to advocate for increased usage of mammograms in younger women.
Now, regarding the anecdote of the family that was misdiagnosed...it's possible that there was just no good answer. Since doctors don't have great diagnostic tools for breast cancer even in this day and age, they are often put between a rock and a hard place. Some patients are gonna have things that just don't make sense from a clinical perspective. It's up to the doctor to make their best judgment and offer advice. The problem comes in where doctors tell the patients what to do, rather than lay out the facts for them and let them decide what they feel is right.
Long story short, I think what your situation emphatically demonstrates is how surprisingly limited our ability is to diagnose something as terrible and seemingly obvious as breast cancer.
October 17th, 2013 at 5:31 PM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 10:18 AM ^
I don't think awareness really needs to be spread at this point. I'm all for fundraising for charities, but a lot of it is overdone.
That being said, I'm sorry about the recent diagnosis in your life. I can't imagine being in a similar situation.
October 17th, 2013 at 11:13 AM ^
Strength to you and your family in the fight
October 17th, 2013 at 11:17 AM ^
As someone who is dealing with this with my dad (esophogeal cancer) I wanted to send you a ((hug))! Best wishes for a positve outcome, don't forget to take care of yourself also.
October 17th, 2013 at 12:12 PM ^
