He breast cancer It is the most common type of tumor among women and the first cause of death in Spain when there is a diagnosis of cancer: 6,677 in 2023, almost 100,000 in the last decade and a half. Being a woman is the main risk factor for having breast cancer and dying from it; In men, the percentage of cases is 1.5% of the total. And the survival rate has increased, yes, excellent news; Although it is also important to know that this survival rate is measured over five years, which is the time that maintenance treatments last, normally hormone therapy. After that time, when there are no longer maintenance treatments, the mortality of those who have had breast cancer increases. So much so that the medical community begins to extend them up to seven or 10 years, to avoid relapses, recurrences, and metastases in other organs of our body: brain, lung, bones and liver are the most frequent points. Metastatic cancer is incurable and it is this metastasis that kills sick women and this metastasis occurs in up to 30% of breast cancers. I may be disease-free at this moment, but no one assures me that this will be the case forever. Selfish, immortal and traveling, this is how cancer cells are (read the book of the same name written by Carlos López-Otín)
Cancer hurts physically and emotionally. Dying from cancer, whether breast, pancreas, brain or lung, is one of the most painful and difficult experiences that a person and their loved ones can go through. Perhaps that is why there is so much fear of mentioning the word cancer, because of that and because of the stigma that there may be some personal guilt in that diagnosis, in what one has done or has not done. How easy it is to reduce the complex to guilt. Fear, guilt and also ignorance; rather, ignorance. How little clear and accessible information we women diagnosed with breast cancer have. This is not offered, you have to look for it, because it exists, it exists, and it is very useful to deal with treatments, their side effects, panic, scars and other traces left by the disease after chemo, radiotherapy and surgeries. . Ignorance contributed by the pink campaigns that romanticize these oncological processes and disguise reality until it turns it into a tale of princesses who are going to be saved by the brand of the day that will donate a ridiculous amount of its sales to research.
Few things come to mind more antagonistic than the color pink and cancer, neither breast nor any other type. While for us and our people a diagnosis of breast cancer means that “the world stops” (another recommended book, by Juan Fueyo), for brands this disease – and it only happens with breast cancer – opens up a world. of business opportunities. To raise awareness about breast cancer it is not necessary dye october pink and that we give in to consumerism. Who doesn’t have a case of breast cancer or simply cancer close to them?
Open your eyes, we are here.
Our individual stories are not isolated cases, they are a collective story. It is not us consumers who have to assume a responsibility that corresponds to the public powers, to the public budgets of the State, the autonomies and the city councils. If it is any color it is brown. Ask any of the women who have gone through this disease or are going through it. This is what the latest Teta&Teta campaign is about, a Canadian production directed by Irene Baque and starring the breast cancer patients themselves.
There is a lack of precise information about the causes of breast cancer. Information necessary to prevent, detect and increasingly personalize treatments. There is progressmany advances, but the scientific and medical communities are unable to have an explanation for why breast cancer diagnoses have grown above 12% since the turn of the century and have skyrocketed since 2016. It is known that breast cancer It arises from a combination of environmental causes (physical, psychological and chemical), and also genetic. But it is also known that half of the women who suffer from breast cancer do not have any of the risk factors that are usually mentioned, many of them associated with the lifestyle of the women themselves.
Despite knowing this, campaigns that place the weight of cancer prevention only on that lifestyle as if (and I emphasize the word alone) just eating healthy and doing physical exercise were enough to avoid having cancer or to prevent it from coming back. On the other hand, there is hardly any talk about the importance of the existence of regulations that control the environmental factors to which we are involuntarily exposed every day and stop the marketing of products that contain carcinogenic substances, products that are on the shelves of all supermarkets.
As long as there are pink campaigns that make us feel good about our solidarity purchase that saves sick (but brave) women, it will be very difficult to be able to talk about the need for the State Budget to allocate more money to public research, innovative trials and treatments and that public specialized centers be provided with more resources with an integrative approach. Nor will there be the possibility of talking in the midst of the frenzy and the pink party for breast cancer about the importance of formulating public policies aimed at preventing breast cancer and that act on the basis of what is already known about chemicals or physical and biological agents suspected of causing cancer or that increase the risk of this disease.
Research and innovation in oncology must be a public, health, social and economic investment. It cannot depend on business interests and political campaigns. marketing that sweeten the harshness of a disease like cancer and make us women with breast cancer dance and jump so that the pink ribbon party does not decline. As Anne Boyer, author of the book, says die“it is as important to investigate genes as the water we drink to look for the causes of cancer.” Perhaps the time has come for another story about breast cancer, a collective one that tells that this disease is not the fault of those of us who suffer from it but of a capitalist, sexist and war-mongering society that allows us to get sick and profits from our treatments. Maybe the time has come to collectivize this damned disease, to talk about a pandemic. That of cancer, not just breast.
