Breast Cancer Awareness

I hate the facebook statues that say things along the lines of "If you have watched a loved one struggle with breast cancer, repost this as your status to help spread awareness."

Now before you all run away thinking I'm an insensitive idiotic jerk, please read the rest of what I say.

The problem lies in the definition of awareness, and something key that the status is lacking. For some diseases awareness simply means knowing that the disease exists. This is NOT the case with breast cancer. Awareness for breast cancer needs to be more than that. We all know that it exists, so how about we start actually making people aware of actual information about the disease? Knowing something exists doesn't really do you any good if you don't know anything about whatever "it" is that is existing. You might as well say "I have a left shoe, let's spread awareness."

Let's make people aware of the fact that it can kill, because a surprising number of people think its not a "bad cancer."

Let's make people aware of how common it is, or how it can be detected, or what various treatment methods are and how effect they are supposed to be.

Let's make people aware of different organizations that help with Breast Cancer Research, looking for more effective treatment options.

Let's do a little more than just announcing it exists. This disease isn't something so rare that most people have never heard of it. It's something everyone knows about. Time to take the next step.

Now, I'm off to look up statistics so that I can repost that status and make it a little more effective.