When I lost my father to bladder cancer at the age of 14, it seemed cruel and ironic that he managed to survive the Holocaust, only to be done in by some virulent disease that cost him his life and, while he was still living, his dignity. Even worse, in his mind, than having to choose between mind-boggling pain and the mind-numbing drugs that would alleviate his suffering, he had to suffer the iniquity of pissing through a hole in his side, something my proud father could never adjust to. What we know now, however, is that bladder cancer isn't just some rider on the storm, a vagrant disease striking strangers in the night—my father unwittingly brought the disease upon himself by smoking two or three packs of Old Gold cigarettes every day. We all suspected, the denials of tobacco companies notwithstanding, that cigarettes caused lung cancer; we didn't know enough to understand that it also caused cancers to digestive and other crucial organs.
Which brings me to the 20th annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, which this year attracted over 25,000 well-meaning people to Central Park, all of them determined and gulled into believing that their appearance will knock cancer senseless, pound it to oblivion, tear it limb from limb I tell ya'.
Okay, at least the Susan G. Komen Foundation has retreated from its Temper Tantrum for the Cure. But it's still perpetrating a massive fraud upon determined (if credulous) multitudes, which, like most frauds, is criminal not just for what it manages to accomplish—to part people from their millions—but for what it wastes, which is the opportunity to bring all those financial and human resources to bear on the real cause of cancer.
By the way, my point here isn't to prove what most sane and objective observers have come to realize—which is that cancer is mostly caused by environmental factors ranging from the crap we eat to the poison we allow corporations to pour into landfills and directly into the air and the rivers and streams that we and our livestock ingest.No – if you don't already know that, this diatribe isn’t for you. But here's the issue: the Susan G. Komen Foundation and its ilk would have us believe that finding cures for cancer is a smart strategy, which is kind of like arguing that liposuction is a good cure for obesity.
Most people understand this, if only on an intuitive level. Cancer is inexorably on the rise, and attempting to cure cancer is akin to humanity racing itself on a galactic hamster wheel, only much more expensively. That’s good for universities and drug companies, but otherwise entirely besides the point.
You can see where I'm going, right? All this energy and all those resources should be directed against the Monsantos and Con Agras of the world, the Liggets and the Dows and the Tysons. My god, I could go on and on.
And that's the point. To confront the root causes of cancer is to politicize the debate, to point fingers at our employers and our neighbors, and to pick a side on the political debate between free markets and regulations.
(It doesn't have to be that way, of course. Free-market champions could still get on board by boycotting companies that create cancer-causing products or byproducts. But there would have to be clear-eyed and honest leadership on the right side of the political spectrum for that to happen, and that seems to be nonexistent.)
Instead of attacking the root cause of cancer, the Susan G. Komen Foundation solicits sponsorships, allowing corporations to give away tee-shirts to their employees as a show of solidarity, of support for women, as a team-building exercise (and for brand marketing – hey, there's nothing wrong with that!).
And Central Park is filled with pink-wearing, self-anointed heroes of the fight against breast cancer, choked-up women giving speeches about courage, fortitude and survival, the event every year more populous, more ritualized, more lucrative. And just as irrelevant to the real fight as the year before.
