Cancer scare tactics are a cunt.
Many of us have suffered a family loss to this disease. It’s awful. However, the corporate tactic to raise money is like rubbing salt in the wound, because of the cavalier way statistics are quoted and presented.
I saw some tv recently, and I saw the statistic being touted of “1 in 2 of us in the UK will get cancer in our lifetime”.
The delivery of this statistic relies on the context of emotional distress, usually after a harrowing real life story. Of course the reality is terrible, I’m not suggesting otherwise.
However, I would say that there is a massive fucking difference between implying that half the population are definately getting the disease so pay up cos you might need our help, and saying that the average person has a fifty percent chance of contracting the disease in their lifetime.
Let’s not forget that this statistic also includes all the different cancers, many of which are already treatable, or benign, or the fact that many elderly people die anyway despite having an age related cancer.
Having a fifty percent chance also means that not getting it at all is also a possible outcome, for each person, individually.
This is no doubt the work of advertising executives, those soulless cunts who set loose the chuggers on our streets, and set about cold calling the elderly. I think drawing on people’s fear of death is an awful thing to coolly employ as a marketing tactic. Raising money for these things is obviously necessary but I think it should be done openly and honestly.
People would give to a cause like cancer research even if marketing execs didn’t imply they were next.
I suppose it’s too much to expect a marketing exec to comprehend that at least some humans are capable of empathy.
Perhaps this is also one of those subjects we’re not allowed to speak realistically about, and doing so just means that one is a cunt.
Nominated by Cuntflap




