Breast Cancer™

October is still three weeks away, but the ramp-up to Breast Cancer Awareness Month has already begun.

I was in a Bed Bath & Beyond store last week and walked past a whole display of pink-tinted kitchenware.

Next month's issues of women's magazines are hitting the newsstands, their covers trumpeting breast-cancer features.

And my mail, both real and virtual, is sprinkled with invitations to benefits and other events.

Of course I support anything that brings us closer to a cure, to earlier diagnoses, to better treatments, to greater understanding and more sensitivity.

But I must confess that a part of me has trouble with the marketing juggernaut that breast cancer has become.

As much as Coke or McDonald's or Nike or Apple, breast cancer is a brand.

It has a logo.

It has spokespeople.

It has merchandise.

It has sponsored events.

It has celebrity endorsements.

It has a trademark color.

It has one of the best P.R. machines around.

It has a designated month.

Not a day.

Not a week.

A month.

It doesn't have a jingle—yet—but it does have an anthem in Melissa Etheridge's "I Run for Life."

It even has a postage stamp.

I know that a lot of good—in the form of funding and awareness and increased screening—comes from all of this, and I am truly grateful for that.

But I am also dismayed at the fact that we live in such a consumer culture that our idea of fighting a disease is buying pink M&Ms®, or pink lipstick, or a pink blender, or one of dozens of other pink products that nobody needs but that somebody finds a way to sell.

This is how we choose to alleviate suffering?

By going shopping?

If you need a blender, by all means buy a blender.

But if you want to fight breast cancer—if you want to hasten a cure, or bolster early detection, or enhance medical care, or just make life a little easier for someone with the disease—do something else.

Find a worthy cause and donate directly.

If you want to do it in October, that's great.

You can even use a pink pen to write the check.