Color Me Cancer

In the spirit of supporting cancer (or research rather), I'd like to propose a full blown color campaign for all cancer types.  Currently the color Pink has taken the spotlight and captivated a large audience and acclaimed notoriety for its association with breast cancer.  This can be attributed to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a nonprofit orgainzation which has raised millions of dollars to fund breast cancer research.  While I may not be a bra, I do support the cause for healthy breasts for women....and for men too.  The color Pink has had great success as the spokesperson for this cause, so much so that retailers and other money makers have joined forces with Pink to help promote breast cancer awareness.  Or maybe these money makers are using Pink to their advantage.  What better way to sell a product than to associate it with a noble cause?  In April 2010, Komen received national attention when it paired with fast food restaurant chain KFC to offer "Buckets for the Cure," a promotion in which fried and grilled chicken was sold in pink branded buckets.  Just think of all the good that will come from this campaign.  What better way to raise awareness for health then to hunker down and gorge myself on a bucket of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a diet coke.  In the support of breast cancer, eat chicken breasts?!  Sound logic indeed.


With everything Pink has done for breast cancer, I believe there should be more color associations with other cancers to help create awareness for them as well.  Throughout history color has played a very important role for it's symbolism.  Take for example the United States flag.  It is said that the white of the stripes represent courage and the red stripes represent blood, shed for liberty.  If colors can accurately represent the greatest nation on earth, then I see no reason why we are holding back on symbolizing all of the cancers of the world, some of the greatest diseases created by man.

So now that there is a reason for the cause, there has to be a proper assignment of the different cancers to correspond with the symbolic color.  One idea for a first step would be to consider talking to the Crayola company.  They seem to have a pretty good grasp on color, based on the countless color varieties they offer.  I think the largest assortment I had at one point was the 64 flavors box with the build in sharpener.  And no matter how you might try to convince me otherwise, I still stand firm and always will in my conclusion that blue-green and green-blue are the same color, just like purple and violet.  And with Crayola involved, we would be able to reach as vast audience of children, our future generations.  Let's start early and take a stranglehold on cancer by teaching our children about the disease.  These packs of cancer colored crayons could be distributed to schools across the nation and hopefully inspire some bright youngsters to blossom into great doctors and scientists.  My sky is not blue. Instead I'd like to think that my sky is prostate cancer blue.  After all, I'm a man and blue pairs just as as well with prostate cancer as pink pairs with breast cancer.  What color is this cat?

Lung cancer black of course.  And the white in the picture..........bone cancer white.  Green can now be bile duct cancer green.  And red can now be leukemia red.  This list could go on and on but I think you get the point.

Now that colors are established, we can partner these causes and colors with companies to gain more exposure.  UPS would be the first company I would approach.  Everyone knows "what brown can do for you" but I don't think everyone knows what colon cancer brown can do for you.  Yahoo! is another well known company and is represented by the color purple.  They could easily reach billions of people and help spearhead pancreatic cancer research by promoting pancreatic cancer purple.  A final example would be The Home Depot.  Just think how much more people could save and do if they knew they were supporting the oral cancer orange color.

The bottom line to all of this is that without a color, you really have no cause.  While noone knows who Susan G Komen is (I do because I researched her), everyone knows that pink stands for breast cancer.  So get your ribbons and color them with cancer.