Support for cancer victims is not tied up in wearing a ribbon

A few days ago, I stopped at a table in Frist to grab some free candy. You know the drill: read an article or sign a petition and get a Hershey's kiss for your trouble. I didn't even bother to look at what the table was about before I stopped (no I'm not saying that's a good thing, but I was in a rush and just wanted some chocolate). As I reached for candy, a girl at the table asked me, "Do you want to wear a ribbon?"

I knew I'd seen those ribbons before (it was already Thursday so quite a few had spread around campus). Something about cancer . . . maybe one had to donate money to fund research? Or read some educational brochure about cancer? Or sign up to get tested to be a bone marrow donor? Nah. It turned out I just had to wear a ribbon. Who could have a problem with that?

I don't even know if I have a real problem with it. I believe the campaign took place in a spirit of good-will and hope. I only wonder how much good it really did. Yeah, it's great to say, "I sympathize with people who have cancer," but I think we could have done a lot more. After all, to be honest, when my four grandparents were dying of cancer, I don't think any of them really cared about whether strangers sympathized with them (and probably took for granted that they would if they knew about their case). They wanted to know if anyone would help relieve the emotional strains on their relatives, how they were going to cover the cost of their healthcare and why there weren't better treatments available. As far as the Princeton Against Cancer Together campaign affected me this week, it didn't address any of those issues.

I couldn't help wondering if they weren't perhaps even trivializing the agony that many cancer victims deal with. I mean, yes, by wearing a ribbon, we were saying that their suffering was extraordinary and giving them the same status as GI's who have gone to fight in a war or those dying of AIDS. However, were we really sympathizing? How genuine an act is wearing a ribbon at all, when it's meant to symbolize something so profound?

Would I really have been doing anything by wearing a ribbon? Think about it. I'm making the statement that I sympathize with people who have cancer (that's what the girl at the table told me the purpose was when I asked). I guess when people first started wearing ribbons to support HIV patients, they were making a statement. They were saying, "No, I don't think HIV is a gay disease. No, it's not a plague brought down by God on the sinners. These are people just like me who need help."

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more wearing the ribbon didn't seem like such a good idea. In light of the suffering cancer victims go through, I find it harder and harder to look at PACT as relatively harmless and well-intentioned. Regardless of the good faith in which they acted, the people who organized it in some ways trivialized the real pain, the absolute agony, involved in dying of cancer. To think that there is any meaning in simply wearing a ribbon that proves compliance with a statement that society universally endorses (even in the case of lung cancer patients, we side with them and blame the cigarettes manufacturers rather than the people who chose to smoke them) the belief, is, I think, a stretch. Does it actually do anything to help the victims? Logically, can any act that is just a public symbol and not the method of helping any cancer sufferers legitimately support or sympathize with cancer victims?

I don't want to be nasty in writing this. I don't mean to criticize the steps taken, and I'm not saying that they're necessarily bad. I just wonder if they really had any use. Has any cancer victim's life been made easier or better through this? Has any funding been raised for research? Has the minimal increased awareness at Princeton even changed University policy or personal lifestyles?

Perhaps instead of Princeton Against Cancer Together (something I would have assumed is always true), there should have been Princeton Action Against Cancer Together. I think we could have managed that, and I think someone should have. Aileen Ann Nielsen is from Upper Black Eddy, Penn. She can be reached at anielsen@princeton.edu.