[haswell]

This is just it.

When the subject is children with cancer, cancer is the enemy. A faceless threat that everyone can stand “against” without hesitation. And this completely misses the critical fact that cancer is often a downstream effect.

I think that cancer awareness really needs to expand to include underlying causes. As it stands, the cause and effect are so disconnected that awareness often leads only to sympathy/empathy/compassion instead of driving people to anger and to push for systemic changes.

[mcpackieh]

I think it's because on an individual basis, attributing cancers to a particular cause is very difficult. It's only when you're dealing with large populations that statistical trends become damning (as happened with cigarettes), otherwise it's usually very difficult to point to a specific kid and say his cancer came from a specific business.

[haswell]

And the twisted thing about all of this is that when we start seeing large numbers, humans tend to stop caring. We care about an individual's story, but our ability to care diminishes the moment there are two, and all but vanishes when it's a large group.

So I'm not really sure what the answer is. If the individual cases chosen for awareness campaigns could be selected based on their traceability, it might provide a bridge from cause to effect.

Or maybe it really needs to be a multi-pronged effort. Present individual cases to people care. Separately, present aggregate cases so people start linking those individual stories to systemic factors.