The CDC (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Office on Smoking and Health) has unveiled a $54 million national media campaign. The campaign shows people struggling with life-altering ailments such as stroke-related paralysis, limb amputation, lung removal and heart attack. For example, depicted is a patient who breathes through a stoma, a surgically created hole in the neck through which a person who has undergone larynx or voice box surgery can breathe.
The images are intended to be terrifying, to try to scare smokers into quitting, or youth from not starting to smoke.
Yeah, well, those same terrifying images of the ravages upon the human body of cancer are also viewed by patients and families of cancer victims that ARE NOT SMOKERS!! Does your tutu have cancer? Your spouse? Your child? Want to watch an evening of TV, and have blasted across the screen the graphic images of cancer killing a patient??
It is one thing to put negative images on a pack of cigarettes. (Which only subjects smokers to the images ~ the intended "audience" of the campaign.)
But it is totally a different situation to put such distressing images as an advertisement (or PSA) on television. I cannot imagine how the CDC could show such a lack of compassion for cancer victims and their families, or how the CDC can feel that sensationalizing grim, deadly illnesses and diseases is for the good.
Shame on the CDC! Innocent cancer victims and other diseased patients deserve better from our government!
The images are intended to be terrifying, to try to scare smokers into quitting, or youth from not starting to smoke.
Yeah, well, those same terrifying images of the ravages upon the human body of cancer are also viewed by patients and families of cancer victims that ARE NOT SMOKERS!! Does your tutu have cancer? Your spouse? Your child? Want to watch an evening of TV, and have blasted across the screen the graphic images of cancer killing a patient??
It is one thing to put negative images on a pack of cigarettes. (Which only subjects smokers to the images ~ the intended "audience" of the campaign.)
But it is totally a different situation to put such distressing images as an advertisement (or PSA) on television. I cannot imagine how the CDC could show such a lack of compassion for cancer victims and their families, or how the CDC can feel that sensationalizing grim, deadly illnesses and diseases is for the good.
Shame on the CDC! Innocent cancer victims and other diseased patients deserve better from our government!
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