Module 4, Week 11?

I don't honestly know what week we're on. Last week was week 11 so I'm going to go with that. Ok last week we read the article about the NCI teaming up with Kellogg to promote their new cereal that had more fiber in it and they used the fact that fiber could potentially help reduce the risk of cancer. The article discussed the benefits and concerns of using marketing to with such a sensitive issue. I found the article very interesting actually. Especially because it was written at the beginning of a group joining a food company to advertise for both health and a product. That is so common in our daily lives that it doesn't see like such a big deal. And honestly most of the advertisements just filter out now. But to think about the potential benefits and risks of allowing that to occur was eye opening. And it made me start to listen to what people said about certain foods over the last week. And the advertisements actually do have an impact on people who may have no background knowledge on the science whatsoever. Anyway, I found the article very thought provoking.

As for class, I really enjoyed the guest speaker. Promotion of screening for cancer really isn't my area of interest, but cancer itself is a very close to home topic. And I found our speaker to be very inspirational and very in touch with the topic and the emotional aspect of the topic. And it honestly just made me thankful for having people like him willing to do the kind of work that they do. It is because of the people willing to fund raise in order to pay for scientists to come up with new and different kinds of treatments etc. And it is because of people like him that my godmom was able to have many more birthdays than ever imagined. Everytime I see or hear the birthday campaign it brings me to tears, because it so true. She battled breast cancer for thirty years, was originally diagnosed in Mexico City and moved to LA area to be able to get treatment at City of Hope, which is an absolutely amazing cancer facility. As the cancer grew and spread they always kept her positive and she always was positive. It went to the bone and the brain as breast cancer is known to do, but they still had the new procedures and the up to date technology, they always had hope and she always battled for another year, another birthday. As a pencil artist her fine motor skills deteriorated, but she started doing bigger drawings, drawings of angels, like the one above, and now City of Hope, the place that took such good care of her and gave her such hope to continue on, hangs her angels on their walls. It was hard to respond to a lot of his questions to the class on Tuesday, because his talk brought me back to thinking of my godmom, Cynthia Hope Garcia, but it was special. And it made me really value the idea of advertising and marketing and promotion. And I think it finally really hit home as to what promotion can really do and who it can really impact and how much a part of our lives it really is, even if we don't realize it at the time. In loving memory.