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Men:
the Disorganized Majority Abstract |
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| Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the major health hazards in all countries with adequate health statistics. In the U.S.A. alone it affects approximately 10 million men and authorities believe it will kill more than 40,000 men in the next year. Approximately 80% of the cases affect men over 65 years. Estimates indicate that 334,000 men will be diagnosed in the next year, while 180,200 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer (BCa). PCa mortality is rising while BCa mortality is decreasing. Despite these figures, PCa receives about six times less federal funds for research and prevention. Compared to AIDS, discrepancies become even sharper: ar current rates of research funding for each disease, each PCa death costs $2,631, each BCa death costs $9,700 and each AIDS death $72,000. We argue that such discrepancies stem from the combination of two factors: 1) the relative strength of each interest group and 2) the social consensus on the relevance and gravity of each of these diseases. BCa activism benefits from the long political experience and organization transferred from the feminist movement. That movement was the leading force for establishing an apparent consensus as to the greater seriousness and relevance of BCa and beyond that women's disadvantage in health issues and the need to have special policies addressing their gender-specific problems. It has also been successful in highlighting female sexuality and getting special attention paid to it at institutional level. By contrast, male sexuality is not an important focus of either public or academic concern. We argue that men, and specially older men, areat great disadvantage in the public policy arena. They have not yet been able to organize, to exert pressure, and to get their gender-specific interests to be socially and politically "correct". Viewed as the "default" gender in health issues has resulted in society defaulting their gender-specific problems. © 1999 MarÃlia Coutinho & Gláucio A. D. Soares, All Rights Reserved | ||
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PSA
Rising Magazine
prostate cancer survivor news http://www.psa-rising.com ©1999 March 6, 1999
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