![]() Throughout, Pool juxtaposes well-reasoned, impassioned arguments from activists with images of various events and marketing pitches intended to make curing cancer seem as simple as buying the right yogurt or taking the weekend off to walk with like-minded women. Cosmetics companies try to look righteous while refusing to make safety studies of their wares public auto manufacturers offer “cure”-themed cars made in factories whose workers suffer tremendous cancer rates. More damningly, the film takes a scientific tack, noting that many of the corporations most closely associated with cancer-related charities owe much of their income to products made with carcinogens. ![]() Author Barbara Ehrenreich is particularly vocal on the latter point, noting (as do members of a stage-IV support group in Austin) how little comfort all that pastel iconography gave during her own experience with the disease. It lambastes the onslaught of pink-branded consumer goods, whose purchase makes people feel they’re doing something but often contributes little to the cause (while draping an ugly, hateful disease in the color of valentines and Disney princesses). ![]() It argues, counterintuitively but persuasively, that spending hundreds of millions on pursuing medical cures for cancer isn’t nearly as promising as investing in prevention. Instead the film, like its most convincing interviewees, prefers to tackle more complicated questions. ![]()
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