AARP runs vomit-inducing, quackery-filled breast cancer piece with Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge

There are two AARPs: one is non-profit and the other is for-profit. They play you by acting as your advocate and protector and then profit from your trust.

YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN MY
Negative Entity REMOVALS
Natural herbal Remedies
Activational music—BOOKS—DVD’s
chakra sound healing sessions

There are many contingent possibilities. This is merely one of them.

I joined at 55. The card has more than paid for itself. The magazine and mailings go straight to trash.

3 Likes

The lesson I learned - it helps if you’re RICH and FAMOUS.

6 Likes

7 Likes

Or FAMOUS and DANDY, as explained by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy…

Shockingly, people who are famous for being singers (or actors) are not necessarily experts to consult for health issues. And simply having a disease does not magically make you an authority on that disease.
There is really no substitute for educating yourself and looking at good science for your information.
Woo sells well because woo wants you to feel GOOD about yourself and woo wants you to buy it’s book telling you how awesome you can be simply by buying whatever woo is selling this week.
Truth is that woo doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you. It wants your money. And woo will be just as happy to sell you laetrile for your inoperable cancer after the macrobiotic diet and acai berries it sold you to treat it fails.

8 Likes

Not trying to ruin the fun of hating on these two, but the direct causal link between a high sugar diet and cancer is clinically verified at this point in the mainstream medical journals and we’ve also known for decades that stress is a major factor in nearly all illness, not just cancer. We’d be better served to examine the data rather than dismissing the overall point that diet and lifestyle factors are the primary cause. Genes play a minor role and they are expressed under the correct environmental conditions via these epigenetic factors that control their expression.

1 Like

I worked at AARP headquarters as a temp for about four months when I was fresh out of college and not yet established. Their building is absolutely gorgeous. There is a million dollar worth of art in the board rooms. It’s also right across the street from the National Portrait Gallery/Museum of American Art which made for a great lunch break.

The project I worked on was not the sort of thing I associated with the AARP at all. It was an education program for very poor older women to teach them basic financial skills, things like how to balance a checkbook and where to store valuable papers so they would survive a fire. I also remember the ladies that I worked with telling me that they had a group that handled cases of fraud against seniors, and in particular that those automatic beds which were heavily marketed late at night to the olds were very dangerous - they’d fold up and trap people inside - and that they were involved in what I guess are class action lawsuits against the manufacturer or some other kind of legal remedy.

The organization, at least at that time (25 years ago), was very involved in lobbying.and outreach programs. They had an odd structure where there were legions of administrative staff and then a ton of people with Masters Degrees and not much jobs in between. Most of the people who worked there seemed to like it a lot; I think because it was one of those places with really cushy benefits, but also I think people enjoyed their work. It was a very DC kind of place; seemed to attract the political science major types. I got the feeling that the public arm of it - the discount programs, the magazines - was just the most visible part of a much larger organization, but I thought it was weird how it secretly did all these other things no one much associated with them.

9 Likes

If cancer is a gift, can I return it for store credit? Please?
The insult felt by many of us affected by BC is the implication that the 30,000 people who will die of metastatic breast cancer this year merely failed to have a “positive attitude” or the willingness to give up white sugar/meat/soy/wine…you name it. And don’t get me started on the differences between a “journey” and undergoing ongoing treatment for a terminal diagnosis.

20 Likes

I had an acquaintance who had breast cancer quite young and she told me that everyone expected her to have some special insight into life because she was dying, and that it was hard to deal with it because she really didn’t.

15 Likes

To be fair though(despite my earlier rant) these are probably some of the sillier things said during perhaps an hour of interview, cut and pasted to the satisfaction of the ad writer who is actually responsible for amplifying these statements.

1 Like

This is the same reason the Magical Negro movie and TV trope is damaging. Magical Negro - Wikipedia

2 Likes

Thank you, Xeni for the level headed dismissal of this insipid combination of schmaltz and woo. It means all that much more to hear it from you.

6 Likes

AARP? The Active Auroral Research Program?

That’s about weaponizing the weather. Who would listen to them on healthcare issues?

5 Likes

I work the crossword puzzle first.

‘Cancer taught me to put myself first’. * snort * Sheryl managed to get two references to herself in a seven word sentence. Women like Sheryl and Melissa never in their lives needed cancer to come along to motivate them to be more self-involved.

6 Likes

Maybe Sheryl Crow learnt about monetizing cancer from Lance Armstrong.

8 Likes

Lance, and every public figure who put their PR firm to work turning a personal crisis into a financial opportunity. If you’re going to be sick, might as well make a few bucks off it. We can include friend and sperm donor, David Crosby, then. I wept when I saw him take the stage again.

1 Like

Sugar causes cancer? News to me… (other than weight/diabetes related factors)
Sounds like some Mercola BS. They use the fact that cells derive their energy from glucose to sell the “fact” that sugar fuels cancer.