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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To be disgusted at cancer research adverts?

143 replies

Gracey1231 · 17/09/2016 01:36

Okay so my amazing father passed away January 2015, he had NHL in the lung stage 2, and after being told his chemo had really shrunk the tumour, it wrapped itself around his pulmonary artery and he had a pulmonary haemorrhage in outpatients on the way for his 2nd chemo

The adverts are really getting to me, where it shows the patients. All I can think of is poor families who have lost someone that day or been diagnosed coming home turning on the TV and seeing it. I know they need to raise awareness, but I feel like this is emotional blackmail and unfair to people.

I know it sounds vile, but AIBU?

OP posts:
Topanga1 · 17/09/2016 12:25

I despise them for funding drug research on animals.

Every six seconds an animal - primate, dog, cat, rat - dies in a Britsh laboratory.

GabsAlot · 17/09/2016 12:27

i knowit can be hard to watch but i think thats the point-they need to shock you into wanting to donate

i lost my mum to it btw aswell-

i hate mothers day more drives me mental

AnchorDownDeepBreath · 17/09/2016 12:27

I don't think they should be banned, I just don't think they need to be so sick.

Unfortunately, people don't donate then. I don't work in this niche, but broadly a similar industry, and I've attended conferences where charities have discussed what works. For health charities, it's hard-hitting adverts that graphically show loss. It's the same for animal charities. The results for tamer, more palatable adverts are much less, so much so that it's not worth considering.

The adverts aren't really raising awareness of the illness, more that it's still there, and people are still losing those that they love to that disease - and without funding that doesn't change. It means that for those who haven't lost someone close, it becomes a reality - and I suppose for those that have, some will donate to stop it happening again. They aim to give a sense of control - if you donate, this is less likely to happen, we will find a cure faster.

I hate watching them - I often fast-forward them too - but unfortunately they work, from a donation perspective, so it's very unlikely to change. The charities will continue to align their adverts with the psychology of viewers. For as long as hard-hitting = more donations, we'll have ad breaks full of that type of ad :(

I am so sorry about your Dad Flowers

GabsAlot · 17/09/2016 12:28

i dont think you shoudlbe disgusted though thers far worse things going on

MetalMidget · 17/09/2016 12:28

I think pretty much all charity adverts do this, and they've gotten worse over recent years. They used to be pretty straightforward and factual, but now they lean very heavily on making a strong emotional response - the father telling his child he won't be coming home, or the baby dying due to heart disease or defects, patients 'fighting' cancer, sad dogs, cats and donkeys being mistreated.

I'm guessing they've found it more effective, but some of them are very hard to watch (I end up sobbing at Dogs Trust/PDSA/Great Ormond Street appeals).

reallyanotherone · 17/09/2016 12:28

I see the prime time ads and think there's 30k that would have paid a research assistant for a year.

Having worked in CR and been paid crap, with these big charities refusing to fund long term, so no one working in research has a secure job, most of my peers have now left research.

Maybe less money for prime time ads would mean more for the scientists actually doing the find a cure thing.

Original poster
Gracey1231 · 17/09/2016 12:30

@reallyanotherone that's what crossed my mind a few times as well, it's fucking annoying

OP posts:
peneleope82 · 17/09/2016 12:32

They NEED to raise money to carry out their research which saves lives. They get no government funding. These adverts are tested and tested to see which are the most effective.

If everyone who had been touched by cancer or heart disease or animal cruelty or whatever donated, they would need to advertise less. Or if there were more public funds available.

It might be painful individually (and it is for me too) but they are positive for the 'greater good'.

peneleope82 · 17/09/2016 12:33

That isn't how it works. It's about return on investment. The £30k spent on an end will probably being in somewhere in the region of £100k over the next 5 years.

peneleope82 · 17/09/2016 12:33

Ad not end.

Chinnygirl · 17/09/2016 12:35

A lot of cancer research is funded by the public. My mum died of ovarian cancer and wasted away before our eyes. I hope they can find enough money to help fight this disease. The adverts give me hope.

I would rather be reminded how horrible this disease is while they ask for funding than more people suffering because of cancer. Having cancer is more uncomfortable than watching one of these ads in my opinion. I don't mind being reminded if it means one less person having to go through it.

Original poster
Gracey1231 · 17/09/2016 12:35

I know they need us to donate but I don't see why they can't shit us up with information and not seeing a little lad in a bed with no hair and a PICC line, I'm sorry to me, that's far too much

OP posts:
Original poster
Gracey1231 · 17/09/2016 12:36

@Chinnygirl, I'm really sorry about your mum Flowers

OP posts:
Happyinthehazeofadrunkenhour · 17/09/2016 12:38

YNBU..Having lost lost two close relatives during the summer hols and a friend going through treatment now...Its all a bit much.

Beeziekn33ze · 17/09/2016 12:39

Hope the charities see this thread and think about the effect on people. I dislike the emotional appeals and the pesky chuggers. It used to be people who actually cared, out once a year with collecting boxes. If all the cancer charities worked together and had neither poorly paid uninvolved chuggers nor overpaid fat cat executives maybe they'd have more public support and be able to sponsor properly financed longterm research instead.

icedgem85 · 17/09/2016 12:41

I completely sympathise but I respectfully think YABU. Until quite recently 3 in 4 people who were diagnosed with cancer died. Now 1 in 2 survive and Cancer Research UK are aiming for 3 in 4 to survive by 2020 and they're on track to achieve that. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy used to have far more side effects (I know they're still terrible) and surgery was more invasive. If it wasn't for these 'right now' adverts, they wouldn't raise anywhere near as much money. The patients in the video are happy to be doing it to raise money for life-saving research, they are real patients in real situations, not actors and CRUK are keenly aware of the balance between sensitivity and realness to get donations. That's the reason that they didn't show the adverts on Christmas day. Unfortunately, without hard-hitting REAL adverts like this - more people will die of cancer and more people will endure tougher treatments than they need to.

Original poster
Gracey1231 · 17/09/2016 12:41

@beeziekn33ze I rang up to complain about the insensitivity of their door knockers after my dad was diagnosed, I had told them and they basically said "all the more reason to donate so we can help him" I was so so bloody angry

OP posts:
var12 · 17/09/2016 12:42

I am sorry for your loss.

When my Dad died, at first, I was hypersensitive to soaps and other dramas that made story lines out of the death of a father. It really hurt, especially as I was watching as a means of escaping from my thoughts. I remember being upset that they were writing these stories for entertainment.

What can I say? Life goes on for everyone else, and then, eventually it goes on for the bereaved too. It hurts to see people enjoying something that is causing you so much misery, but you do get over that after a while. At least the cancer research adverts are in a good cause.

Mhoys · 17/09/2016 12:43

Totally agree OP.

Fucking disgusting advertising.

Seeing a mother breaking down because her daughter has cancer. Are these real people or actors? I think they are real. Absolutely fucking disgusting.

CAncer research know this will press buttons of course. But all publicity is good publicity eh? Cretins.

Original poster
Gracey1231 · 17/09/2016 12:44

@Mhoys they're real apparently and it's all right now filming or something, I don't agree with it at all, some of it is too much. The one where they tell the girl she is clear is more effective in raising money imo as its showing a positive outcome of the research treatmen

OP posts:
reallyanotherone · 17/09/2016 12:52

They NEED to raise money to carry out their research which saves lives. They get no government funding

You do realise these charities don't have their own massive research facilities they fund themselves?

They make grants available. So a researcher, who will be working out of a lab paid for by either public funds or pharma, will write a grant proposal to fund a project-usually for one research assistant and consumables. They generally use machines and equipment already in the lab, although they can apply for a grant for machinery too.

if the grant is given, it's usually for one, two or three years. Then the researchers have to go through the rigmarole of reapplying. If it isn't renewed (often) all the staff that grant paid for are out of a job.

Original poster
Gracey1231 · 17/09/2016 12:52

I read on their website they got 48m in grants of funding

OP posts:
OnceThereWasThisGirlWho · 17/09/2016 12:54

I'm sure they're actors. Although to be fair that comes from doing Media Studies A Level and having to deconstruct an ad, so it may well have changed in a decade or so...
They purposely make it seem as "real" as possible, more like a documentary video than a professional glossy ad, the ad we did had a girl crying and talking about her dad and they'd even given her a few pimples to look "ordinary" and relatable... Having said that they were using true stories apparently.

Chinnygirl · 17/09/2016 12:55

Gracey, thank you, you too. My mum died in 2009 so I am more used to it. Maybe that is why my fighting spirit is stronger than the emitional part when I see these ads. I agree that they aren't pleasant though. I just try to see the hopeful side. But I totally get why they are painful, especially when your loss is fresh.

Purplebluebird · 17/09/2016 12:59

I hate the "oh you're so strong, you beat cancer". So all the people who die from it are weak then? I get that you want to help someone feel good about getting rid of their cancer, but I feel that saying they're "strong" is to some degree an insult to those who did not beat it. I know I'm totally overthinking this after my mum died from ovarian cancer, at age 52. I don't like the adverts either. We all know about cancer by now. We know how horrible it is.