‘I wish I had breast cancer’: U.K. charity defends its ‘envy’ campaign

"I wish I had breast cancer."

It's the controversial "envy" campaign commissioned by British charity Pancreatic Cancer Action, highlighting pancreatic cancer's poor survival rates compared to other forms of the disease.

According to the above ad, just three per cent of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer are alive five years later, compared with 85 per cent of breast cancer patients and 97 per cent of men diagnosed with testicular cancer.

The campaign was met with outrage. Breast cancer survivors emphasized they'd wish their cancer "upon NO ONE. Not a single person."

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"I can’t speak for anyone else’s experience, but believe me, when I was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma and faced my own statistical likelihood of imminent death, I didn’t wish I’d been given breast cancer instead. You know what I wished for? To get better," writes Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams. "I was lucky that I did. And I don’t look around now at my friends with leukaemia and ovarian cancer and breast cancer and rank who has it hardest."

Chris Askew, CEO of Breakthrough Breast Cancer also criticizes the campaign:

"We can’t support any message that suggests that any form of cancer is preferable to any other. Or any inference that breast cancer has been 'solved.'"

Samia al Qadhi, chief executive at Breast Cancer Care, agrees.

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"It is unhelpful to pit one cancer against another," she tells BBC News.

"Most of us know someone who has been affected by this dreadful, life-threatening disease and know the impact it can have on those affected and their loved ones. Unless you have experienced it yourself, it's impossible to fully understand the huge challenge faced by women who every day wake up to the brutal reality of breast cancer."

Ali Stunt, a pancreatic cancer survivor and Pancreatic Cancer Action's founder, responds to the criticism:

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"We are sorry if this campaign upsets anyone and our heart goes out to anyone affected by cancer. All types of cancer are horrific and the last thing I would wish on anyone," she says.

"Our advert is not stating that someone wished they had cancer but rather they wish they could swap pancreatic cancer with a cancer that gives them a better chance of survival. We purposely selected cancers for our campaign that have a significantly better survival rate than pancreatic cancer."

In a blog post, Stunt admits to experiencing "cancer envy" when she was going through treatments at the same time a friend of hers was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer.

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"While I was sympathetic and empathetic, I did find it very hard to listen to her tell me about how tough it was and that the side effects of her treatment were awful (which they were). I understood as, after all, I too was undergoing chemotherapy. I couldn’t help but think every now and then, 'it's alright for you, you have an 85% chance that you will still be here in five years time – while my odds are only 3%,'" she writes.

Stunt hopes people can see beyond the sensational headlines.

"I can understand that if you just look at the headline it could potentially cause offence and upset. Read on or watch the video to understand where it's come from. It's come from a pancreatic cancer sufferer who wishes they had a better prognosis," she tells The Independent.

What do you think of the "hard-hitting" campaign? Do you agree with Stunt that "no cancer advert that saves a single life can be accused of going too far?"