Maria Curcic
not only wears many hats, she designs them too. The DJ, painter, and
milliner added do-gooder to her hat rack when a close friend was
diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999. "She was the same age as me and
it was devastating
news to those of us who knew her," she recalls.

Given her
experience producing fashion and art events, Curcic decided the best
way to help her friend and raise awareness about the disease would be
to throw a party in her hood in Calgary, Alberta. She convinced a small
club to host the event, contracted a jazz band, and hit up local retailers to contribute goods for a silent auction. She contributed her
own hats, paintings, and music too.

"My event was unique in that I incorporated aspects of my own life into
it," Curcic recalls.
"I also did a show and sale of my hats and accessories, paintings, and
other services that I provide, like interior design, and I
donated a percentage of all my sales, 15 percent to be exact."

That
first event was such a success that Maria has been putting together new
venues, bands, and vibes to benefit cancer survivors every year since.
Now that the official Breast Cancer Awareness month has come to a
close, we asked Maria for her opinion on the many events that crowd the
calendar. We anticipated some talk of auctions, sponsors, maybe
balloons. Instead, Maria surprised us with a critique of the current
struggle against cancer.

Over the years, Maria writes us by
e-mail, the events have grown more expensive to produce, more
sponsor-driven, and in her opinion, less likely to actually benefit
people with cancer. Though Maria has certainly presented her own work
at her events, she's
no fan of what's called "cause marketing": when large corporations
sponsor a cause in order to accrue good will along with publicity.

"A
good event needs to be about the cause and living life," she says,
"not about big corporations getting their hands into it, selling us
poison, and then telling us they donate a portion of their sales to
BC." What's at stake, she believes, are profits and good PR for cancer
producers. "I did some research and found out that these large
companies
were more concerned about the hype for their company than the actual
cause -- disheartening indeed."

That research includes Dr. Samuel S. Epstein's 2005 book Cancer-Gate: How to Win the Losing Cancer War. "This book will open your eyes to more
than you ever imagined," Maria promises.

Epstein argues that both the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society
have been coopted, if not corrupted, by lobbyists and donors from
pharmaceutical companies and other corporations that produce
carcinogenic products. This has resulted in a focus on finding a
"cure," rather than restricting the environmental carcinogens that make
us sick -- an alternative course of action that Epstein contends would
be easier and more feasible to achieve than curing the disease after
the fact.

Looking at the sky-rocketing cancer rates since
President Nixon declared the "war on cancer" in 1971, Epstein claims:
"It seems that the more money we spend on cancer, the more cancer we
get."

Oh, nothing is ever simple. Or is it? Maria
writes that nowadays, she's taking a more direct approach to helping
cancer survivors. "Raise the money," she writes. "Then find the
people who are going through chemo, buy them their meds or whatever
they need to feel comfortable, take them to the spa, make them feel
special. Help those that need it most; they will thank you,
not the big corporations. This is what I do now and it is more
rewarding in the end."