Lung Cancer Alliance pats nurses' cute little heads, but refuses to fix Dr. Lung Love PSA
November 22, 2009 -- Please help us with our campaign about the Lung Cancer Alliance's Dr. Lung Love video, which uses naughty, subservient "nurses" to promote lung cancer awareness. LCA refuses to fix or remove the damaging PSA "Waitin' Room Service" despite protests from many nurses and nursing organizations. The prominent charity's president and CEO Laurie Fenton Ambrose (right) took three weeks to respond to our daily calls and supporters' many emails. (See her email.) Her email stated that LCA had "replaced" the video, but it has done no such thing. LCA has just slightly deemphasized the video at the lunglove.com website (now defunct) by having a different Dr. Lung Love video be the default video when visitors first arrive at the site. This actually appears to be part of LCA's original plan to rotate related videos, so it seems that LCA has done nothing to address nurses' concerns. (See our response to her letter.) The original rap video remains prominently displayed on the site, on YouTube, and elsewhere. Ambrose's letter says that she understands nurses' concerns about the "perceived misrepresentation" (maybe it was all in our heads!). But Ambrose also spends a lot of the letter boasting about LCA's achievements, and implies that our concerns must give way to LCA's more important health mission. She even points out the ways in which LCA has supported nursing issues in the past, as if nurses owe LCA tolerance of this obviously degrading campaign, or as if LCA might not be so supportive of nursing in the future if nurses don't back down now. LCA seems to be running out the clock, dragging things out till the PSA has completed its planned run. But it is actually not OK for LCA to pursue its public health goals by obstructing nursing's public health goals, continuing to suggest that nurses are naughty physician servants. So please see our campaign, then call 202-463-2080 (press 8) and ask LCA president Laurie Fenton Ambrose to fix or remove the PSA and apologize to nurses. (Letter-writing campaign closed). Thank you!
You can see our original campaign from November 2, 2009.
Success (sort of)!
See how we got the LCA to remove its Dr. Lung Love rap video on November 30, 2009.