Sprechen Sie “Breast Cancer Barbie”?

Pretty soon, Breast Cancer Barbie, the doll I love to hate, will be speaking German.

I’ve been in e-mail contact with Gudrun Kemper who is working with another breast cancer survivior and close friend, Gudrun Lüttgen, to put together a German-language Web site for women with breast cancer. Gudrun writes that all the breast cancer Web sites in Germany are sponsored by drug companies. “We’d like to change this,” she says, “and put together an independent, self-contained Web site” for women who have or have had breast cancer.

Gudrun asked if she could translate my Breast Cancer Barbie piece into German and put it on the site, so watch for that at http://www.bcaction.de/10breastwatch/bc-barbie.htm in the next few weeks.

Gudrun, who is a librarian in the Berlin State Library in the Eastern Europe Dept., was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000 at age 39. The “other Gudrun,” Gudrun Lüttgen, is a philologist who lives in Bonn.

“This Web site is the first Web site without industry sponsoring for independent access to information,” Gudrun Kemper says, “and I hope, that we can make it better and better in time.

“The ‘German Breast Cancer Movement’ is small and relatively aggressive, dismembered, fragmented. The women are shy, adjusted, honest, the doctors ‘demigods.’ And there is no wide access to independent and critical thinking. The health system is in a deep crisis, [and] breast cancer is on the top of the agenda … Today I'm networking with some small but independent women’s health organizations, and I hope that we get some mental support.”

I don’t know if Mattel sold BC Barbie in Germany, although of course she is available worldwide via the Web. I’ve e-mailed the company to ask.

You'll find the Gudruns' Web site at http://www.bcaction.de, although it won't go live until some time in December.