Charity attacked over wine sponsorship

Leading scientists have criticised a breast cancer charity in the United Kingdom for permitting its name to be used in the promotion of a brand of wine. The Breast Cancer Campaign has accepted fifty thousand pounds' worth of sponsorship from BRL Hardy which is featuring the charity's logo on its bottles.

It seems ill-judged to many in the medical and scientific world for the charity to allow its name to be associated with the promotion of a product which is a known risk factor in the development of the disease it is dedicated to fight against.

Tom Sanders, professor of nutrition and dietetics at King's College London and a government adviser on food and diet, said, "As alcohol intake is linked to increased risk of breast cancer, it is rather like putting an ad for a lung charity on cigarette packets. It is extremely ill-advised of the breast cancer charity to get involved with a wine company, which is, after all, trying to promote the consumption of alcohol. It sends out a confusing message to women about the risks they run."

Pamela Goldberg, chief executive of the Breast Cancer Campaign, defended her charity's association with a branch of the drink industry, saying that alcohol represented increased risk rather than the sort of causal link been long-established between smoking and lung cancer. She added that the charity had decided to take a pragmatic view when offered the financial backing. "It's not like smoking and lung cancer," she said. "We know that smoking causes disease. This is not a causal link; it's a slight increase in risk. OK, we took a pragmatic view but there is nothing in our relation with Hardy that encourages women to drink."

BRL Hardy in its turn defended its backing of the charity. BRL Hardy's UK trading director, Adrian McKeon said, "When we started off the connection with the Breast Cancer Campaign there was no concrete evidence for a link between alcohol and breast cancer."