I don’t think it’s passed over to America yet but in the past few days Cancer Research have had over £1 million ($1.65 million) in text donations because of a meme on Twitter and Facebook where women posted a no-makeup selfie and then donated £3 by texting BEAT to 70099. Many people had a moan about their timelines being flooded by surprisingly non-disgusting looking women but overall, this idea which has no discernable beginning has gone viral and then raised a relatively enormous amount of money for a charity which was not expecting it at all. It may even have the side effect of showing women that most of them look almost identical without makeup.
I really doubt that most women will come to that conclusion because wearing makeup is so ingrained, it isn’t even considered an option. Still it may take something like the happy accident of this meme for people to realise it. Happy accidents are the way a lof of epoch shifting events happen. On the topic of cancer, the idea that we can cure it is a little misleading considering there are many types of cancer and we don’t even know what causes some of them. It has taken a happy accident in the lab to discover a new idea for ridding the world of cancer: blowing it up.
A team of 22 researchers trialling drug concoctions on the most aggressive form of brain cancer, glioblastoma multiforme (GMB) have found one which clears these cells by making them explode. Well, the study calls it “cytoplasmic membrane rupture” but it’s the same thing. The cancer blows up! The treatment requires a large quantity of the drug and has only been tested on mice thus far, but it really gives us an exciting new avenue to explore cancer treatments. That doesn’t mean you should stop posting pictures of yourself with no makeup and donating money to cancer research or support charities though.
