Business is business. Maybe it's about making a difference in the world of consumers but mostly, it's about making money. I get that -- and if I owned my own company and offered some sort of product, surely my goal would be to reap a financial reward. And if I wanted to increase my reward, I guess I would consider new markets, new advertising, and new techniques for hauling in loads of cash.

So I see what's going on with the new Camel No. 9 cigarettes, in their hot-pink fuscia and minty-teal green packages with the slogan Light and Luscious. I understand this brand is targeting female smokers with enticing wording that Camel maker R.J. Reynolds executives say is meant to suggest dressed to the nines, putting on your best. I even get that it's a pretty savvy strategy. But somehow, it all seems so wrong.

In a world where more women die of lung cancer than breast cancer -- by a large margin -- how can anyone, even business people whose sights are set on profits, feel OK with the decision to encourage women to smoke?

Think about these passages that just recently published in a New York Times article:

Wall Street analysts praise the introduction of Camel No. 9, in regular and menthol flavors, as a further step by the R. J. Reynolds, a unit of Reynolds American, toward a new marketing strategy. The goal is to refocus on the biggest, most popular -- and most profitable -- brands, which include Kool as well as Camel.

"What we're about is giving adult smokers a choice," says one executive, "with products we believe are more appealing than existing products." The introduction of Camel No. 9 is part of plans to "focus on products that are 'wow,' " she added, "that add fun and excitement to the category."

Fun and excitement? Believe me, there's nothing fun and exciting about cancer. Now if I could only package that truth and market it to the world. I suspect I'd be a rich woman -- and I don't mean financially.

Last week I noted that Wal-Mart was pulling nine brands of children's clothing off store shelves in China when it was found the clothes to be contaminated with a cancer-causing dye. I posted it primarily because the Wal-Mart spokesperson in China declined comment when asked if the children's clothing had been exported to the U.S. I felt it a good idea for parents here to be on alert.

Within hours of that post, I was contacted via email by Marshall Manson of Edelman, who handles the online public affairs for Wal-Mart, sharing a statement being made by the Wal-Mart spokesperson here in the U.S. saying Wal-Mart was reasonably sure that the cancer-causing children's clothing could not have been exported from China. Because Wal-Mart was not 100 percent sure that the clothing in question had not made its way to store shelves here in the U.S., I asked Manson to contact me when Wal-Mart had finished its internal assessment of the situation. This morning, Manson emailed again. "I wanted to follow up with you and let you know definitively that none of the children's clothes in question in the story that you originally blogged about were exported to the United States. None." Wal-Mart in China has concluded its investigation into the matter and no clothing contaminated with the cancer-causing dye was shipped to the U.S. There you go, now we know for certain.

And while you might be thinking that I am receiving my information from someone who works on behalf of presenting Wal-Mart in the best possible light -- well yes I am -- but here's my thought about that. Truth never stays hidden forever, and would you want to knowingly mislead a blogger? No, I don't think so. All my gut instinct tells me Manson is being straight-forward and forth-coming with the information he has provided in this matter.