I'm all for finding cures to diseases like cancer.
But I think there are at least two things you people might want to consider before jumping all over over the pink ribbon bandwagon. Just gonna throw this out there...
I Will Not Be Pinkwashed: Komen's Race Is For Money, Not Cure
Outrageous salaries, drug company ties, and less than a dime of every dollar looks for a cure.
AlternetI
Susan G. Komen for the Cure is a multimillion-dollar company with assets totaling over $390 million. Only 20.9% of these funds were reportedly used in the 2009-2010 fiscal year for research “for the cure.” Where does the rest of the money go? Let’s have a look. Health screening is 13.0%. Treatment is 5.6%. Fundraising is 10.0%. The largest chunk of the pie is going toward “public health education,” 39.1%. More on that later, but for now I’d like to take a look at the millions, or 11.3%, spent on “administrative costs.”
"Public Health Education"
We have all seen the rallies with pink hats, pink T-shirts, pink staging, pink everything. Is this really making a difference?
The area in which Komen spends the highest percentage of funds is in “public health education,” in other words, bringing awareness to the population of the disease itself and the importance of screening for early detection of breast cancer. While that may be considered a worthwhile goal to some, it’s important to realize that Komen stands to profit from spreading that message.
It admits to about 10% of funds used for “fundraising,” but let’s be honest, the pink-ribbon-plastered “awareness” and”education” campaigns are often little more than a highly effective form of advertising — which in turn, brings in Komen’s millions.
Research "for the Cure"
Susan G. Komen does indeed provide millions of dollars to fund research — but what exactly is it researching with those grants? One blogger diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer who had serious doubts of the intentions of the Komen foundation, dug through the research grants herself, and found the following information about how Komen’s research money is spent.
Its pie chart for all research spending from 1982-2010 says: treatment, 22%; early detection, 15%; etiology, 8%; prevention, 10%; model systems, 3%; survivorship, 9%; and biology, 33%.
The only conceivable categories related to finding a cure for the cancer being researched would be etiology (the study of causation), survivorship, model systems, and biology.
So to break it down even further, Susan G. Komen for the Cure only spends a possible 53% of its research funding for a cure, or — about 11% of total revenue. Donate a dollar “for the cure?” Only about a dime of that will go toward research that might actually be designed to cure cancer
Pink ribbon products are everywhere. But
how much good is it really doing to support the fight against breast cancer by purchasing them?
As it turns out, not much.
If only about a dime of every dollar is spent on research for a cure, then just imagine how minuscule of a contribution is being made for that cause when such a small portion of the pink proceeds go toward Komen as a whole.
“It’s rarely more than a penny on the dollar,” said Trent Stamp, executive director of Charity Navigator, a charity watchdog group. “It’s just great advertising.”
So, on that front, I would just like to make you aware that there are other charities out there that do a much better job at putting your donations to work.
Not to sound like a Men's Rights Advocate or anything, but the number of men who are afflicted by or die from prostate and testicular cancer are about the same as the number of women who are afflicted by or die from breast cancer.