Re: Komen
 

Has Koman sued them over the pink ribbon yet?

Re: Komen
 

Ribbons and races and lighting Philly skyscrapers pink for a week every year. Whole lot of pomp, and expensive pomp, that could have been better directed to actual research. From what I've seen, it looks like a giant United Way - lots of administrative spending and "events" for people with time to engage in, not as much $$$ going to the cause as should be.

(I've had friends work on awareness week in Philly. They spent gobs of money of all sorts of ineffective and superfluous races and advertising. They'd do a whole lot more simply asking for cash. This is hardly a disease requiring "awareness." I can't think of anyone whose family it has not touched.)

Re: Komen
 

By "other things" I'm guessing you're including stem cell research pullbacks.

I have some understanding of backing off of a Planned Parenthood relationship, as much as it pissed me off, but I have absolutely no fucking idea how they can be part of the anti-cancer ecosystem with a no-embryonic-stem-cell research policy. No fucking idea. I cannot think of a better way to undermine their core mission.

Re: Komen
 

It's not a difficult calculation. How many sick tickets are there who'd think, "Well, I'd give to this breast cancer charity, but not if it's going to contribute to an organization that devotes 97% of its resources to cancer screenings and reproductive health services for poor women, and the other 3% to abortions"?

Re: Komen
 

Those, the chair's political donations, information about how they spend money, etc.

Re: Komen
 

I could understand, sort of, declining to fund research that uses embryonic stem sells.

But refusing to give money for research at any institution that does, or could do, embryonic stem cell research is insane.

Do the people giving them money know that Johns Hopkins is off the table as a potential research partner? Do the donors know that they search "for the cure" is constrained in this way?

Re: Komen
 

Most men don't do anything. Yeah, we'll bitch. The decision certainly irked me, and I told a few people I thought it sucked, and we all agreed it did. But being a typical male, I became interested in something else and forgot about it.

Women actually pick up the phone and do things. And thank God for that.

Shaking your head in disagreement? Well, tell me... Have you seen national testicular cancer awareness weeks? Seen any skyscrapers with huge inflatable testicles put on either side of the shaft to ensure no one forgets about that cancer? That'd be a hell of a compelling image, no? Folks would sure as shit remember that. But for more reasons than possible offense of local obscenity laws, you're never going to see it. Why? Because it's a disease that kills guys. And guys are lazy. For that reason, when this woman says Komen's reversal was "women helping women," I have to grudgingly agree.

Re: Komen
 

there are 124 cases of Breast cancer per 100000 women in the US diagnosed each year. 5.5 cases of cancer of the testis per 100000 in the US diagnosed each year.

Re: Komen
 

I tell you what, let's agree that the first part is comprehensible but insane and the second part is both incomprehensible and insane.

Re: Komen
 

OK, you've convinced me. I'm going to buy a couple of big balloons and ask the window-washing guy to attach them to my window.

Re: Komen
 

Turns out they heavily fund Penn State. Any investigations going on there that are potentially criminal in nature?

Re: Komen
 

I wouldn't call them "sick tickets" but rather people who feel very very storngly about abortion -- in fact the very same group of people in the religious right the GOP courts do make that kind of decision.

My brother boycotted* Target for years because among the zillions of dollars of donations they made, some was to Planned Parenthood -- I think even specifically targeted to community health or something non-abortion. His thinking was that donations to support non-abortion functions leaves more undesignated funds to be used for abortion.

There are people who feel very strongly about supporting -- even very tangentially -- an organization that does abortions. And there are people who feel equally as strongly about supporting an organization that would not fund PP's health services. Because there are plenty of options for charitable giving, people in each of those groups are entitled to act on their beliefs. The Komen executives badly misjudged which of those two groups provides most of its funding.

*By not shopping there, he didn't demonstrate or anything.

Re: Komen
 

Nicely summed up.

Re: Komen
 

Careful now. There were grants to researchers at Penn State. That's not "heavily funding" the university.

Re: Komen
 

And now they are allegedly backtracking, thus having pissed off both groups.