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The highlighted part is the only correct thing found in this OP.Dont you just hate people who think they own a particular disease or illness? I mean come on, you never know what others have been through. The political correctness of disease and victhimhood in America is pathetic. Or is Dante wrong? Maybe he should show the pink to prove something? Yeah right, to hell with mob mentality.
Dont you just hate people who think they own a particular disease or illness? I mean come on, you never know what others have been through. The political correctness of disease and victhimhood in America is pathetic. Or is Dante wrong? Maybe he should show the pink to prove something? Yeah right, to hell with mob mentality.
Dont you just hate people who think they own a particular disease or illness? I mean come on, you never know what others have been through. The political correctness of disease and victhimhood in America is pathetic. Or is Dante wrong? Maybe he should show the pink to prove something? Yeah right, to hell with mob mentality.
Dont you just love second hand victims?
Flame zone here we come
Dont you just love second hand victims?
Flame zone here we come
Still an interesting take....... When was the last time you had a brain scan..........?
Get a government one. I hear they are da bomb...Dont you just love second hand victims?
Flame zone here we come
Still an interesting take....... When was the last time you had a brain scan..........?
Actually trying to schedule one soon. Thanks
Get a government one. I hear they are da bomb...Still an interesting take....... When was the last time you had a brain scan..........?
Actually trying to schedule one soon. Thanks
I have one every 5 years....Keeps getting better.Get a government one. I hear they are da bomb...Actually trying to schedule one soon. Thanks
I suspect if most everyone here had a baseline test and revisited a few years later, a not too pretty diagnosis would be made.
Dont you just hate people who think they own a particular disease or illness? I mean come on, you never know what others have been through. The political correctness of disease and victhimhood in America is pathetic. Or is Dante wrong? Maybe he should show the pink to prove something? Yeah right, to hell with mob mentality.
. . .A popular gripe among advocates is that too much is spent on awareness campaigns walks, races, rallies at the expense of research. (And really, when Snuggies go pink, haven't we hit our awareness saturation point?) There's a case to be made for that, of course, but there's another explanation, one that exposes an ugly, even blasphemous truth of the movement: Breast cancer has made a lot of people very wealthy. The fact is, thousands of people earn a handsome living extending their proverbial pink tin cups, baiting their benefactors with the promise of a cure, as if one were realistically in sight. They divert press, volunteers, and public interest away from other, more legitimate organizations, to say nothing of the money they raise, which, despite the best intentions of donors, doesn't always go where it's supposed to.
The Breast Cancer Society, based in Mesa, Arizona, has made an art form of this kind of creative accounting. Founded in 2007 by James T. Reynolds II, now 37, the organization provides critically ill breast cancer patients across the country with cash grants to pay for everything from groceries to medical bills, Reynolds says. In 2009 (the most recent year for which tax records are available), the BCS claims it raised $50 million in contributions, the bulk of which went to supplying medicines to hospitals in Third World countries like Guatemala and Ethiopia, ostensibly for the treatment of breast cancer. (Reynolds says he has visited only three of the eight hospitals that purportedly received these medicines.) Press him on his group's finances and he admits that, in fact, BCS raised just $15 million in cash donations in 2009. The other $35 million represented his estimate of medications that the BCS accepted as gifts or bought at a major discount but then listed on its books as having much higher values. For example, BCS reported that it sent $8.8 million worth of goods to hospitals in East Asia. "I'd have to look it up, but it probably cost us maybe $40,000 to procure and distribute that," Reynolds concedes in a phone interview. Where do these medicines come from? Reynolds says he gets them from other organizations, including the Ontario-based Universal Aide Society, which saw its Canadian charitable status revoked two years ago for malfeasance. (Its employees used funds to finance vacations and other personal expenses.) This so-called "gifts in kind" scheme makes BCS seem a whole lot bigger than it actually is and obscures the fact that the group spent 90 cents of every dollar that it raised on telemarketers, not patients.
Nonprofits don't seem a likely place to make a fortune. But in 2009, Reynolds collected a $223,276 paycheck, nearly double what he made the year before. (Perhaps that's only fair given that over the same period, he doubled his telemarketing efforts, which, in turn, nearly doubled what BCS brought in from solicitations.) He says his salary is comparable to that of executives running similar organizations and commensurate with his 18 years of nonprofit experience. He neglects to mention that his experience has been limited largely to his work with the Cancer Fund of America, a controversial group founded by his father, which has been blasted by both the Better Business Bureau and the nonprofit rating agency Charity Navigator for giving less than a penny of every dollar raised to cancer patients. Charity Navigator once listed the Cancer Fund of America Support Services, an affiliate Reynolds ran between 2003 and 2007, as one of "10 Non-Profits That Make Ebenezer Proud." Reynolds was also one of the Cancer Fund of America's highest-paid employees for several years, serving as its vice president between 2006 and 2008. In 2007, the Georgia Governor's Office of Consumer Affairs accused that group of making false and misleading claims in its mail solicitations, allegations that the Cancer Fund of America ultimately settled for $50,000. Reynolds is nonplussed by critics who say he's taken a page from his father's "one for you, three for me" playbook and applied it to his Breast Cancer Society. "I've offered to have people come and visit our facilities and sit down with them and open our books up," he says calmly. "I don't ever want to run an organization that hides things."
The net result of all this profiteering? Pink has lost its punch. "All these groups that have sprouted up around the country have diffused the attention to breast cancer," contends Fran Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition and former chair of the Integration Panel of the Department of Defense Peer-Review Breast Cancer Research Program. "They take up dollars and put them into little pots all across the country. They take away from the efforts that can and do make a difference. They should all be focused on putting themselves out of business." But who closes up shop when business is booming?
For anyone worried about where their donations are going, here's a useful tip: Skip the pink-ribbon merchandise. Because no one really owns the rights to what has become the universal symbol of breast cancer (though Susan G. Komen for the Cure trademarked its own version), peddling the logo has become a massive racket, overrun by slick profiteers exploiting the public's naive assumption that all pink purchases help the cause. Often they don't. Tchotchke vendor Oriental Trading sells an extensive line of pink-ribbon party favors, including "Find the cure" car magnets and "I wear pink in honor of" buttons. Save for proceeds from its pink rubber duckies, part of a sponsorship deal with Komen, not a penny of Oriental Trading's breast cancer novelties goes to breast cancer. Three years ago, veteran nurse Christina McCall, the daughter of a breast cancer survivor, launched Pink Ribbon Marketplace, an online store based in Germantown, Tennessee, with a vast array of pink-hued goodies. "As a woman and the mother of three daughters, it quickly became apparent that creating a business that gives back to breast cancer victims and their families was important to me," she writes on her store's website. "I personally chose our local American Cancer Society and Reach to Recovery Program to be the receipient [sic] of funds we donate." But when asked about those donations, McCall fesses up that, in fact, no monies have ever gone to the American Cancer Society or its breast-cancer-targeted Reach to Recovery program. "I'm a little leery of [donating money]," McCall told Marie Claire. Instead, she says she gives away free products to charity events and donates to individuals "depending on my profits." (Shortly after MC contacted her, McCall removed any reference to the American Cancer Society from her website.)
Last year, the Better Business Bureau issued a warning to consumers about misleading or vague claims made on the packaging of pink-ribbon-festooned products. "Simply because a company puts a pink ribbon on its package doesn't always mean a good breast cancer charity is benefiting from your purchase," noted Michelle L. Corey, a BBB exec.
The Susan G Komen/KFC Buckets for the Cure partnership, which Breast Cancer Action described as 'feeding people carcinogenic grilled chicken that raises the risk of breast cancer'. Photograph: Ecouterre | Eco-fashion, green design, sustainable style
In conversations about the direction the "awareness" movement has taken, it's important to examine its early roots, and the things people did to make society more conscious and force a discussion. The gradual commodification of breast cancer reflected a failure of the movement, in that it wasn't able to adapt quickly enough to fight the commercialisation of breast cancer awareness. Now, groups like Breast Cancer Action are having to fight cancer on two fronts: battling for patients, as well as fighting the rise of pinkification.
The group points out that many of the products tied to breast cancer awareness are themselves linked with cancer, or are produced by firms with a terrible record on environmental pollution and other activities known to contribute to high cancer rates. In the course of trying to make a difference, a monster was created instead.
Activists who fought to take breast cancer mainstream obviously didn't do so with the end goal of pink yoghurt lids in every grocery store. Their goal was to increase funding for research, treatment and support for a disease that went largely undiscussed; one that women were told to be ashamed of, a condition that was so horrifyingly embarrassing that patients had to conceal it by any means possible. They wanted to create a world where cancer rates were lower and patients got the care they needed. They also wanted a world where patients didn't need to hide the fact that they were sick.
A movement that started with powerful intentions became commercial, gender-essentialist and repugnant in many of its mainstream incarnations, even as smaller campaigns and voices actively agitated against its framing. Those who oppose the use of sexism and gender essentialism in breast cancer campaigns are cast as opponents of action on breast cancer. In a strange twist, the people demanding that major breast cancer awareness campaigners be accountable first and foremost to patients are told they don't care about breast cancer patients.
When patients are saying they don't want to be reduced to their anatomy with cutesy slogans like "save the ta-tas", and that they're enraged by pink ribbon branding of products known to be cancerous, they're told the cause is more important than their feelings. When people at higher risk for breast cancer express concerns about the failure of outreach campaigns to reach them or acknowledge their experiences, we're told we aren't standing in solidarity with the movement and should be silent in the name of the greater good.
The willful obstinacy when it comes to denying the voices of people who want to see the movement return to purer roots is, of course, one part pure capitalism. Big firms have learned that breast cancer is a profit-generation tool, and they aren't willing to give it up. It's also one part insistence on neglecting the diversity of voices in the community. Just as mainstream feminism has failed many people simply by refusing to listen to them, the mainstream breast cancer movement has failed many people by pretending their concerns don't exist.
Dont you just hate people who think they own a particular disease or illness? I mean come on, you never know what others have been through. The political correctness of disease and victhimhood in America is pathetic. Or is Dante wrong? Maybe he should show the pink to prove something? Yeah right, to hell with mob mentality.
Agreed. Herd mentality is what this forum excels at. Free thinking is not valued at all. One thing partisans can all get behind, is the elites making a buck off of death and decay. It works for war, why not the death care system?
This article is HUGE. I recommend it to everyone. It is four pages in length. I doubt most have the intellectual weight to get through it in the age of twitter and FB. Basically? PINK is a SCAM.
The Big Business of Breast Cancer
http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/breast-cancer-business-scams-3
. . .A popular gripe among advocates is that too much is spent on awareness campaigns walks, races, rallies at the expense of research. (And really, when Snuggies go pink, haven't we hit our awareness saturation point?) There's a case to be made for that, of course, but there's another explanation, one that exposes an ugly, even blasphemous truth of the movement: Breast cancer has made a lot of people very wealthy. The fact is, thousands of people earn a handsome living extending their proverbial pink tin cups, baiting their benefactors with the promise of a cure, as if one were realistically in sight. They divert press, volunteers, and public interest away from other, more legitimate organizations, to say nothing of the money they raise, which, despite the best intentions of donors, doesn't always go where it's supposed to.
Another really good one.
Pinkification: how breast cancer awareness got commodified for profit
What began as a social movement serving urgent health needs for women has been hollowed out by cynical marketeering
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/03/pinkification-breast-cancer-awareness-commodified
In conversations about the direction the "awareness" movement has taken, it's important to examine its early roots, and the things people did to make society more conscious and force a discussion. The gradual commodification of breast cancer reflected a failure of the movement, in that it wasn't able to adapt quickly enough to fight the commercialisation of breast cancer awareness. Now, groups like Breast Cancer Action are having to fight cancer on two fronts: battling for patients, as well as fighting the rise of pinkification.
The group points out that many of the products tied to breast cancer awareness are themselves linked with cancer, or are produced by firms with a terrible record on environmental pollution and other activities known to contribute to high cancer rates. In the course of trying to make a difference, a monster was created instead.
Activists who fought to take breast cancer mainstream obviously didn't do so with the end goal of pink yoghurt lids in every grocery store. Their goal was to increase funding for research, treatment and support for a disease that went largely undiscussed; one that women were told to be ashamed of, a condition that was so horrifyingly embarrassing that patients had to conceal it by any means possible. They wanted to create a world where cancer rates were lower and patients got the care they needed. They also wanted a world where patients didn't need to hide the fact that they were sick.
. . .
A movement that started with powerful intentions became commercial, gender-essentialist and repugnant in many of its mainstream incarnations, even as smaller campaigns and voices actively agitated against its framing. Those who oppose the use of sexism and gender essentialism in breast cancer campaigns are cast as opponents of action on breast cancer. In a strange twist, the people demanding that major breast cancer awareness campaigners be accountable first and foremost to patients are told they don't care about breast cancer patients.
When patients are saying they don't want to be reduced to their anatomy with cutesy slogans like "save the ta-tas", and that they're enraged by pink ribbon branding of products known to be cancerous, they're told the cause is more important than their feelings. When people at higher risk for breast cancer express concerns about the failure of outreach campaigns to reach them or acknowledge their experiences, we're told we aren't standing in solidarity with the movement and should be silent in the name of the greater good.
The willful obstinacy when it comes to denying the voices of people who want to see the movement return to purer roots is, of course, one part pure capitalism. Big firms have learned that breast cancer is a profit-generation tool, and they aren't willing to give it up. It's also one part insistence on neglecting the diversity of voices in the community. Just as mainstream feminism has failed many people simply by refusing to listen to them, the mainstream breast cancer movement has failed many people by pretending their concerns don't exist.
And to think, I almost jumped on that silly band wagon. Good thing I research everything before I make decisions about them. Usually, the dominant establishment thinking is the way it is because of money and profit. Generally, that's the rule.
Whoa is me. 
Ha ha, nice.
Such a shame. . .
I never would've thought this would come from such euradite poster. This? Coming from one of the few that has challenged my views and caused me to reflect. How could this poster resort to such sophomoric of retorts? Eh. . .
My illusions are shattered and I suppose I'm no longer a newb here. You've let me down Ringel.
To go from Igor to a pink zombie? Not much of a trade up.
I guess we know what butters your bread.
Ha ha, nice.
Such a shame. . .
I never would've thought this would come from such euradite poster. This? Coming from one of the few that has challenged my views and caused me to reflect. How could this poster resort to such sophomoric of retorts? Eh. . .
My illusions are shattered and I suppose I'm no longer a newb here. You've let me down Ringel.
To go from Igor to a pink zombie? Not much of a trade up.
I guess we know what butters your bread.
