Cut the Pink Ties to the Komen Foundation

Feb. 5, 2012 - PRLog -- A couple of years ago the Komen Foundation announced that they had reached the one billion dollar mark in fundraising, and yet the organization that get’s the lion’s share of donations for cancer, is getting stingy. This past week they made a bold decision to deny funding for breast cancer screenings if the women obtained their mammograms through Planned Parenthood.

Women have been the primary donors to their Komen Foundation since its inception twenty-eight years ago. I dare say that Susan G. Komen would roll over in her grave if she knew her name was being used to extort money from women, and then women were being denied the screenings that would prevent them from dying of the same cancer that killed Susan Komen.

Women have been running, begging, groveling for a cure, to fund the Komen Foundation, and in over a quarter of a century of fundraising, we still don’t have a vaccine or a cure. To date, much of the funding has been spent on awareness programs telling women to “Be Aware!” Excuse me, but if there’s a woman who is not aware of breast cancer by now, she’s living in a cave. Dr. Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine in a lot less time with a lot less research money than the Komen Foundation has raised. This county plotted a course of action and sent man to the moon in just a decade. Yet we allow cancer to pertuate generation after generation. Every woman in the country should be incensed about this blatant disregard to expedite a cure for breast cancer.

The problem with this foundation is the lack of accountability. We don’t know exactly how this billion dollars is being spent. We just know what they don’t want to spend it on…women. This is a bizarre paradox. Let’s face it, to find a cure would put an end to this money machine. The Komen Foundation has lost its focus. It’s no longer focusing on finding a cure for breast cancer; it’s focusing on perpetuating its foundation.

If you truly want to ensure that your money is well spent, why not funnel it to Penn State College of Medicine who just reported on August 9, in the online journal Molecular Cancer, that their researchers have found a virus that kills human breast cancer cells in the laboratory. Researchers used a naturally occurring version of the adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV2) on three different breast cancer types, representing various stages of the disease. In the culture dishes in the laboratory, the virus destroys all the cancer cells within seven days. Their study showed that the AAV2 virus, as a single entity, targeted all different grades of breast cancer. The AAV2 does not affect healthy cells, and the researchers at Penn State have also found that AAV2 can kill cells derived from prostate cancer, methoselioma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. See articles at: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/234882.php & http://www.pennlive.com/bodyandmind/index.ssf/2011/10/vir...

In 2011, the American Cancer Society reported that there would be about 230,480 new cases of invasive breast cancer in women, and 57,650 new cases of non-invasive carcinoma in situ (CIS), for a combined total of 288,130! Approximately 40,000 women would die from it. Breastcancer.org reports that the breast cancer incidence in women in the United States is 1 in 8 (about 13%). And if it affects one in eight, it will happen to someone you know. They have access to a much larger sample size than I, but in my community, one in every group of four women I network with, has had breast cancer. I wouldn’t go on record stating that it’s 25%, but it’s definitely got to be 20%.

Mammograms are old school; they don’t protect you from contracting breast cancer. Donning a pink T-shirt and running shoes and ‘running for a cure,’ isn’t a protective method either. It’s time. It’s time we take a proactive approach and develop a preventative measure. Stop band-aiding the process. Get your ‘pinking’ shears out and cut the pink ties to the Komen Foundation. Contribute directly to the research effort and quit wasting it on an organization that has not been held accountable for the billion they’ve extorted from women, and then pick and choose which women they’ll spend it on.

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Freelance reporter, writer, featured columnist, blogger, and public speaker, focusing primarily on aiding non-profit organizations in fulfilling their mission statements.