MB Civic

Wheeler ..

Komen just pretended to reverse its decision defund Planned Parenthood’s cancer screening services (it promises only to consider Planned Parenthood applications in the future, not to fund them) .. But now that everyone has become aware of Komen’s sleaziness, it’s time to look at what they – and the cancer industry – do more generally. They fund efforts to diagnose and find a cure but they work against things like prevention. They also tend to push back against research that shows we’ve been over-diagnosing and over-treating breast cancer .. We ought to use this scandal to examine more closely where cancer money gets spent – on treatment, turning cancer patients into customers – and rarely on prevention. While I appreciate the gesture, pink ribbons to me have come to symbolize cancer patients as profit centers, both for consumer goods capitalizing on an association with the goodwill (and Komen), as well as for ungodly expensive drugs that don’t always provide better outcomes

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