Pink bats for breast cancer research

[Oeditpus Rex]

In recognition of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, ballplayers today are swinging pink bats. So far (it's only the first inning), Kenny Lofton and Nomar Garciaparra have batted with them. (They didn't get hits, but Randy Winn just started the bottom of the first with a double, using a brown bat.)

Today, appropriately, Major League Baseball is sponsoring a fundraiser for breast cancer research. At http://www.mlb.com you can make a flat pledge or a pledge per strikeout during today's games. You can also buy neat stuff, like pink caps with the breast-cancer logo ribbon, with a portion of proceeds going to the foundation. (My pink Dodgers cap is on the way.)

Great way to honor our moms, no? :loveya:

[hlthe2b]

1. I think I'd like to buy one of those pink bats....

to carry around from time to time when besieged by combative types--Freepers or otherwise.

Kudos to MLB.

[undeterred]

2. OK I was thinking of the other kind of bat

the kind that you see around halloween...and maybe some genetic engineering to change the color.


Great way to honor moms, yes.

[Berry Cool]

3. No thanks, I prefer not to support an organization run by Bush Pioneers

even if it's "for a good cause."

The NHL got it done better. Their pink-hockey-stick campaign, as it turns out, raised money for the Breast Cancer Society of Canada, which is not in bed with the Bushes (although I wish I knew what proportion of the profits from auctioning the sticks went to them).

Read this from AlterNet:

http://www.alternet.org/story/14014/

The Marketing of Breast Cancer
By Mary Ann Swissler, Southern Exposure. Posted September 16, 2002.

Judy Brady has little use for the limelight. Yet, as someone with a lot on her mind, she has much to say about what she terms "the marketing of breast cancer." One of the worst examples, she says, is the Dallas-based Susan G. Komen Foundation...

Now held year-round in 110 U.S. cities and abroad, the festivities offend Brady and the group Toxic Links Coalition. The races, they say, merely focus women on finding a medical cure for breast cancer, and away from environmental conditions causing it, the problems of the uninsured, and political influence of corporations over the average patient...

...Brady and the coalition are persistent in their message, yet the circle it travels in remains small, especially when compared with that of the Komen Foundation and its founder, Nancy G. Brinker....Federal Election Commission records show the Komen Foundation and its allies lobbied against the consumer-friendly version of the Patients Bill of Rights in 1999, 2000 and 2001. Brinker then trumpeted old friend George W. Bush in August 2001 for backing a "strong" Patients' Bill of Rights, while most patient advocates felt betrayed...

...Through the years, the Brinkers helped deliver the state of Texas to George W. Bush, for the governor's seat and then the Presidency. Their phenomenal fund-raising skills earned them the moniker of "Bush Pioneers," followed up with committee positions for the Bush Inaugural Ball, which requires a minimum $25,000 donation. On her own steam, Nancy Brinker lists nearly $256,000 in Bush and Republican Party donations, from Bush gubernatorial races, GOP hard and soft money, and federal PAC hard money, according to FEC records...

[undeterred]

4. I did not know that

I just knew it was a very successful foundation.

[Berry Cool]

5. Most people don't, and that's the pity.

They never look beyond the "we fight breast cancer" aspect of it. Komen already has tons of money, more than they know what to do with. They are the highest-profile breast cancer charity in the United States, and almost all the pink-ribbon campaigns you see in the United States benefit them. Where all that money is going, who knows? Even they may not know. One thing's for sure: they're in bed with Big Pharma and they are in bed with Bush.

Something tells me Big Pharma is more interested in treating breast cancer than in preventing it. After all, if you prevent it, how can you continue to sell treatment?

Komen's mission, as stated on their Web site, is "to eradicate breast cancer as a life-threatening disease." That's all very well and good, but how about just plain ERADICATING it? Why is it OK to surrender on eradicating it, and simply make peace with it by treating it with ever more expensive treatments that many people have a very hard time affording? If people didn't GET it in the first place, they wouldn't have to worry about how to afford the treatment, or how to get through the side effects of the treatment.

Science and medicine have done a lot, but 1 in 7 women still gets diagnosed in her lifetime. A few years ago it was one in 8. A few before that, it was one in 9. We need to find out why--and stop it.

[Oeditpus Rex]

6. Oh

Well, since they're interested only in (quote) finding a medical cure for breast cancer (unquote), I say let's blow them off the face of the planet. :eyes:

[Berry Cool]

7. Not blow them off the face of the planet. Just consider putting your money

where it supports the cause without supporting other things you don't like.

Just a thought. Nothing wrong with asking people to research a charity before giving. Remember all the bogus organizations that cropped up in the wake of Katrina.

It's dangerous to think only of the feel-good side and not ask yourself where your money is going.