Yes they have. In the past. And good for them, I certainly won’t diminish the accomplishments of making a disease more survivable. However, what they did in the past doesn’t mean that tossing more money at it will get even more results. Breast cancer is one of the most well funded and researched diseases, I find it difficult to believe buying a pink ribbon is going to be the difference between success and failure of research. I believe, with this specific disease, we have hit the law of diminishing returns and money would be FAR more productive if funneled to other diseases.
I suppose I should have specified breast cancer rather than all cancers. I’m well aware that the quest to save the tittie is funded four or five times as much as other cancers with similar number of deaths.
That’s a legitimate opinion. I don’t know enough about breast cancer research to say if it’s right or wrong, although I’m not sure how they’re supposed to do better work without more money. And of course there’s no objectively wrong decision when you’re choosing how to make a charitable contribution. I do wish the major breast cancer charities put more of their energy into research and less into marketing.
In mean in 1950, the chance of surviving breast cancer was ~80%. Currently it’s around 98%. Historically, breast cancer research has produced great gains.
My issue boils down to, is the money being tossed at that remained 2% possible gain best spent there, or might that money produce far greater gains is spent on other research? Colon cancer, for example, has a survival rate of ~65%, and it’s one of the more common type of cancers so we aren’t talking about a disease only 3 people and a mouse get. Might some research cash currently going towards breast cancer save far more lives if dedicated to colon cancer?
I think so, and yet we see no brown ribbons, waddle for the cures, or colon cancer month. Which is exactly why I don’t like letting emotion dictate research. Emotionally, people get a lot more concerned about a sick tittie than a sick asshole. Yet researching the asshole could save far far more lives than further research for the tittie. I would rather research funds be given out based on the lives it could save, not which body part is sexier.
It’s not just about sex, though. That’s a factor, but it’s also about the way survivors deal with each other and with their illness. For all my disagreements about the publicity, women with breast cancer have done a great job of banding together to get attention and money. They’ve made a community. That hasn’t happened to the same degree with other cancers.
Most charities, like the rest of us, waste money, and most successful charities are themselves a business, with donations going first to support the employees of the charity and the residual money going to the Cause. If a charity taking in a million dollars has a quarter million in expenses so they give $750K to their Cause, and then the next year donations fall to a half-million, it’s a pretty good bet they now have only a quarter million for the Cause. (Government works the same way, but I digress.)
The general model of medical science cure Charities is for the Cause to be basic research, usually within an Academic institution. Once a Cure is found, there are various mechanisms to commercialize the Cure itself. However, as a rule of thumb, publicly-funded discoveries remain in the public domain.
It’s not the case, to the best of my knowledge, that medical-cure charities fund for-profit companies (who do their own research so they can “own” any Cure, so to speak). And it’s also not true that Corporations would sit on a “cure” because a treatment they market is more financially lucrative than a cure. Those sorts of conspiracy notions are the stuff of movies and the paranoid or naive. Even drug companies are composed of employees with souls, hearts, and sick relatives who need cures.
For all its bizarre machinations and profit motivations, the United States in toto outperforms the rest of the world in coming up with innovation in medicine.
I have given a lot of money over the years to the Multiple Sclerosis Society, admittedy for a rather selfish reason. My uncle suffered from it for many years. He died a few years ago.
I should clarify, I’m not trying to dismiss breast cancer or the community built up around it. That’s great, it really is. I’m just saying, because they’ve had past research to improve survivability and because they have the community support then money should be spent on issues that don’t have those. Breast cancer is covered, as far as it can be without a magical cure to make all cancers disappear at least. It’s time to cover other diseases as well. Funding diseases off emotion won’t do that though. Funding diseases off logic, numbers, and potential for improvement will though.