What I see in the way that we reacted to the Komen debacle is perhaps the perfection of our coming together to say,

NO MORE!  We have had enough!

For me, the Komen story has been deja vu.  Many of the issues that have been highlighted by the many wonderful people who have documented this story are things I have written about before and I am so glad they have finally been aired in a way that has reached critical mass.

Without hesitation, I can say that of all the many topics I have ever written about, the Komen story is one of my least favorites.  But yet I have felt compelled to write about it again  last week and I am gratified by the attention the two pieces that I wrote on this blog received.  Today The Washington Post ran a piece that linked to my work and last week, the Institute for Public Accuracy included a link to one of them in a press release, the result of which was requests for numerous interviews with radio stations and print media from all corners of the country.  Here are links to two of them:

Sonali Kolhatkar interview with FPN’s Lucinda Marshall on KPFK’s Uprising

FPN’s Lucinda Marshall interviewed on WORT’s Her Turn

Let’s take what we’ve learned from the Komen incident about raising our voices together and keep this rolling because enough is enough, women’s rights are human rights and our lives and our health can no longer be used as political footballs!

Newt Gingrich upped his attacks against President Obama on Sunday over his administration’s requirement that some religious hospitals offer co-pay-free birth control under the new health care law.

Gingrich’s comments come after a week of outrage from the Catholic Church and his fellow GOP presidential candidates over the policy.

“This is a tremendous infringement of religious liberty,” Newt Gingrich said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Every time you turn around the secular government is shrinking the rights of religious institutions in America.”

And then there is this gem from Santorum making the absolutely false, debunked a gazillion times, connection between abortion and cancer,

“I don’t believe that breast cancer research is advanced by funding an organization where you’ve seen ties to cancer and abortion,” he added. “So, I don’t think it’s a particularly healthy way of contributing money to further cause of breast cancer, but that’s for a private organization like Susan B. Komen to make that decision.”

Romney also decided to jump on the anti-Planned Parenthood wagon,

“I also feel that the government should cut off funding to Planned Parenthood,” the former Massachusetts governor added. “Look, the idea that we’re subsidizing an institution which is providing abortion, in my view, is wrong. Planned Parenthood ought to stand on their own feet, and should not get government subsidy.”

Of course he doesn’t want the government to provide those services either.  But the win in the right wing misogynist hate fest goes to Ron Paul for coining the baffling phrase, “honest rape”,

In an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan, Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul was asked whether or not victims of rape should have access to abortion services. He said that while he believes that life begins at the moment of conception, the issue is too complex for him to give an answer that will “satisfy everyone.”

In an interview from Las Vegas on Piers Morgan Tonight, Morgan asked whether as a man with daughters and granddaughters, Rep. Paul (R-TX) thinks that abortion is warranted if a woman has been impregnated by a rapist.

“If it’s an honest rape,” Paul replied, “that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen.” He claimed, however, that if a woman is “seven months pregnant” and says that she was raped, “It’s a little bit of a different story.”

Okay, all of the above is revolting, but they are all Republican candidates, so ixnay on the surprise but here is the one that makes me spitting mad:

A top adviser to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign suggested on Tuesday that the administration was open to working with Catholic hospitals and universities over their objections to providing birth control services to women.

That the political dialog has reached a point where a Democratic President running for re-election feels he can sell out women with the same impunity that Republicans candidates assert, women’s lives are in deep peril.

As angry women have said repeatedly the last few days, it is not acceptable to advocate for breast health at the expense of our overall health.  The reason we have stood by Planned Parenthood is because it is absolutely essential to fund them because they provide essential healthcare for women that, for many, is simply not available elsewhere.  And yes, 3% of that care is providing abortions.  But as we insist on funding Planned Parenthood, what we really need to be asking is why it is that we are in a situation where we must depend on Planned Parenthood for these services that are frequently unavailable or unaffordable elsewhere.  The answer or course is the unrelenting attack on women’s health in Congress and state legislatures and a lack of single payer healthcare in this country (which Komen has reportedly lobbied against).

Over the years, Komen has accepted massive support from corporations that make all manner of products that have been linked to cancer and hawked all manner of pink stuff with cancer-related ingredients.  They have hammered about the need to be aware and get annual mammograms even while study after study has questioned this recommendation (and oh yeah, they have accepted contributions from the companies that make mammography equipment).

Komen has told us that being aware and early detection are the key, even though in many cases, this simply makes no difference in outcome.  They have hawked (and even trademarked) ” for the cure” (a trademark they have spent millions of  the dollars we have raced to raise defending), the shockingly expensive drugs that treat this awful disease, while taking large contributions from drug makers.

Komen has told us that we have to take personal responsibility while focusing on treatment, rather than looking for the cause while they take contributions from chemical companies, car companies and others who pollute the planet with  cancerous toxins.

To state the obvious, this is not healthy.  What is needed in this country is, first and foremost, single payer healthcare that provides full reproductive health services to everyone.  Secondly, as organizations like Breast Cancer Action and people like Dr. Susan Love have repeatedly said, we need to figure out what causes breast cancer and work to stop it, not just throw expensive treatments at it.  It also should be pointed out that breast cancer isn’t even the leading cause of death in women.  Heart disease is.  Interestingly, while more women get breast cancer than lung cancer, more women die of lung cancer which is far more likely to be deadly.  But breast cancer gets the attention and the money because diseased or not, we find boobs titilating.  But indulging in that fascination rather than prioritizing our efforts to address the diseases with higher mortality rates is literally killing women.

So enough with Komen and their pink guns and buckets of chicken and toxic signature fragrances.  It is time to demand full universal healthcare, (including reproductive health services) and a responsible medical funding policy, and to refuse to be complicit with the damaging ethos of pink ribbons.

–Lucinda Marshall

While this story has taken many by surprise, the reality is that Komen has a long history of ties to corporations and the political right.  I have written about Komen numerous times.  In Seeing Red About Thinking Pink, I reported that,

…companies such as General Electric and DuPont, which manufacture mammography equipment, and make generous donations to organizations such as Komen and ACS, also make products that have been linked to cancer. DuPont’s Teflon coating–which is used on many products, including non-stick cookware–is made with perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a chemical linked to cancer by the Environmental Protection Agency. General Electric is a builder of nuclear power plants that produce radiation, a known carcinogen. Both DuPont and GE have been sued for injuries and illnesses caused by the deliberate release of radiation at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation…

…AstraZeneca, maker of the estrogen-blocking drug Tamoxifen, is the primary corporate sponsor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Like other pharmaceutical companies, the company supports the American Cancer Society and the Komen Foundation. The financial interest of such companies clearly lies more in finding a drug “cure” than in addressing the environmental causes of the disease or promoting the benefits of lifestyle choices. Exercise, for example, has in numerous studies been shown to lower hormone levels and thus reduce the chance of getting or dying from breast cancer by as much as 60 percent.

and in 2005, in Does Breast Cancer Awareness Save Lives I pointed out that,

Yet organizations like the American Cancer Society and the Susan G. Komen Foundation routinely fail to address these issues. As it turns out, both groups have connections with numerous corporations in the chemical, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries, many of which have an enormous financial stake in breast cancer. Good intentions aside, it is far more profitable for these companies to detect and treat breast cancer than to prevent it, leading to an enormous conflict of interest between their corporate well being and their charitable public persona.

The primary corporate sponsor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is AstraZeneca, which makes the popular cancer drug Tamoxifen. Interestingly, Tamoxifen can also cause cancer and until recently, AstraZeneca also made a variety of other cancer-causing chemicals. Apparently the company has a thing about color marketing. Not only do they encourage you to think pink, they are also the maker of a frequent sponsor of the nightly network news, the little purple pill a.k.a. Nexium. Which begs the question of how corporate sponsorship of the news might impact how cancer ‘cures’ and causes are reported by the networks.

AstraZeneca is not the only company playing both sides of the cause/cure game. Dupont makes numerous chemicals that have been linked to cancer (including Teflon) as well as much of the film used in mammography. And General Electric makes nuclear power plants that produce ionizing radiation, a known cause of cancer as well as mammography equipment (which also perversely produces cancer-causing ionizing radiation). GE also owns NBC.

What these corporations understand is that supporting breast cancer awareness and funding is a great public relations gambit. As Barbara Brenner of Breast Cancer Action points out, “If you slap a pink ribbon on a product, people will buy it.” But where does the money raised by the sale of all these products go? Some companies clearly state what portion of the proceeds are donated, but many just say something along the lines of, ‘a generous portion of the proceeds will be donated to finding a cure for cancer’. The definition of ‘generous’ can vary widely and all too often there is no definitive accounting of how much was raised and who benefited from the proceeds. (2)

And what of organizations like the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, which sponsors the annual Race for the Cure? According to the Toxic Links Coalition, the race focuses on finding medical cures while ignoring environmental causes. In “Running From the Truth”, Mary Ann Swissler reports that the Foundation’s stock portfolio has included holdings in several large pharmaceutical companies as well as General Electric, one of the largest makers of mammographic material. (3) Their 2003-2004 Annual Report lists Ford (automobile exhaust has long been linked with cancer) and Johnson and Johnson (makers of numerous cancer drugs and diagnostic equipment) as Partners.

In 1998, Komen was the only national breast cancer group to back Tamoxifen as a preventative treatment for some women, which other advocacy groups objected to strongly. As it turns out, Tamoxifen’s maker, AstraZeneca is a strong backer of the Race for the Cure and in 2003 received the “Friend of the Fight” award from Komen.

The Komen Foundation is also notably silent on environmental issues. Interestingly, Occidental Petroleum, a major environmental polluter (think Love Canal) is a big Komen supporter. While Komen may have the best of intentions, as breast cancer activist Judy Brady points out, the problem is that they simply don’t see that “‘business as usual’ is why we have cancer”. (4)

ACS and Komen are both big supporters of annual mammography for women over the age of 40. Over and over, both organizations tout early detection as a lifesaver. They both also receive substantial funding from makers of mammography equipment such as GE and DuPont.

Komen’s cause branding has turned everything from paperclips to fried chicken emporiums pink, all too often at greater benefit to the pinkifying producers than to the cause.  It is time once and for all to run, not for ‘the cure’ but for the exit and tell Komen that you don’t get to pick and choose which part of women’s health you support and it is unacceptable to cause brand our lives while kissing ass with those whose corporate and political agendas kill women.  If you want to truly support women’s health, please consider making donations to organizations like Breast Cancer Action, SisterSong and Planned Parenthood.

You can let Komen know what you think of their move to defund Planned Parenthood here.

Additional worthy reading on this topic:

The Cancerous Politics and Ideology of the Susan G. Komen Foundation (more on political background to this story)

The Tragic, Craven Undoing of Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s Noble Mission (disproportionate impact of Komen’s decision on poor women)

There is little I like less than companies who make things that are linked with cancer (such as car exhaust) making money on breast cancer cause branding and I couldn’t figure out how getting a $10 dollar rebate on a very pricey oil change was going to cure breast cancer, so much against my better judgement,  I clicked the ad.

Which led to this:

Wow, did they just up the ante on possibly the pinkest car ad ever?  Forget the oil change, now they are suggesting we have to buy a whole car?  Still not a word on how this fights breast cancer.  So I decided to go googling and found this:

The copy below the banner reads,

When you submit a service rebate for service performed in October, you can help change a woman’s life when you elect to waive some or all of your eligible rebate(1). Whether it’s $5, $10 or $25. Chevrolet will contribute the money to the American Cancer Society®(2). Join Chevrolet in the fight against breast cancer.

Talk about generosity–if we buy their overpriced service, they will send our money to ACS.  Not one word about an actual donation from Chevrolet itself.

You can contact Chevrolet here and tell them what you think of their self-serving, ungenerous, pink-washed ad campaign here.  Chevrolet owes an apology to everyone who has ever had breast cancer and while we’re at it, a plan to cut cancer causing auto emissions.

—–

Chevy isn’t the only automaker to run campaigns like this.  I had to get new windshield wipers awhile back and the guy at the Toyota service center told me that half of the purchase price for the wipers would go to breast cancer.  I started loudly saying that I was opposed to companies that make cancer producing products doing this sort of cause branding and I’d prefer to buy the wipers at half the price.  Which they quickly agreed to if for no other reason than to get me to shut up. Of course half the price is what the wipers should have been in the first place, not the jacked up price that forces the customer to be generously overcharged so that the company looks like it cares.