Talk:Susan G. Komen for the Cure/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2

Komen

Thanks for helping with the page guys. I saw that "Komen" was requested, so I assumed that the person who requested it wanted the Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.Bjtitus 04:06, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Expand Article

I would like to see this article expanded. As such it is hardly complete. --PaladinWriter 23:11, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Seems pretty complete to me, if you'd like to expand it, feel free. Suppafly 16:22, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Possible Copyright Violations

User Karencohick has added a ton to this article in the past couple of days, which is great. I'm concerned, though, that most of the content is ripped directly from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure website and is therefore copyrighted. I marked the article as a copyright violation with the copyvio template, but Karencohick removed it and kept editing.

Karencohick - can you address these concerns, please?

Thanks, -- Amoore 21:29, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'm working on rewriting most of the copy. Thanks for pointing it out.Karencohick 16:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
GFDL licensing statement for the text has been received and archived here. Jkelly 02:51, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Written like an advertisement

I'll echo Amoore's concerns. While I appreciate Karencohick's hard work on this article, I'm concerned that statements like:

  • Komen is leading the global movement to end breast cancer forever.
  • Nancy Brinker promised her dying sister, Susan G. Komen, that she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer forever. In 1982, that promise became Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
  • Komen for the Cure has played a role in major advances in the fight against breast cancer - transforming how the world talks about and treats this disease and helping to turn millions of breast cancer patients into breast cancer survivors.
  • Every major advance in the fight against breast cancer has been touched in some way by a Komen Grant.
  • Because 10 million women around the world could die from breast cancer in the next 25 years without a cure, Komen for the Cure is fighting every minute of every day to save every life.

aren't in an encyclopedic tone and sound like it came from Komen's PR department. The "Breast Cancer Then and Now" seems superfluous; is the Komen foundation directly responsible for all the advancements, as the section seems to imply?

I also agree with PaladinWriter -- there should be a controversy/criticism section. I seem to vaguely remember something about the Komen Foundation, but I'm not too sure what it is. In any case, there is considerable discussion about the Komen Foundation's political ties, so if anybody is interested in writing such a section, this article would be a good place to start. Purifiedwater 07:20, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

OK. I took some time and went through a lot of this stuff in this article to clean it up:

  • removed statements that were impossible to make NPOV;
  • made NPOV the parts that I could (except for Breast cancer: 1982 and now — looks like there's too much research needed to salvage it easily);
  • added Komen as the source for things I think an organization's self-sourced statements are appropriate sources for (and maybe a few more things too - feel free to tag); and
  • added citation-needed tags on items that I think need a non-Komen source to have encyclopedia-level verifiability.

Oh, and I removed ™ and ® marks from proper names, for obvious reasons (and because Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks) says to). Related articles that one may want to check:

--Closeapple 12:24, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

As of today, this article still seems to read like it was written by the foundation as propaganda, even with the controversy section added. I'm marking it POV-check. 71.0.222.159 (talk) 01:31, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I added a bit to the Controversy section today, but the "Public Policy" section still reads like its straight from a brochure. What to do about it? Sweet kate (talk) 18:30, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

NPOV dispute?

I noticed this article has been tagged as NPOV, but a big cleanup was done back in February. Is the neutrality still disputed, or can we take down the tag? -- MisterHand 13:54, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I've been looking that the guidelines for NPOV disputes and it does not appear to me that they were properly followed in this case. The guidelines state that there should be a discussion of the reasons for placement of the tag in a clearly marked section of the article's talk page. Given that this was not done originally, and the fact there have been numerous additions to the article since February that have worked to balance the tone and content of the article, I'm going to make a bold edit and remove the tag. If others disagree, can we please discuss here? -- Sfmammamia 01:48, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

As the article again has the tag (since Dec 2009) and recently there have been some claims of bias, I posted to the WP:NPOVN Neutral Point of View noticeboard to hopefully get some outsider help. Sweet kate (talk) 14:32, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Image

The branding image was kind of dull and a bit same-y with the logo at the top, but I don't find the image of Brinker does much for the article. She was the founder sure, but the non-profit's moved on and I don't think a photo of her really tells the reader much. I brought in a photo from the Race for the Cure article instead - though a different illustration of one of their fundraisers might be even better. -- SiobhanHansa 09:52, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Elephant in the Room: Where did the money come from?

The elephant in the room in this entry is: Where did the Foundation get $1 billion? There are hundreds or maybe thousands of foundations about cancer. This one is only important because it is the only one with over a billion dollars, more money than many countries' GDP. Borealis.seven (talk) 21:47, 17 October 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Borealis.seven (talk • contribs) 21:41, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I've read Ehrenreich's book, which is discussed at this news story. I see nothing in the article and I remember nothing from the book that ties Komen's logo to positive thinking. By contrast, Sulik's book directly and explicitly says that Komen's logo is connected to the three values of pink ribbon culture. Therefore I have reverted this good-faith addition because it {{Failed verification}}. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Source quality

I'm not wild about the general trend in the sources we've added recently. A feature story that is mostly a local person or event, with a brief mention of Komen, isn't really the best sort of source for information about Komen. Lightly edited press releases aren't really the best we can do. And, strangely, we seem to be removing top-quality scholarly sources in favor of these lower-quality local news stories. This is not a desirable approach to this article, in my opinion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:06, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

"Others say"

When we name a top-quality source to support a statement beginning with words like "Others say", it does not mean that the author of the source is the only person who says this. This indicates that the source says that multiple other people say this, not that the author of the source agrees with it or is the only source that says this.

I apologize for accidentally tagging some of the recent changes as vandalism, which they were not. Last month's update to the MediaWiki software has scripts loading last, and just as I clicked on "undo", Twinkle finally loaded, and the "vandalism" button appeared where the "undo" button had been. I want to be perfectly clear that I do not believe that any of Beobjectiveplease's edits were anything even remotely like vandalism. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:10, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Invisible sources?

I'm just not getting this. Beobjectiveplease has repeatedly complained about and deleted information on the grounds that it's not sourced... but the source is sitting right there.

For example, this text was objected to on the grounds of being unsourced:

More than one hundred small charities have received legal opposition from Komen to varied uses of the words "for the cure" in their names, at a cost of nearly one-million dollars per year in donor funds. Among the offending charitable organizations and events were "Par for the Cure," "Surfing for a Cure," and "Cupcakes for a Cure"

but it was supported by this source:

Bassett, Laura (2010-12-07). "Susan G. Komen Foundation Elbows Out Charities Over Use Of The Word 'Cure'". The Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/07/komen-foundation-charities-cure_n_793176.html. Retrieved 4 January 2011.

which was not only immediately after the end of that sentence, but which clearly (it's free! click on it!) says:

"So far, Komen has identified and filed legal trademark oppositions against more than a hundred of these Mom and Pop charities, including Kites for a Cure, Par for The Cure, Surfing for a Cure and Cupcakes for a Cure--and many of the organizations are too small and underfunded to hold their ground.... Blum told HuffPost that legal fees comprise a "very small part" of Komen's budget, but according to Komen's financial statements, such costs add up to almost a million dollars a year in donor funds."

Okay: "More than one hundred"? Check. Names of the charities given as examples? Check. Million dollars? Check. What exactly is "unsourced" here?

So what's the real problem here? Are we deleting these because we personally believe that defending their trademark (as they are required by law to do) makes Komen look silly? Have we mistakenly come to the conclusion that Wikipedia requires an inline citation after every single sentence—which it emphatically does not? (See WP:MINREF.) What's the real problem? What problem here is so big that it would make you claim that a fact that is clearly sourced immediately after the fact doesn't have a source? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Philosophy section: Ongoing dispute - NPOV

(related)
This edit replaces facts drawn from the source by Y.T. with stuff for which [dubious – discuss] and [failed verification] are appropriate. It's 100-500 false alarms in the cited source, not 250-500, and so on and so forth.

Regarding what is "completely unnecessary": Is it only necessary that a policeman wear a bulletproof vest on the days he gets shot at? Is it completely unnecessary for him to wear a vest on any other days?

I've removed the disputed paragraph so we can come to consensus here about what it should say, and then put it back. --Elvey (talk) 06:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

"Universal screening" is jargon; it doesn't mean what a layperson would assume it means, so I changed it to "screening". Do you disagree? You described it as "every single woman in this age group" would be accurate and preferable. OK? (Well, without "single"; it includes married women too! :-)--Elvey (talk) 15:25, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
Is there any evidence that patients are more likely to make evidence-based decisions than doctors? It's possible, but speculative, so I edited the article to reflect that; why revert me?--Elvey (talk) 15:25, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
  1. Komen supports universal screening. They do not support any old kind of screening: they support a specific kind of screening. Every breast cancer organization in the world supports some kind of screening; not all of them support universal screening. It is appropriate to tell the reader exactly what kind of screening Komen supports, because this is a feature that distinguishes them from some other organizations.
  2. This is wrong: you have re-written it say that only the patient is evaluating the evidence. Although NBCC would like to believe that every woman was sufficiently educated and active in her healthcare to do that, in practice, it's usually the physician who makes a recommendation, asserts that the recommendation is evidence-based, and the woman simply agrees to whatever the physician proposes. "Individualized, evidence-based decisions" are recommended; "based on the patient's (inexpert) evaluation of the pros and cons" is not. I reverted you because you introduced (1) errors and (2) material not in the cited source (or any reliable source at all, so far as I know).
  3. I encourage you to get a copy of the cited source and read it for yourself. The cited source is Welch, H. Gilbert; Woloshin, Steve; Schwartz, Lisa A. (2011). Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health. Beacon Press. p. 149. ISBN 0-8070-2200-4.
  4. The definition of "completely unnecessary" is exactly what the dictionary says. In this context, it is treatment for a "cancer" that would have gone away on its own, or that would never have grown any further, even if you never knew that it existed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:06, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
  1. (re #1, above) Ok, well can we AVOID THE JARGON? How 'bout "screening of all women above a certain age"? You're not addressing my concern or helping reach a compromise by simply reverting my edits.
4. (re #4, above) Where is this dictionary definition of completely unnecessary you refer to? You didn't answer my question. I believe the correct answers are "no", and "no". Do you agree or not? --Elvey (talk) 23:09, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Failed 3O by Darkwind

(←) I responded to a third opinion request for this section, and asked for the parties involved to clarify their positions, but received no response within 3 days. I'm taking this page off my watchlist now, so if either or both of you still feel the need for a third opinion, please relist your request at WP:3O. —Darkwind (talk) 04:25, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Let's try again... —Darkwind (talk) 01:17, 15 September 2011 (UTC) (the 3O clarification template was inserted here for a second time and later removed again)

Darkwind, it's kind of you to keep taking an interest, but Elvey never indicated what s/he wanted a third opinion about and appears to have stopped paying attention. I think you can assume that Elvey no longer needs a third opinion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
I think it's more a misunderstanding of the idiosyncrasy of the 3O process than a lack of interest on his part. I posted again because Elvey (t c) mentioned the request on my talk page the other day, and re-posted on WP:3O as well. That being said, I'm bowing out because he's already said he feels slighted by the way I've tried to start the discussion in this matter. I'm re-adding the posting to WP:3O as it does seem clear to me that Elvey would like someone to weigh in on the content issue at hand.
N.B.: To the next editor who visits via the 3O page -- my attempt at participation does not make this a 3-editor dispute. —Darkwind (talk) 04:38, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
I, like Darkwind, am a Third Opinion Wikipedian. I recognize that the long relisting at 3O was probably in response to Darkwind's request for a statement summarizing the dispute, but because of the nature of the 3O mechanics, that's not the place to put it. (And, yes, this does in fact have an element of emphasizing form over substance, but that's the way that we participants at the 3O project have chosen to do it after discussion and re-discussion of the issue.) I have, therefore, cut the listing down to its bare necessities. The summaries, preferably one each from both Elvey and WhatamIdoing ought to go here on this talk page. Frankly, part of what Darkwind may be (subconsciously?) reacting to is the fact that this dispute may well not qualify for listing at 3O (or, for that matter at the Dispute Resolution noticeboard, which has a similar requirement) because of the 3O requirement that, "Before making a request here, be sure that the issue has been thoroughly discussed on the article talk page. 3O is only for assistance in resolving disagreements that have come to a standstill." (Emphasis added.) While both editors have set out their positions, above, I do not see any substantial discussion of those positions and I believe that this call for dispute resolution is premature. But that's just my opinion and some other 3O Wikipedian may choose to offer an opinion. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 13:24, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, I feel what you wrote about me is not true. Specifically, I DID "indicate[] what [I] wanted a third opinion about." (As evidenced by TransporterMan's edit of my Darkwind-prompted relisting writing which did just that.) --Elvey (talk) 20:00, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

TransporterMan, I appreciate the effort. While I think the dispute can be seen as an NPOV dispute, it can also be seen as a dispute with a more objective basis for a 3O, namely: Did the cited edits replace statistics at variance with those found in the source (and yet which cite that source) with ones that accurately reflect the statistics found in the source? I believe that question is ripe for a 3O. Even more specifically: Does the source indicate that there will be 50-250 biopsies or 500, per LS? I've only responded to a few 3O requests, and only made about 1. But it seems that this issue has been rather thoroughly discussed, as have very closely related edits - see the "What Komen supports" discussion above (with BeObjective), this section (and the page edit history). The 3O DOES require someone willing to check the source. --Elvey (talk) 20:00, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

3O Response

Interesting issue, and I'm not sure if I fully understand the nature of the dispute, but it would seem to be a question either of whether the figure in the article contradicts the source, or which source to use out of two conflicting sources. I'm going to treat it as the latter.

Both sources (the editorial and the book) are attributed to the same author, but each has different figures. I've reviewed the book source here and it appears to confirm the assertion that half of the 250-500 false alarms will have biopsies. Since this is the same author as the editorial, I looked at the context of each table. It appears that the editorial citing the 100-500 figure is from 2009, and is explicitly noted as a draft table in the full article. The book (linked above, page 149) has an almost-identical table citing the 250-500 figure, and was apparently published in 2011.

I'd be inclined to favour the book source for two reasons: firstly, as a published book with more than one author, I believe it represents a better quality source than the editorial; and secondly, the publishing date of the book suggests that its information is more up-to-date than the editorial. It appears that the authors revised their figures between the editorial and the book.

I hope this helps. I've removed your 3O request from the list. I'll check back here periodically but if you have any questions about my response, please get my attention on my talk page so I can respond here. If this ultimately doesn't help resolve your dispute, please remember to use an alternative dispute resolution process such as RFC. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 23:44, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Just an added note, I really can't see what the dispute is, my response above is based on a 'best guess' from the section linked in the 3O request. If this isn't the problem at hand, I'm happy to offer another opinion on your dispute, but it really must be summarised clearly on this talk page. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 23:52, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
My best guess is that Elvey never looked up the source. It's not difficult to see that the source supports the text as given. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:33, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
TechnoSymbiosis, thanks for a fair and thorough analysis. I didn't notice the subtitles of the change of source, or that both sources have the same main author. I just noticed that properly cited stats had been replaced. Incidentally, I found a good 2010 analysis in the BMJ, Screening for breast cancer—balancing the debate --Elvey (talk) 23:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Politics

Susan G. Komen for the Cure may be the most widely known, largest, and best funded, but Wikipedia should include a caveat that they are a political organization. This is in spite of the fact that they one of the most trusted “nonprofit” organizations in America. Even if they publicly changed their “mind” about which organizations should receive their praise and funds, they are known to respond to purely political pressure!


Creighton Wesley Sloan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.28.183.132 (talk) 22:47, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

As queried below after a similar comment, do you have a reliable source for your assertion that Komen is "a political organization" and that they "are known to respond to purely political pressure"? If not, it does not go in the article. I think the criticisms and controversies of Komen are sufficiently discussed in the article. Wikipedia strives to be neutral, not a soapbox for personal opinions. 174.99.121.118 (talk) 23:01, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

There are reliable sources to link a number of key people in the Komen organisation to Republican partisan political activity, including Nancy Goodman Brinker (CEO), Karen Handel (VP public policy) and Jane Abraham (a member of Komen's board of directors). Wikipedia strives to be neutral. Komen, we now know, does not. :) --66.102.83.61 (talk) 17:18, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Concluding that "Komen is a political organization" from "people at Komen are involved in partisan political activity" is quite a stretch. Lots of people in lots of organization are involved in partisan politics. At times I am involved in partisan politics, but that doesn't make every organization with which I am affiliated a "political organization". Any such conclusion is synthesis of information and would require a more specific reliable source specifically identifying Komen as a "political organization". 174.99.120.116 (talk) 23:35, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Controversy/Criticism

I would like to see a section in the article containing any controversy or criticism against/about this organization if there is any. --PaladinWriter 23:11, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Why would you want the section if you don't know if any exists? CynicalMe 23:13, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Some people can not grasp the concept of positive things and they insist on being a pessimist. If you find some controversy then post it, but I will not waste my time digging up trash.

There is a Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2239255066&ref=nf) that alleges that the organization conducts inhumane animal testing. Does anybody know anything about this?
The link you provided required login so I can't read the actual allegation. But the foundation raises money and grants it out to others. It doesn't do any medical research directly nor does it design the research. there are plenty of accusations of animal cruelty in medical testing, but I don't see (especially since I can't read the link) that the Koman foundation is any more a player in it than any other group that gives money to medical research. Facebook looks like a mix between social networking and blogging, in which case it wouldn't be a reliable source. But if you can find reliable sources from the entry maybe we could investigate further. -- Siobhan Hansa 03:27, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

One element of controversy might be the "efficiency" of this charitable organization relative to others. In the 2004 data from Forbes' "America's Most (and least) Efficient Charities" articles, the Komen organization is in the bottom quartile of the 200 charities compared vis-a-vis the percent of monies collected that are distributed to the charity's target, as opposed to fundraising expenses (i.e., 3/4 of the charities did better than Komen). This article is here: http://www.forbes.com/2004/11/23/04charityland.html . Sjmwiki 16:13, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Unless I missed it, there's no editorial on this article, so it's hard to use these figures in a way that isn't original research. The fact that they place in the bottom quartile of a restricted group isn't by itself an indictment of their practices. -- Siobhan Hansa 05:07, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

One source of ongoing controversy for Komen is the fact that some of their community grants go to Planned Parenthood clinics. Those who are anti-abortion and anti-Planned Parenthood are often upset to learn that a breast cancer foundation provides funding to PP -- even if the grants are used to treat breast cancer. Unfortunately, the only source I have for this at the moment is original research. I will see if I can source this controversySfmammamia 05:27, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The grants funded by Komen for the Cure and its Affiliates are specific to Komen’s mission to save lives and end breast cancer forever by empowering people, ensuring quality care for all and energizing science to find the cures. All community grants are restricted to provide vital breast health education, screening and treatment services for underserved women. In keeping with the high standards set by Komen headquarters, grant recipients are required to provide detailed reports about how the funds were used to the funding Affiliate at least bi-annually.
Early detection through breast cancer screening is the key to surviving breast cancer. In many urban and rural areas, Planned Parenthood may be the only source of free or low-cost women’s health screening services (e.g., pap smears, mammograms, clinical breast exams, etc.). Unfortunately, many underserved women find breast cancer at a later and more aggressive stage and have a higher mortality rate from this disease. Some Komen Affiliates provide restricted grants to local Planned Parenthood clinics that offer vital breast health services for underserved women in their communities. These services often help to provide otherwise unavailable breast screening for women ages 40 to 50, which may not be covered by the Centers for Disease Control’s Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program.
The common thread to the individuals served is that they are at risk for breast cancer. Komen and its Affiliates do not provide any funding for abortions or for any activities outside the scope of their mission, and do not discriminate on age, gender, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability or decisions people have made in their lives.

CrayolaStar 21:57, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, Jim Hightower noted in "There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos" that the Komen Foundation was originally bankrolled by major chemical companies, so that they could vet all the ads...which is perhaps why the focus is on a "cure" and to some extent on "early detection", with no mention of "not pouring such massive amounts of carcinogenic chlorine compounds into the air and water". DanielCristofani 19:46, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

You know, I read that somewhere else in the late Nineties, I always wondered if there was any credence to it. Worth digging, certainly. Proscriptus (talk) 15:32, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

They mention the KFC controversy but there have been plenty of other examples of partnerships they've created with chemical-ridden products. I found a video on the Promise Me perfume, http://thinkbeforeyoupink.org/?page_id=1627. I think more of this information needs to be shared. Also, has anyone seen anything more about their work with pharma companies? I know the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month group that Komen is a partner of was founded by AstraZeneca and the American Cancer Society. FitzBklyn (talk) 21:26, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

There would need to be reliable secondary sources reporting on the impropriety of these other partnerships in order to add them to the section. I'm not a fan of Komen, but let's be careful not to insert things for the sole purpose of adding more criticism to the article. -Jordgette [talk] 22:42, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

It does seem like they are spending a heck of a lot on ads for the 3 day event right now. That may indicate some inefficiencies, but then this is only anecdotal and an assumption.204.130.0.8 (talk) 20:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I found not a single word about animal tests in this article, I believe people should know that Komen supports cruel tests on animals, so e.g. the following information should be placed under Criticism: https://secure.peta.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1061 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.143.240.66 (talk) 10:06, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Here you go. http://cancerfree2b.com/2011/10/31/komen-please-leave-me-alone/ 98.145.223.166 (talk) 23:44, 4 November 2011 (UTC) --TJ

How much money goes to research

About today's little edit war over how much money goes to research:

The fact that most prominent breast cancer organizations spend relatively small proportions of their overall revenue on cure- or prevention-oriented research is addressed in this book:

  • King, Samantha (2006). Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-4898-0.

I don't have a copy in front of me, but it certainly discusses Komen by name, and it may discuss this particular issue with respect to Komen.

There's another issue, though, and that's misleading advertising. It's not at all unusual to see an organization pushing research as the primary reason to donate money, even if only a small fraction of the revenue is spent on research. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:25, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

So the anon added a citation to an essay directly criticizing Komen's neglect of research. The citation is:
I think it pretty clear that this is a verifiable complaint about Komen's choices. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:19, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

March 8, 2011

Re: IP 24.9.186.9's most recent expense paragraph: This time it's more referenced, but still not written in impartial tone. The information seems relevant to the article, but needs to be written to Wikipedia's NPOV standards (Wikipedia:NPOV). Again, the information is valid, just needs more encyclopedic, less biased wording. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sweet kate (talk • contribs) 15:40, 8 March 2011

Section reproduced here:

Extremely low expense on Research

For a foundation who has changed their corporate name to "Susan G. Komen For the Cure", many of their supporters naturally expect that their donation will be spent on finding a cure to breast cancer. On average, between 2004-2009, only 25% of total revenue was spent on "Research".[1]

And for those who donate to "Local Affiliate" offices, 75% of your donation is not spent on research.[2] [3] The remaining 25% of your donation is sent to Komen International who only puts 21% of total revenue into Research.[4]. [5]

  1. ^ http://cancerculturenow.blogspot.com/2011/01/komen-by-numbers.html
  2. ^ http://www.komenminnesota.org/About_Us/Where_Your_Money_Goes.htm
  3. ^ http://www.komensandiego.org/about-us/
  4. ^ http://gaylesulik.com/?p=5477
  5. ^ http://ww5.komen.org/uploadedFiles/Content/AboutUs/Financial/new-2008-2009AnnualReport-final.pdf
Hi Kate,
I agree that it need to lose the nasty tone. What do you think about incorporating it into the ===Research grants==== section? I think that the percentage of revenue spent on research would fit nicely alongside the billion-dollar "creating awareness" claim that someone (mis)placed in that section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Hmm. Let's think. I'd almost lean more towards a == level "Use of funds" section between "Philosophy" and "Grants" that states things very matter-of-factly: In 2009 Komen raised $___. 30% went to research, 40% went to administrative expensives, blah blah blah. Local chapters' fund distribution varies, for instance the Minnesota chapter... (I'm wary of the info being under a section referencing awards, which makes it sound positive when it should just be stated.) Then under controversy there could be a (cited) line "Komen has been criticized for its use of funds etc. etc."... ? What do you think? Sweet kate (talk) 15:05, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
That's a good idea. I've also thought about unifying 'Grants' and 'Global activities' under ==Activities== (since making grants is itself an activity), and how the money is spent could fit in there, too.
Would you like to WP:BOLDly try something? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:52, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Okay. I did some work. Some sections still need help (global activities is particularly haphazard) but I made a good stab at it, I think. Sweet kate (talk) 18:14, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
That looks pretty good. Thanks for doing that. I've added a pie chart to illustrate the expenses. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:26, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
I think it's fine to add this section, but, in it's current form, it's inappropriate and doesn't leverage credible sources. I removed it, but am entirely open to reinserting it as long as there are supporting references that make sense in accordance with Wiki standards / guidelines. The Give Well thing is fine to use as a proof point, for instance. Beobjectiveplease (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

One more thing to consider: the amount spent "on research" does not necessarily equate to the amount spent "for the cure". Yes, the amount spent "on research" is under 25% of the total and dropping (certainly a matter of concern, both for this organisation and others) but research can be broken down further as to *what* is being researched. Research to determine the cause or find means of prevention is not research to invent more drugs to prolong the dying process, which in turn is not research to actually cure those currently afflicted with cancer. There are online sources which attempt to break this down into slightly finer categories of research (for instance, "biology" as a percentage of total research spending) but nothing where one can point and say this research dollar went "for the cure" while that dollar went to determine causation, to prevention or to some other line of scientific enquiry. To equate the two is simplistic at best. Counting solely dollars spent also fails to answer the question of whether cancer is being treated in any different manner as a result of all this spending - some amount of money was paid out, but what were the results? --66.102.83.61 (talk) 18:20, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Synthesis

Yes I know this is synthesis, but in the 'Pinkwashing in cause marketing', the 'such promotions are often financially ineffective', the reference speculates that eating 3 per day for the four month campaign donates $36 dollars, but was a 10 cent donation for 37 cents postage. This seems almost deliberately obtuse, they did not have to be mailed individually; 360 lids weigh 30 ounces, which cost $7.04 to mail at that time (more than a 5/1 ratio for the donation), although it was easier to count to twelve and mail periodically (for $9.10), but not the lobsided travesty the reference implies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dru of Id (talk • contribs) 23:13, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

This is only deliberately obtuse in making the assumption that one end-user has piled up 360 lids in the course of a promotion which only runs for a four-month period (nothing is donated for lids sent in after the four-month window closes). There will be far more consumers wondering what to do with one of these lids (spend 48 cents to send it in and Yoplait donates a dime, on which they get the charitable tax break) than wondering what to do with 360 lids in one neat little bundle. Odds are, this is all worked out down to the percentages... if the manufacturer has run the promotion before, they know how few lids to expect in the mail per 100 containers of the product sold. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 18:28, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

What Komen supports

Beobjectiveplease has once again removed this sourced sentence:

Komen supports universal screening mammography and breast self-examinations, as well as ever-increasing levels of government spending on diagnosing and treating breast cancer.[1]

  1. ^ Sulik, 2010. pages 52–53.

on the grounds that it's not in the named source. I quote for your convenience from the top of page 53:

"...the foundation's advocacy arm, the Advocacy Alliance, focuses primarily on advancing policies that almost always relate to screening and increased public and federal investment in breast cancer. While Komen gives strong advice, such as starting mammograms at age 40..."

Considering not only this, but the balance of all reliable sources, including Komen's own self-published materials, I really don't think that we can say that Komen doesn't support universal screening or increased research spending. In fact, I think you will be hard pressed to find any source at all, including even blogs written by nutters, that says that Komen supports restricting screening programs like mammorgraphy and BSE (which is mentioned, by the way, more than three hundred times on their own website) to only high-risk groups, or spending fewer tax dollars on research.

This sentence says nothing more than the actual facts: Komen wants screening available to every single woman, not just the chosen few, and they want more money spent on research. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:52, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Komen supports more screening and more mammograms, that is a given as core to their political platform. Do you have a source, though, for their supporting anything close to universal access to treatment (and public funding where needed to ensure same)? A term like "public and federal investment in breast cancer" could mean just about anything, not just "government spending on diagnosing and treating breast cancer". One can "invest" in diagnosis and screening, only to watch the patient die after a private insurer decides the cancer is a pre-existing condition or not covered for treatment for some reason. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 16:40, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
You will want to get a copy of Sulik's book and read it for yourself.
Supporting universal screening (=all people in the designated population are screened, regardless of their personal risk factors) does not automatically mean supporting public (=government) funding for it. Universal screening is not the same as universal access to healthcare. That's why Wikipedia has separate articles for these unrelated concepts. This sentence makes absolutely no claims about whether Komen supports either universal access to treatment or taxpayer funding to make that possible for everyone. It says only that they support:
  1. universal screening (even if this is done solely at the woman's own expense),
  2. breast self-examinations, and
  3. spending more tax dollars each year on diagnosing and treating breast cancer. (NB that "more" does not mean "enough to diagnose and treat everyone", just more than the previous year.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Yoplait

A knowledgeable person should take a look at the second paragraph under "Pinkwashing" in this section. Referring to this sentence: "Yoplait has donated more than $25 MILLION to Komen. In 2010 their annual maximum commitment was raised to $1.6 million." MacSigh (talk) 20:17, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

What about it? The linked source appears to support the facts exactly as stated here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:52, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

The operation of the Yoplait sponsorship is a little hard to follow. It's not simply "buy the product and they donate ten cents". Buy the product and spend 48 cents (or whatever US-domestic postage is these days) to mail the container lid to the manufacturer, then they might donate 10 cents... if the mail arrives before the end of the promotion period and if the $1.6 million annual maximum commitment hasn't already been reached. As for limiting this to $1.6M/year and then claiming to have "donated more than $25 million", odds are the latter figure is total over many years or decades (it'd take 16 years). --66.102.83.61 (talk) 18:10, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

The analysis is a bit more complicated than that, because some groups collect these lids and mail them in by the boxful. Ask your favorite search engine about dropping off yoplait lids, and you'll see what I mean.
I believe that the Yoplait promotion began in 1998. Of course, they may have also made donations to other breast cancer-related charities during that time, which would inflate the amount donated vs the amount from this specific campaign. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:17, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Planned Parenthood

Defunding of Planned Parenthood. Documentation that Susan G. Komen is cutting funding for Planned Parenthood was multiply sourced and that Karen Handel was appointed their Senior VP for Public Policy following her election defeat (by other people). I sourced that Ms Handel is actively hostile to Planned Parenthood as an organization, regardless of the work that it does, from archive version of her campaign political position statements. Ed Allan,1 Feb 2012

(restored deleted reference to original campaign statement.)

Edallan (talk) 04:36, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

An archived copy of a self-published statement from several years ago is not an adequate source to support your claim that this particular decision by Komen has anything to do with that statement by Handel. Wikipedia has very high standards for sources that support statements about living people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:42, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

No one is saying that Komen has anything to do with that statement by Handel; the cause-effect being inferred by current media coverage of PP/Komen has the arrow pointing in an opposite direction, ie: Handel is *already* politically partisan (Republican) with an anti-PP and anti-abortion agenda. She ran for office in GA on this agenda and was defeated. She then took this agenda with her when appointed VP at Komen and now suddenly the Komen organisation is being used to launch politically-motivated attacks on PP with her apparent support. The CEO of Komen also having political ties to Republican partisans (as one of Reagan's diplomatic ambassadors) is also being noted by media today. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 16:34, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, Edallan was himself saying that the particular, two-year-old self-published statement by Handel was related to this decision. You can see that he makes the connection in this edit. Drawing that sort of conclusion is prohibited WP:Original research in Wikipedia terms.
Repeating what mainstream media directly says about these political connections is fine, but drawing your own conclusions from a years-old blog post that doesn't even mention Komen is not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:17, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Komen is a political organization, not a charity

and should be reclassified accordingly. Angelosnes (talk) 00:41, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Do you have a WP:Reliable source that says this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:32, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Edit request

The most recent information added about Planned Parenthood (from Komen's website on Feb. 3, 2012) leaves out one of the most critical parts of Komen's statement: "We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political" (italics added). This is a major change in their position of disqualifying an organization on the basis of "disqualifying investigations." Since the page is protected, I hope a neutral editor will make the appropriate change. Thanks. 174.99.121.118 (talk) 17:13, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, Tripodian. 174.99.121.118 (talk) 17:25, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
My pleasure. Tripodian (talk) 17:31, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Fear

Can someone please change the word 'fear' to 'awareness' after the reference to the pink ribbon culture's values? For some reason, I am unable to edit this article. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.117.118.146 (talk) 17:58, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

"Fear" is the exact word used to by the cited source. It would be inappropriate to substitute our own, meaningfully different words. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Embryonic stem cell research

Also please add mention of actual amounts affected: http://www.lifenews.com/2012/02/01/komen-also-stops-funding-embryonic-stem-cell-research-centers/ Komen Also Stops Funding Embryonic Stem Cell Research Centers In addition to stopping funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business, Komen for the Cure has also quietly stopped funding embryonic stem cell research centers, another concern for pro-life advocates... donations from Komen totaling $3.75 million to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, $4.5 million to the University of Kansas Medical Center, $1 million to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, $1 million to the Society for Women’s Health Research, and $600,000 to Yale University. On November 30, 2011, Komen quietly added a new statement to its web site stating that it does not support embryonic stem cell research... new Komen Vice President for public policy Karen Handel, a pro-life advocate for Georgia, opposes embryonic stem cell research. She has been credited with being instrumental in helping stop the Planned Parenthood funding.“I oppose embryonic stem cell research, which creates life solely for the purpose of destroying it." MDelk (talk) 21:42, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

It may be better to seek out neutral sources to back whatever point you're trying to demonstrate; something like "lifenews" is most likely an anti-abortion propaganda site, not a newspaper of general circulation or a neutral reliable source. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 17:00, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I suspect there will be more mainstream coverage of this stem cell defunding in the days ahead. BrosWt (talk) 17:24, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Quite possible, if this piece http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/02/komen-stem-cell-research is any indication. It would be a most strange outcome if Komen stops funding to specific universities to protest stem cell research but doesn't extend the "but they're under investigation!" routine they'd directed against PP to also include Penn State for the investigation of their handling of the Sandusky mess. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 01:31, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Controversy/Criticism redux

One reason Wikipedia frowns on separate "Controversy/Criticism" sections is that it frequently results in an overbloated section out of proportion to the remainder of the article. That seems to be the case in this article. I am not necessarily arguing that the entire section must be integrated into the remainder of the article, but I think the section could use a major overhaul and reduction in size. I agree with the template that the Planned Parenthood controversy is too long because of "recentism". As it is right now, the Controversy/Criticism section makes up about one-third of the article. While I understand that controversies and criticisms justifiably exist, I don't think in the broader view that they should overshadow the more positive (and neutral) aspects of the organization. Before the PP ruckus most people didn't associate Komen with controversy. And although the PP situation will not be forgotten, in a few months it will have faded. I should note that I am not involved with either Komen or PP and simply came here for information. I hope someone will take a more neutral approach to the article and remove some of the excess the Controversy/Criticism section. Thanks. 174.99.121.118 (talk) 22:28, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you, except that the PP situation will likely be out of the news a week from now, rather a few month from now. This is a common problem for Wikipedia articles that connect to recent news, and it will probably be easier to fix it next week or next month than to try to stem the tide of enthusiastic people who are trying to add their bit (which is good), but not necessarily thinking about the big picture (which is unfortunate). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:10, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

The PP situation is notable, but I'd expect in the long term the section will need to be rewritten not to remove the PP controversy but to expand the discussion of pinkwashing as much of the information in a newly-released feature-length documentary, Pink Ribbons, Inc., is not here. Léa Pool notably juxtaposes an ad campaign with a motorcar dealership using the cause as a means to market the Ford Mustang line against the account of a group of workers, manufacturers of plastics for automotive applications in the 1980's and subject to long-term exposure to chemicals in the workplace, now losing multiple colleagues to fatal cancers. Similar questions are raised about the use of lead or formaldehyde in cosmetics; just because a product bears the pink ribbon logo, that assures nothing about the health implications of manufacturing or using the product. The section currently only addresses foodstuffs as potentially-unhealthy products being promoted commercially using the breast cancer fundraising tie-in... that's valid as far as it goes, but there are multiple non-food products (which, unlike food and medicines, are not subject to FDA standards of any kind) which need to be addressed here. The question of whether corporations who are sponsoring this massive marketing campaign as pharmaceutical manufacturers are owned by chemical manufacturers with potential carcinogens (such as pesticides) in the product lineup also needs to be addressed. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 16:52, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I mostly disagree. The Pinkwashing section may need to be tweaked, but right now nothing in the Controversy/Criticism section needs to be expanded. The entire section needs to be cut in half, if not more. This article is "Susan G. Komen for the Cure", not "Criticisms of Susan G. Komen for the Cure". 174.99.121.118 (talk) 17:27, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

The PP fiasco is a watershed event for Komen that needs to be chronicled. The reputational damage is clear and Komen has lost a lot of support among women. BrosWt (talk) 17:21, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

It is chronicled. Read WP:RECENT. The issue has already begun to fade. In a month it will be less of a "fiasco". This is an encyclopedia, not a newspaper. Wikipedia is written for the long-term, not the current headline-grabbing moment. 174.99.121.118 (talk) 17:27, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

The pinkwashing and questionable corporate sponsorship choices have been going on for years; the documentary film Pink Ribbons, Inc. is newly-released (two days ago) but the same info would presumably be in the 2006 book on which this was based: King, Samantha (2006). Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-4898-0. This dependence on corporate sponsors severely hamstrings Komen's ability to support research into the *causes* behind the growing rate at which patients are being diagnosed with this cancer; heaven forbid that it have anything to do with a valued corporate sponsor's product or process. That Komen itself marketed a perfume "Promise Me" which contained suspected-harmful ingredients has already generated controversy. There was also a question regarding a Komen sponsor, Eli Lilly, manufacturing bovine growth hormone and the impact of that product on the rate of cancer in the US. Certainly the PP controversy landing at the *same* time as the documentary film's release is awkward for Komen as one event draws public attention, only to have that attention drawn to what else Komen has been doing (less than a fifth of the money goes to research, much of the effort is a corporate marketing venture and the sponsors' products themselves include some incredibly unhealthy choices - of which Komen denies any ties to (edit: this specific version of) the pink handguns but admits endorsing KFC despite its link to obesity and obesity's link to both cardiovascular disease and increased susceptibility to various cancers). Furthermore, the partisan appointments of anti-abortion Republicans to key positions in Komen have not been rescinded, so perhaps we haven't seen the last of the PP issue. PP needs to be in this section, but all categories of unhealthy products bearing the pink-ribbon endorsement also need to be there. To list just the one food example (KFC) while ignoring the others leaves the section badly incomplete. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 17:53, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

If someone wants to start a new article, "Criticisms and Controversies of Susan G. Komen for the Cure" please do so. You can then link it in this article. But the current article is about Komen as a whole. And generally on Wikipedia, separate Controversy/Criticism sections are discouraged, and they especially should not expand to the point of covering one-third to one-half of the article, especially with additions on the coattails of recent controversies. 174.99.121.118 (talk) 18:14, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

If a criticism is specific to Komen (for instance, a reliable source reports controversy due to a sponsorship tied to an unhealthy or potentially-carcinogenic product which exploits this cause) it belongs in the article on Komen. If the issue extends beyond Komen (for instance, to a similar endorsement by another organisation or in another country, such as the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation's "(sponsor's name) run for a cure") then use pinkwashing as the main article on the controversy, but creating a page Controversies regarding Komen.org is a waste of time as that *is* a one-sided page. This page on Komen should reflect both sides - anything less is an advertisement masquerading as an encyclopaedia article, hence a violation of neutrality. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 18:48, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

No one has suggested that controversies and criticisms don't belong in this article, but they do not need to cover one-third to one-half the article, which is the trajectory that some are pushing here. If the criticisms and controversies are as extensive as they are being presented here, and if these controversies are as in the forefront of the news about Komen in six months as they are now, then no, a separate controversies article is not a waste of time. There are a number of separate articles on controversies about organizations that have been spun off of the parent article. Now, if the argument is that a separate article on Komen controversies would not withstand an AfD because it doesn't have enough substance, then that's an entirely different argument. Expansion of the current controversies section does not belong in the current article; if there is expansion, it should be in a separate article. That's the way it's done on Wikipedia. The current section may need rewriting, but it does not need to be lengthened. 174.99.121.118 (talk) 19:02, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

BrosWt, we don't actually know what the eventual effect on Komen's reputation will be. Various media sources have speculated on it, but nobody knows, and nobody will know until "eventually" actually gets here. We should certainly describe this situation, but six paragraphs over what might well prove to be mere flash-in-the-pan media circus is probably too much.

It's hard to figure out the proper WP:WEIGHT to give to events as they unfold, but let me give you some points of reference: When Huey Long was governor of Louisiana, they tried to impeach him for bribery, corruption, and other serious crimes. That major political scandal, running from 1929 to 1930, and splashed all over national news, gets just three paragraphs in all of Wikipedia. The American Red Cross spent two years explaining, defending, and amending its disaster relief donation policies after the 9/11 donation scandal, but that gets only four paragraphs on Wikipedia.

So it seems a little odd for us to spend twice as much space over a policy decision that had no practical effect because it was reversed in about three days. In fact, despite the pundits talking about "watershed moments", the most likely outcome is that in 50 years, nobody will remember that this even happened. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

That really depends on whether the organisation returns to some semblance of political neutrality or continues on a controversial and partisan course. It'd be WP:CRYSTAL to speculate as to what happens next... if it all blows over, the section can be updated at that time to give less weight to the PP fiasco and more weight to some of the other issues, such as stem cell research (which inexplicably only gets one line in this piece as it stands now). That there are at least two entire books on the manner in which these events and the agendas have been hijacked to appease corporate sponsors (Gayle Sulik's Pink Ribbon Blues plus Samantha King's book on which the new Pink Ribbons, Inc. documentary is based) suggests that there is more than enough here to justify a controversy section in this article. The question of whether the marketers have cunningly pasted a happy face on a horrible, debilitating disease for their own commercial ends is one which needs to be addressed - yet it is not even mentioned. Using breast cancer as a political football in a US election year does invite controversy, but so does using the disease as a profitable mass-marketing opportunity to sell consumer products to housewives. That can of worms, now opened, isn't going away. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 19:51, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Again, no one has argued that there is not "enough here to justify a controversy section in this article". And you'r right about WP:CRYSTAL; no one knows how controversial this organization will be, either in the long-term or a week from now. 174.99.121.118 (talk) 20:05, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Political lobbying

This org is supposedly a charity, no? Why, then, is it spending about three quarters of a million dollars of donated funds annually on lobbying? At least one site is claiming that Komen "felt that treatment for uninsured breast cancer patients should be funded through private donations, like the pink ribbon race" and was lobbying behind the scenes to kill the 2000 Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention and Treatment Act, a bill which was to provide Medicaid coverage for uninsured women diagnosed through the Breast & Cervical Cancer Prevention & Screening Act. That act passed nonetheless, but Komen was to return with subsequent attempts to lobby on other health-related legislation in a manner which favoured HMO's but harmed patients. Evidently they're putting the Republican party line, the best interest of the sponsors or the organisation's interest in the status quo ahead of the interest of the patient, but is there WP:RS if the issue isn't on the radar of the mainstream media currently covering the PP defunding fiasco? --66.102.83.61 (talk) 01:19, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Investigative journalists have raised serious questions, but their work was either ignored or not well publicized. Mary Ann Swissler's 2002 expose is a good example - I'm surprised her name is not mentioned anywhere:

http://www.southernstudies.org/2012/02/flashback-how-the-komen-foundation-fights-health-reform-and-fails-cancer-patients.html BrosWt (talk) 03:22, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps the questions of key people in this org with political ties to the Republican party or anti-abortion groups (which go well beyond just the CEO Nancy Goodman Brinker and VP public policy Karen Handel, currently reported) should be broken out of the section specific to the PP controversy and given their own subsection. (That would reduce the size of the PP subsection.) The PP mess is only part of the impact of the org going partisan-Republican in an election year and, while stem cell research is likely the next political hot potatoe, the question of availability of treatment to poor, uninsured or underinsured women once all these tests and mammograms find more cancers is as unavoidable as the inevitable rôle Obamacare (and lobbyists' efforts to destroy same) will play as a 2012 US presidential election issue. If Komen's top people overlap with the boards of for-profit pharmaceutical or medical companies, if the organisation is depending on these companies as sponsors or if neutrality is compromised through extensive ties to partisan politics, the organisation is not free to independently evaluate whether the current health care agenda is good or harmful to patients. Given the nature of this org's mission, that's a serious blind spot and the text raising the issue should be broken out of the narrow PP debate.

One Komen board member who merits a second look: "Jane Abraham — President of Abraham Strategies LLC., a small business that handles strategic marketing assignments for a variety of clients. She also is the General Chairman of the Susan B. Anthony List, a not-for-profit membership organization and connected political action committee that supports pro-life political candidates and issues. The wife of former Senator and U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham..." That's Komen's description, the pro-abortion side would raise one additional issue, that of her ties to The Nurturing Network, a so-called "crisis pregnancy center" whose mission is not to provide objective medical advice but to pressure women into not obtaining abortions. (And yes, Spencer Abraham is already in Wikipedia as partisan Republican... see a pattern yet?) --66.102.83.61 (talk) 16:20, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

You shouldn't diminish an event's immediate or short-term relevance by minimizing its coverage by fast-forwarding 50 years. That's proactive revisionism - Stalin was good at it.
In the long term, everyone will be dead. Wikipedia is for the living - it's for people who look up stuff while they're young and alive.
BTW most people don't know about Huey Long and they don't care about Huey Long or what people say about Huey Long. GTillson (talk) 16:05, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Lots of people know about Huey Long. Don't assume that because you have not heard of someone that it means no one else has or that the person is not notable. You might try actually reading something about him, for example Huey Long for starters. Wikipedia is written for the broader population of English speakers, not the lowest common denominator. 174.99.121.118 (talk) 00:45, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

What is "Public health education (39.1%)" in expenditures?

For something that appears to be nearly two fifths of the budget, there seems to be little explanation as to what exactly this "educational" message could be. Other than telling women to get lots of mammograms, the only message (outside the latest foot-in-mouth episode) appears to be the aggressive promotion of the organisation's programme itself... not education but advertising, promotion and marketing.

It's possible that the cost of the walk/run events themselves is claimed not as "fundraising" but somehow as "education". From [1]:

Ellen Leopold, for example -- a member of the Women's Community Cancer Project in Cambridge and author of A Darker Ribbon: Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors in the Twentieth Century -- has criticized the races as an inefficient way of raising money. She points out that the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade, which sponsors three-day, sixty-mile walks, spends more than a third of the money raised on overhead and advertising, and Komen may similarly fritter away up to 25 percent of its gross. At least one corporate-charity insider agrees. "It would be much easier and more productive," says Rob Wilson, an organizer of charitable races for corporate clients, "if people, instead of running or riding, would write out a check to the charity." To true believers, such criticisms miss the point, which is always, ultimately, "awareness."

This Where is the money going, exactly? question is one which should be asked of any charitable solicitation - and more so given the huge amounts of money at stake (breast cancer raises more funds than all other gynaecological cancers combined). --66.102.83.61 (talk) 03:33, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Analyzing Komen's spending choices is not Wikipedia's job. It would actually be a violation of our WP:No original research policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:22, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Conversely, what's there now violates WP:SELF in that we're assuming that analysing Komen's spending choices is Komen's job, with no need for an objective source to explain what this 39% actually represents. The information, as presented, is so vague and incomplete that it does more to confuse than inform the reader. Complicating matters further, Komen is structured not as a single organisation but as a central organisation plus 121 local chapters (118 of them in the US) in which the local chapter runs events, incurs the related overhead, then sends a quarter of the net profit to headquarters with the rest used for local programme spending. That means having to look at 122 budgets (not one) to figure what is actually going on here. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 15:44, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

The original cite for Leopold's statement of "up to 25 percent" as the cost of running the events themselves is (Shopping for the Cure, Ellen Leopold, http://prospect.org/article/shopping-cure The American Prospect 2001-10-07) which cites a Komen spokesperson:

"At Komen, one spokesperson told me that the foundation keeps race expenses for its one-day events below 25 percent of race revenues (not counting cash and in-kind donations from corporate sponsors); others refuse to confirm that and will say only that the foundation's overall expenses amount to 9 percent of overall revenue."

Unfortunately this is a ten-year-old figure, but Komen refuses to break the cost of the event itself out separately in its figures --66.102.83.61 (talk) 15:11, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

  • We are not using Komen's claim to "analyze" their spending; we're reporting it as a simple fact: they said this is how they spent their money.
  • Whether an expense can be counted as fundraising, administration, or program services is ultimately defined by the IRS, not be individual organizations. You personally may not believe that a mailing with a pink ribbon on it or the words "mammograms save lives" should count as "educational" rather than "fundraising", but the IRS does.
  • We're reporting an overall total for the organization, not a range that might apply to any given activity. Some activities are 100% fundraising or 100% administration. Others are 100% program services. It's more useful to say "39% is educational" than to say "depending on the activity in question, somewhere between 0% and 100% of the expenses were educational".
  • It's trivially easy to keep fundraising expenses for walk-a-thons and similar events under a certain threshold. You figure out what your fundraising expenses are per person, and then declare that all participants must raise a certain amount more than that. So if you expect to spend $100 on fundraising expenses, and you want to keep that under 25% of the gross, then you declare than every participant must secure at least $400 in donations. This is standard practice in the industry. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:33, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "reporting it as a simple fact" when it comes to organisations self-reporting numbers in any instance where an expense could potentially be classified more than one way. Cost of the event itself, 'education' or 'fundraising'? Dunno... put it down on the books as 'education'. Cost of evaluating submitted research proposals, 'research' in its own right or 'administration'. Dunno... put it down on the books as 'research'... and on it goes. As long as there is still even the slightest room for ambiguity, the organisation may classify expenses in whatever category makes them appear to be programme costs and the IRS will say (and do) nothing. A category like 'education' is particularly troublesome as some organisations misuse this to include all manner of advocacy and self-promotion here - something doesn't have to actually respect neutrality or stick to the facts to appear on the books as 'education' and often groups will deliver messages with one or two lines of "educational" content and the rest of the same message a promotion or solicitation for money. There's a huge amount of wiggle room here, let's not be naïve. To blindly accept that "39% was spent on education" without asking exactly what message was delivered, by what means or what media and to what end is to go beyond credulity. This needs to be pinned down factually. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 04:07, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

If you have a proper reliable source that provides further information, we can include it. If you don't, then we can't. (Note, please, that to be useful the source would need to be reasonably current and to have information about the whole organization's total budget, not just one particular program.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:15, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Problem with the pie chart

There is a color problem with the pie chart. Can someone please fix? thanks, Richard Myers (talk) 23:35, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

What's the problem? It looks fine to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:23, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

The pie slice for 'administration' is not one solid light blue (as the legend indicates) but either two-tones or a gradient fill. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 15:47, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

It looks solid light blue to me. There's a tiny sliver of white adjacent to the light blue, which I assume represents the 0.1% that could either be rounding error or miscellaneous expenses that don't fit any other category. But I don't see two tones or a gradient fill. 67.239.179.160 (talk) 22:56, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
There are six different colors. Any tiny sliver of white (especially if you see it at the "three o'clock" position) is just a browser rendering error. Have you tried all the usual troubleshooting things (looking at it on another computer, restarting yours, purging the cache, etc.)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:23, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Criticisms

I've refactored the criticisms to list pinkwashing first and the recent abortion politics last, as WP:WEIGHT should go first to an issue which has been extant for several years and has had at least two entire books denouncing the hijacking of the cause by corporate marketers.

I've moved some of the stuff regarding the ties between key Komen people and the US Republican Party from the article to the talk page for now:

and, regarding the Planned Parenthood cuts:

  • Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said it was "a welcome, long-overdue decision that will make Komen more effective in the fight against breast cancer."[2]

Certainly the clear partisan ties are an issue (especially since Komen spends several hundred thousand donated dollars a year on political lobbyists) but I'd prefer not to list every Republican tie in the section on Planned Parenthood as PP is merely one issue being influenced by partisan politics, corporate sponsorship or overlap in board of directors between Komen and entities with a vested interest in the issue. After all, Obamacare might've made a difference to those who are diagnosed by Komen-funded screenings but then cannot afford treatment as poor, uninsured or underinsured... but the multiple ties of key Komen personnel to the GOP or the drug companies forces them to support the status quo.

I've left the stuff about Karen Handel in as that was being used to establish a cause-and-effect link to the PP funding withdrawal. As for the rest, a separate subsection needs to be created for the political ties and the use of paid lobbyists - an issue which goes back at least to the turn of the millennium - as the PP section is already large enough and needs not to be bloated with discussion of the larger issue of Komen - GOP ties. --66.102.83.61 (talk) 17:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, Handel is saying Komen was already going rightwing/pro-life before she got hired (and she's correct, look at the stem cell U-turn timeline). Handel was just a convenient scapegoat - she didn't do it single-handedly. StJosephMO (talk) 19:43, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
About the "paid lobbyists" thing:
Did you know that Wikimedia itself has used paid lobbyists? And the American Cancer Society? And the Salvation Army? And March of Dimes? And, in fact, just about every single major charity in the entire USA?
Just like individual people, businesses, and every other type of organization, charities are legally allowed to lobby elected officials to promote their own interests (e.g., improving laws about managing non-profit organizations) and to comment on issues that matter to them (e.g., improving laws about cancer treatment), and they are legally allowed to hire a professional to represent these interests rather than doing it themselves.
Consequently, I wouldn't want to make too much of this "hired a lobbyist" thing: that's normal behavior for large charities. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

The rules on 501(c)3's and lobbyists are here: http://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/whitepaperdetail.cfm?ItemNumber=12212 That's not the point; the controversy is that in 2000 and again in 2002 Komen lobbied to change proposed legislation in a way which would favour HMO's or other health-care vendors at the expense of patient's interests. Like the use of a million dollars in lawyers to register more than 100 variants of "...for the cure" as trademarks and sue other non-profits, it's not what the individual donor expects to see happen with money which they were led to believe would actually go to research to find a cure for this disease. And no, I can't find WP:RS for your claim that Wikimedia funds are being allocated to lobbyists instead of webservers. Cite? --66.102.83.61 (talk) 15:59, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Read Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative#.22Lobbying.22_and_Government_Affairs, in which the WMF's general counsel names the lobbyists he hired last year.
One might (if one believed that having "for the Cure" in the org's name meant "100% of funds go to research", which I hope most donors are too savvy to believe) indeed be dismayed to discover that a pro-patient organization took an anti-patient stance on any given piece of legislation (assuming the assertions are true, and that there weren't mitigating circumstances, e.g., we support the pro-patient provision X, but not the severely anti-patient provisions A, B, C, D, E, and F also included in the bill, and would rather have the whole thing scrapped than to have this lopsided thing passed). However, it's not the fact of paying professionals to present the org's opinion that actually matters; it's the org's support or opposition to the bill that matters. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:29, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Pinkwashing NPOV

It seems very biased.

Firstly pinkwashing is linked, but there is nothing at the linked page.

Secondly it is not really clear how controversial pinkwashing is. The article implies that it is, from the excessive length of this section relative to the length of the article, but that seems implausible. It forms a much greater portion of this page than say 'Sex abuse cases' at Catholic Church, which is clearly ludicrous.

You could put 12 Yoplait lids in a 37-cent envelope, but it's irrelevant as you can redeem online [2]

Nearly all of this should be moved to the Pink Ribbon page, although some is ridiculous, such as the suggestion that M&Ms are a leading cause for obesity.

The linked Time article (which is six-years old - more recent than the other main source, cited numberous times, which is ten years old), states '. Last year the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, the nation's largest private charity focusing on breast cancer, urged consumers to start asking questions like how much of the money they spend on pink purchases will actually go to charity, what kind of activities does the charity support and what has its record been'.

The paragraph on KFC does not actually contain any active links to criticism of the link-up, but I found one here [3] It mentions Breast Cancer Action as the critic.

I suspect it would be sufficient to reduce this whole section to a paragraph saying that they've been criticised for some of their commercial tie-ups by groups such as Breast Cancer Action. The detail on yogurt lids in evelopes is pretty stupid (how much does a Yoplait cost anyway, 10 cents is presumably a reasonable percentage of the total). 81.141.31.152 (talk) 03:16, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I rather like the breadth of the current section, because it shows that this is an issue that keeps coming up, rather than being a one-time problem.
(Postage is now 45¢ for a one-ounce letter. In my area, the normal retail price for one six-ounce Yoplait brand yogurt is 89¢. And back when this criticism was made, it was not possible to submit them online.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:24, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand why there are not just one but two neutrality tags now on the Controversy & criticism section. It is not surprising that a criticism section might seem biased to some. Sure, it would be nice if there was some balance in this section, but the rest of the article could use more balance as well and I don't see any tags up there. Perhaps it's just that no notable secondary source has come to the defense of Komen in these areas. At any rate, if a minority section on criticism actually does compromise the neutrality of this otherwise glowing article, can we at the very least take that down to one tag? Or how about trimming some of the more minor criticisms and removing the tags altogether? -Jordgette [talk] 20:52, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind seeing both removed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:29, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
 Done, although I also removed a few of the more trivial items from the Pinkwashing section. The section intro mentions that these "sponsor-tunities" tend to benefit the companies more than the charity, so in deleting items I tried to maintain that as the focus. -Jordgette [talk] 02:03, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Legal fees

Hello WhatamIdoing. You have reverted my removal of a phrase stating that the legal battles with small entities over the phrase "for the cure" have cost the Komen organization nearly $1 million per year. Please note that the source paragraph you referenced in your edit summary only states that overall legal fees are nearly $1 million per year. Please see WP:NOR. Some, or even most of these fees may be expended on other legal tasks. It isn't at all clear from the source that all these legal fees are being spent on this litigation. Accordingly, I have removed the phrase again. If you can locate a reliable source that clearly states the entire legal budget is being spent on this particular litigation, please cite it and revert the removal again. Thanks. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 15:43, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

The quotation is, "Blum told HuffPost that legal fees comprise a "very small part" of Komen's budget, but according to Komen's financial statements, such costs add up to almost a million dollars a year in donor funds."
"Legal fees" are self-described as "very small", not as $1M. "Such costs" could refer to legal fees regardless of the purpose, but it could equally refer to the specific costs being discussed in the article.
I'm inclined to think that it's the latter, in no small part because Komen's financial filings indicate that they spent only $375K on legal fees in 2009-2010. "Legal fees" is a very specific thing in the non-profit world. That's what you report on the Form 990, Part IX, Line 11b. And it doesn't include any employee's salary, benefits, or other expenses, even if that employee does exclusively legal work. So Komen's general counsel spends time talking about trademarks with the reporter, and he and his whole staff could do nothing else except defend their trademarks, but that doesn't change the amount spent on "legal fees", even though it definitely affects the amount spent on defending their trademarks.
Given that the "legal fees" amount is $375K and the "such costs" amount is nearly $1M, I believe that these two statements refer to different things: the one "legal fees" as defined by law, and the other actually trademark-related costs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:50, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
I have no doubt that you believe it. But do you have a reliable source that says it? If not, it has to stay out of the article mainspace. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 23:55, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
That cuts both ways: Do you have a reliable source that says the $1M refers to all legal fees? Because I've got a reliable primary source that says it doesn't. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:05, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Research

This page does not talk about any achievements from the research that the Komen foundation has funded. This should be mentioned. Stidmatt (talk) 16:05, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Do you have a reliable (and ideally independent source that describes any achievements? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:04, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
That might be why there aren't any listed. It doesn't seem that Komen is actually interested in eradicating or curing cancer. For example, there's a study which eradicated breast cancer in mice, but has not been able to get funding to move on to human trials. They've asked Komen 3 times and have been denied every time. Source: http://www.wndu.com/home/headlines/Breast-Cancer-Vaccine-100-effective-in-mice-Waiting-for-human-trials-173738701.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:4898:1F:1:D06:90E3:D618:DA6 (talk) 05:14, 13 October 2012 (UTC)


See also section

I removed a few entries already linked in the article. --Malerooster (talk) 17:14, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Not sure if that's a good idea. Keep Pink ribbon#Pinkwashing, Breast cancer awareness#Shopping for the cure and National Breast Cancer Awareness Month#Criticisms where they're easy to find or others will dig up the same facts and post them duplicatively to Susan G. Komen Foundation#Pinkwashing in cause marketing if they're relevant here. As much as the pinkwashing as a form of cause marketing likely is enough for an article in its own right, pinkwashing is currently just a disambiguation page, leaving info scattered across multiple articles. K7L (talk) 18:21, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Looks like this article was "pinkwashed"

The article is unbalanced -- it's a puff piece for a disgraced charity. It appears to me as though this article was written by the public relations firm of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Whatever goodwill had been generated by this organization in the past was largely dissipated by its foolish adventures into corporation-style market domination and particularly by its recent political agenda. It is laughable to hear some of you complaining about the few criticisms that somehow managed to escape your evisceration. It needs a POV overhaul by someone other than anonymous staff members for this firm. NaySay (talk) 12:24, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Certainly, there are some huge pieces of the puzzle missing. There's little or no mention of this group's close ties to the Republican Party (which may affect their political lobbying decisions, particularly on questions like Obamacare) or the heavy sponsorship by pharmaceutical companies in this sector (which may mean less research to actually find the causes of cancer or attempt to prevent it and more research to find profitable, patentable drugs). Worse yet, it has been impossible or nearly-impossible to nail down some rather key figures such as the percentage of the take which goes to the cost of running the events themselves. Komen claims to spend 41% on "education". What is that? Is the run or the march "education", is it "fundraising", is it just one heck of a mammoth corporate marketing exercise targeting a valuable 18-45 female advertising demographic to pitch the sponsors' product? I'd suspect Komen's books will claim the former (these Charity Navigator organizations don't investigate this, they just take what's on the tax form at face value. "41% for education"? Yeah, whatever, no questions asked. The events might be a quarter of the budget, but without a good source to actually pin down this number (and Komen isn't talking) good luck even trying to address that question in this article.
There was a book and documentary film Pink Ribbons, Inc. which addressed some of these questions but even the film has gaps in that it raises the question that only 5% of research is devoted to finding a cause for cancer but doesn't ask why at most 20% of the money raised by this group goes to research at all. A fair amount goes to mammography (the breast exams, which was how Planned Parenthood ended up involved) but even then a patient with the misfortune to live in the US with no medical insurance gets this diagnosis and has no means to afford treatment as the charity funds just the exam. There's also the icky detail that some patients do get all this expensive medical care and die anyway; that doesn't fit with the upbeat message of Komen and the other marketers and pinkwashers, but there is a need to be honest about this.
Perhaps pinkwashing should be an article and not merely a disambiguation (the other meanings listed are very rare and merit no more than a hatnote) because this is big, multi-million dollar business. A long list of pharmacy and cosmetic brands are even operating their own breast cancer charity events as Komen normally will not accept two competing firms as sponsors at the same time. For a company like Revlon or Avon, this is exactly the marketing demographic they want to reach so they'll hold the events themselves. Komen is just one player in this mess, albeit the largest one.
Instead of attempting to address the entire broader pinkwashing question here (Komen is just one organization, there are others doing this) perhaps pinkwashing needs to be a full article, citing every available WP:RS and exploring the topic fully, instead of merely directing the reader to one section of the page on pink ribbons. Questions of where the huge amount of Komen money actually goes belong here, if any sources can be found to answer key questions (What percentage goes to fund the race and events and how is it classified in the budget? What exactly is this "education" as 41% of the budget, given that "awareness" has already been done to death? Is this actually promotion or self-promotion? Is the administrative cost to decide who gets a research grant listed as "research" itself instead of as "administration"? How much is going to lawyers, and what are they doing? Is a significant amount of donor funds going to trademark suits against rival charities? How much is going to political lobbyists and what is their agenda?). Questions of whether deadly diseases should be being used to market consumer products *at all* belong at pinkwashing if it's ever expanded to a proper article. Komen is one among many doing this. K7L (talk) 13:17, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
I've been watching this article for about a year, and I don't believe it's terribly out of balance. It does not need a "POV overhaul," and is not edited only by "anonymous staff members" -- check the history. If you'd been hanging around, you would have witnessed the push-pull that's been going on in order to try to find neutrality in the article. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. If you have an axe to grind, grind it at your blog, not here. Believe me, I am no fan of Komen, but I don't like when people look at an article about an organization they don't like, and decide it isn't "bad" enough and needs more bad stuff added to it so as to more closely paint the world the way they see it. Start by checking reliable sources -- it could be that the issues and facts that you want in the article aren't out there. If they are, add them and see what happens, but at least try to make it seem that you aren't bashing-by-editing. I do like the idea of a "pinkwashing" article. The neologism has been used often enough in reliable sources that an article is appropriate. -Jordgette [talk] 19:13, 29 October 2012 (UTC)


I'm also not convinced that an article about a 30-year-old organization should be focused on a policy that only lasted for three days, even if that policy was pretty idiotic. They deserve some criticism (and I've added a lot of what's here), but they do not deserve only criticism. I'm sure that the women who get mammograms or support groups or other benefits think that Komen has helped them. Even participating in their fundraising races is a positive experience for many women. The research shows a strong connection between physical exercise and an increase in confidence and other mental health benefits in breast cancer patients.
I can answer one question: "Is the administrative cost to decide who gets a research grant listed as "research" itself instead of as "administration"?" According to standard accounting rules, those costs should be categorized as "research". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:29, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
Komen as a pro-Republican, pro-corporation entity with an agenda isn't something "that only lasted for three days". The ties run deep. Odds are, they will affect the organisation's stance on other key issues, such as Obamacare. Mammograms? Only part of the picture; is there healthcare available after the patient gets the results? Is there any emphasis on prevention or even on research to find the causes of cancer so the diagnosis doesn't need to be made in the first place? These questions and others (enough to fill two books and a feature-length documentary film) were being asked years before the attack on Planned Parenthood funding made headlines. For that matter, are the long list of products which Komen exists primarily to advertise through cause marketing even healthy choices? If this group is beholden to corporate sponsors, it has no margin of manoeuvre.
If there are no straight answers to questions like "what percentage goes to the cost of the events themselves?" that in itself is notable. This is a charity, not a privately-held for-profit. One expects a certain level of accountability. If Komen won't say what its costs are, why not?
Much of the sourced information on pinkwashing already exists here, it's just scattered across entire sections of multiple articles with the term itself as a disambiguation page. These need to be consolidated as one page, with whatever's there now moved to pinkwashing (disambiguation). Komen should not be the main article on the 'pinkwashing' topic as it is just one organisation among many. It's notable because of its huge multi-million dollar size (there are huge corporations involved for-profit here) but there are others (such as pharmaceutical companies, cosmetic manufacturers and non-US non-profit organisations) engaged in the same or similar use of this deadly disease as a corporate promotion, advertising and marketing vehicle. Pink ribbon#Pinkwashing, Breast cancer awareness#Shopping for the cure and Susan G. Komen Foundation#Pinkwashing in cause marketing are full sections of three articles on the same topic. Anything in these that isn't specific to Komen as one entity should be used to create a page on pinkwashing in general at that title. The Republican Party agenda, sadly, stays here. 2001:5C0:1000:A:0:0:0:2D53 (talk) 21:44, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Critics of over-screening

Here are 2 good articles criticizing over-screening, which put most of the blame on Komen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/our-feel-good-war-on-breast-cancer.html Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer By PEGGY ORENSTEIN April 25, 2013

http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e5132?ijkey=WqUqgA.EgJq76&keytype=ref&siteid=bmjjournals%2520 Not So Stories How a charity oversells mammography BMJ 2012; 345 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e5132 (Published 2 August 2012) BMJ 2012;345:e5132 --Nbauman (talk) 00:16, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

No Criticism Section

Per Wikipedia rules, there shouldn't be a criticism section. They need to be worked into the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lacarids (talk • contribs) 08:34, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

There are two entire books and a documentary film about the whole "pink ribbon, inc" pattern of using fundraising for diseases as a marketing tool to promote random, unrelated retail products. Komen, as one of the largest names in this sector, has drawn a huge amount of attention. There is enough information on that issue alone that it merits a section, even if some key facts (such as the amount of donated money going to the cost of running the "run for a cure" events themselves) remain unknown. K7L (talk) 13:45, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
If memory serves (and it might not), they spend about a quarter of "Run" money (not a quarter of all money) on the event. Only 25% is actually considered pretty good by industry standards for these events. Some notorious events have spent more than 90% of the gross event revenue on event expenses.
I believe that whenever it is possible to unify the minor criticisms in an unobtrusive way, that this should be done. (Perhaps "Komen changed their logo, and some people complained", but not "Komen changed their logo, and here are six paragraphs of complaints about it.") However, there are major criticisms that are probably best handled in a separate section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:03, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

2011 CEO salary

This article now contradicts itself. "The Komen CEO salary in 2010 was $459,406 a year.[4] Komen paid founder and CEO Nancy Brinker $417,712 in 2011.[5]" contradicts the NBC piece [6] which indicates that "Brinker still holds her position and tax documents reveal that she received a 64 percent raise and now makes $684,000 a year, according to the charity’s latest available tax filing. Komen says the raise came in November 2010, prior to last year’s controversy." The 2012 Reuters piece appears to be pulling outdated info from the Charity Navigator site and publishing it as gospel. Both Reuters and NBC are cited in this WP article, even though they contradict each other. K7L (talk) 17:58, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that we need to compare Komen to the American Red Cross twice in the same section. Do we really need "This is more than the head of the Red Cross is making for an organization that is one-tenth the size of the Red Cross" and "The American Red Cross had revenue of $3.4 billion in the 2010-11 fiscal year, while Komen’s was $342 million"? Isn't one of those enough, or is it important to be redundant here? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Um, that's the way the information appears in the original cited source? K7L (talk) 23:41, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
A lot more than these numbers also appears in the original, thousand-word-long cited source. We don't need to repeat absolutely every fact that's in that source in all of its original glorious detail. Couldn't we provide a non-redundant summary? A non-redundant summary says either that Komen has one-tenth the revenue as the Red Cross or it says that the American Red Cross grossed US $3.4 billion compared to Komen's US $340 million, but it does not provide both the raw numbers and then go on to do the very simple mathematical calculation for the reader. WhatamIdoing (talk) 13:34, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
A quotation (in this case, of the Charity Navigator CEO) is normally verbatim. Paraphrase and you no longer have a quote. K7L (talk) 14:04, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
True, but irrelevant. We have both a quotation that says "one-tenth the size" and a non-quotation that talks about the exact number of millions of dollars. Do we need both of these statements? Do you think that our readers can understand "one-tenth the size" all by itself, or will they be confused about the difference in the relative sizes of these organizations' budgets if we don't then explain that "one-tenth the size" means that the ARC grossed US $3.4 billion and Komen only grossed $340 million? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:23, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
A term like "one-tenth the size" on its own is vague... is it the number of staff? the number of local chapters? something else entirely? K7L (talk) 23:21, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
In this case, the source seems to be concerned with gross revenue, but for organizations with fairly similar approaches, the number of employees would also have approximately the same proportion. (For example, a $10 million food bank probably has about ten times as many employees as a $1 million one.) I'm not sure that ARC and Komen are actually sufficiently similar for that to hold completely true. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Please see this link: http://www.charitywatch.org/hottopics/Top25.html Note that "Breast Cancer Research Foundation" CEO makes considerably more than Brinker and they are tiny compared to Komen. Note all the other MAJOR charities listed are about the same size as Komen. FYI, the head of the Red Cross is a Presidential appointment and it's is a quasi-governmental agency taking billions from the Federal Government each year. Komen is totally private and the CEO is responsible for fundraising tens of millions each year in development activities. This article is totally biased and has been shaped by "haters" not looking to provide balance or FACTS, unless they are spun to meet a certain agenda. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.254.47.96 (talk) 10:06, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

You're the one trying to "spin" this, in an attempt to mitigate the fact that $340 million in donated funds spent on one executive salary is $340 million which will not be going to find a cure for breast cancer. K7L (talk) 22:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Lede

The lede currently looks like it was written by a PR rep from Komen themselves…. — TheHerbalGerbil(TALK|STALK), 05:03, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Request: Education expenditure details

It seems the largest pie graph item is not represented by accompanying text, can someone elaborate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.18.232.147 (talk) 07:17, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

The text says what the item is and how much money was spent on it. Are you looking for something like "What counts as 'public health education'?" The real answer is "whatever their accountants think that they can justify, in the unlikely event that the IRS were to ask them about it", and they're not required to provide a breakdown. Usually, though, this sort of category includes printing pamphlets, running cause-related advertisements (but not fundraising ads), making educational videos, training volunteers (e.g., to run breast-cancer support groups), sending information (except fundraising) to donors, clients, or healthcare workers, and other things like that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:42, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Donation from porn vendor

I'm trying to avoid an edit war with User:Distelfinck. I removed a section from this article I felt was both trivial and an attack on this person (see WP:BLPSTYLE). The section in question reads: "Refusing donation" - In October 2012 PornHub had a campaign intended to conclude with a donation to Komen. The size of the donation would depend on the number of clicks those videos got that are categorized as showing big breasts or small breasts. When Komen heard of the campaign they stated that they were not accepting donations if they come from PornHub.<ref>[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/pornhub-komen-donation-breast-cancer-month_n_1939648.html]</ref>". I would appreciate the input of other editors. Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:25, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Irrelevant trivia. -Jordgette [talk] 00:11, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
An attack on what person? In your edit summaries you also mentioned a "her" - who is she? I was staying true to the sources, and can deliver more of those that proof that this really happened, so I cannot see how reporting facts is "attacking" someone, especially if the article section we are talking about doesn't even talk about any person - it only mentions two organisations. On if it's relevant or not: I think it is - it is quite extraordinary to reject a donation. Taking money from a business the charity doesn't like means that business can't spend it on things the charity doesn't like, so the charity should be very happy about such a donation. Plus, whose donations they reject and whose they don't is quite informative. --Distelfinck (talk) 10:46, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
I removed this material as well. --Malerooster (talk) 12:06, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
I am not going to revert this again, but Distelfinck needs to be blocked at this point to prevent further disruption. --Malerooster (talk) 15:20, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Why should I be blocked and not you, Malerooster? No one's contested the factual accuracy of the paragraph, the only problem some seem to have with it is that they think the events described in it are not notable for this article. So even if it were so, the worst that could happen would be that someone reading the article would waste their time reading something non-notable. --Distelfinck (talk) 16:02, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Do you see above that 3 other editors would not include that material? Wikipedia is not a collection of non notable material for our readers to wade through. This project works on consensus, which is clearly against including the material you want to add. Get support for inclusion and then it can stay, otherwise, it should be removed. --Malerooster (talk) 18:07, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
I wouldn't count Magnolia677's opinion on this, as their reasoning given for removal doesn't make any sense. They may no longer want it being removed for all we now. And you and Jordgette just state that the paragraph is unnotable, but don't address the reasoning I have given above why this is notable. First refute my rationale, but removing something and edit warring about something that's factually accurate without addressing what I've said is not good. The right way to do it would be to restore the part of the article as it was before the edit war, i.e. include the paragraph, and wait until this has been properly discussed and then maybe remove it. --Distelfinck (talk) 19:50, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
No, the "right" way way to do it is to leave it(or any material that editors disagree upon inclusion) out until consensus forms for inclusion. --Malerooster (talk) 20:56, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Why? --Distelfinck (talk) 21:03, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Because that's how Wikipedia works. WP:BRD - Bold, revert, discuss. You bolded, they reverted, and we're discussing, and it's not looking good for re-inclusion. Does that answer your question? -Jordgette [talk] 21:36, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Not really but it's interesting in other ways, so thank you. My question was why someone would think that during a discussion about the relevancy of part of an article, the ideal state of the article would be to not have that part. Even when factual accuracy is not disputed. So if it still is in the article during the discussion, you should put the article in it's ideal state which means removing factually accurate things without consensus. On the other side, putting those things into the article, that would need consensus. There's a double standard in that thinking. Malerooster removed the paragraph without consensus during the discussion. --Distelfinck (talk) 23:48, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Everything that's presently in the article has consensus. We know this because the article has been stable for months. If anyone had a problem with an inclusion during that time, it has been discussed and consensus found (see the rest of this page and the archives). The claim that one needs consensus to remove an item from an article is false. Additions to articles do not have consensus by default; consensus is something that is reached, either through discussion, or via the passage of time without anyone objecting. -Jordgette [talk] 01:37, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
"Before the edit war" would mean the version from July 3rd (ie: the last stable version prior to the edit war) - which did not include the disputed text. And, as pointed out above, per WP:BRD, leaving out the disputed text unless consensus results in its inclusion is the appropriate process to follow. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:53, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
I agree that's it's non-notable trivia. Many charities refuse to partner with certain types of businesses or refuse donates from businesses with which they do not wish to be associated. In the case of Susan G Komen, they have stated in regards to a different fundraising they refused that "the group as a national policy to avoid partnering with certain types of businesses, including those seen as sexualizing women."[7]. The mention of it here results more in a coatrack to advertise Pornhub, rather than being appropriate for the "Controversy and criticism" section of this article. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:29, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
I'd also add that this story was barely covered in the media; leave it to Huffingtonpost to find news relating to pornography. If it had been widely covered, maybe. (Then again, the Georgia "hot car death" case has been on CNN's front page for a week, and it is not even mentioned anywhere on WP, last I checked.) I see it as a publicity stunt and nothing more. -Jordgette [talk]
  1. ^ Komen’s Planned Parenthood decision all about politics (Washington Post, February 1, 2012)
  2. ^ Vitter boasts about Komen move
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