Via Kombiz, it appears the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s newest push towards the hard-right has resulted in another new policy as well. According to a statement released at around the same time as the Planned Parenthood defunding was being planned, the Komen Foundation will also be denying any funding for cancer research that uses embryonic stem cells [PDF]. The statement language is lifted directly from far-right rhetoric on the matter, saying they will only fund stem cell research “derived without creating a human embryo or destroying a human life.”
This seems to go even farther than George W. Bush was willing to go, as it appears to offer no grandfathering of existing embryonic stem cell lines, but instead formalizes a blanket funding ban on all such research, no matter what the origin of the cells. It’s about as extremist a position as exists on the matter.
As my friend Mike suggested, we need to ask our local sports team to drop the whole “wear pink” thing.
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Great, maybe a cure for cancer can be found in the bible.
Something interesting I found when searching for Google news stories on the Susan G. Komen thing. Whenever a Fox story came up it mentioned in the headline the (non-existent) link between abortion and breast cancer. The propaganda never stops.
Oh, so SGK went for that one too, eh? Not surprising.
It’s not like their decision to only take away Planned Parenthood’s money is hypocritical or anything….
Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
Thanks for the link, Mike.
So color me stupid Bible banging hillbilly because you all will, but what is wrong with the viable, non embrionic stem cells? Mayby say umbilical cord steem cells, or adult?
They are not the same.
I’m learning more about the SGK foundation than I ever knew. They are finding their policies under greater scrutiny, and they are smelling like a skunk…
Susan G. Komen for the we want to increase our overhead to get rich and make women into nothing but walking baby incubators.
Everyone should know that plenty of men go to Planned Parenthood. You gotta lay out some bux for an exam, but it’s a little less than a visit to a Mexican cash doctor, and follow ups are cheaper. Treatment is free and follow ups are much cheaper than the cash doctor.
Went there to get some help and got as good care there as anywhere else.
BTW, if you can, give your boys an HPV vax. Get 80% of the girls and 25% of the boys and we got this beat. While males do not have quite as serious consequences, there are consequences.
So Komen buckles to another right-wing ideal, what next? “Good job stopping embryonic stem cell research, now we want you to never research breast cancer in lesbian women.”
Nothing inherently wrong, and few if any people would claim there is. I’m not entirely sure why you ask, as it seems to have little to do with they topic, but many of thm have a lot of potential which is worth investigating, though it is still not clear if we will ever be able to reprogram them to make them as versatile as embryonic stem cells.
Francisco Bacopa I’ll see if I can find the link, but the HPV vaccine is rather dangerous and only cover about 4 strains of the virus. People are developing long term problems and even dying from it. My OBGYN and several of my friend’s doctors won’t even give them out to ANYONE. The benefit can easily not be worth the risk. I’m sure you can google it, but I’ll see if I can find the link again and post it here.
Disappointing to see women’s (and men’s for that matter) health politicised. If you want to truly be “for the cure” any promising avenue should be investigated,
Rachel @ 13, repeating a lie doesn’t make it true. The HPV vaccine is safe, and as for doctors, being not in the USA and under a public health system I have never heard of any that have any problems with HPV vaccines or the criteria for public funding of the same. That’s important in a public system, preventative health is an important part of the overall strategy. They wouldn’t fund something unsafe and that has the potential to increase health costs rather than reducing it. As for the 4 strains, one HPV vaccine strain protects against genital warts and the rest protects against strains most commonly implicated in the development of cervicsl cancer. Probably a waste of time though, if someone can’t get that while there may be many strains of any one type of virus or bacteria, that only some may cause problems like illness (or in this case cervical cancer) it’s probably a lot cause.
Rachal, here is all the info you need to correct and update your thinking on Hpv vaccine …
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-0011605016028824%3Aj8rkr4-so0i&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Hpv+vaccine&sa=Search#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=Hpv%20vaccine&gsc.page=1