Are Cancer Fundraising Dollars Being Secretly Spent on Enriching Cancer Drug Makers?

I stopped giving money to any of the large charities many years ago, due mainly to the collapse of one of the big banks and the reported amounts many of those big charities lost, money being used to play the markets rather than going where it was needed. Incredibly, it has even been found in the past to have been invested in the arms industry and other damaging pursuits!

Now this news report really gave me a "WTF" moment!

The documents include "internal and proprietary methodology and procedures for fundraising, confidential information about its internal operations, and confidential financial information," wrote Gabrielle Levin of Gibson Dunn in a letter to the attorney general's office.
If those details were disclosed, "the American Red Cross would suffer competitive harm because its competitors would be able to mimic the American Red Cross's business model for an increased competitive advantage," Levin wrote.

Excuse me? Since when was doing charitable work a competition? Surely the idea is to provide relief, through donations, to those that need the help the most, not trying to gain a competitive market edge like any other large corporation!

This dovetails slightly with a conversation I was having with a work colleague a short while ago, regarding the big Cancer charities, specifically Cancer Research.
Each year, hardly a week goes by without some sponsored event somewhere in the country with people doing fun runs, walks or other activities and being sponsored by friends and family. These events are usually accompanied by huge publicity campaigns, designed to be emotive and tug at the heartstrings, especially of those who have lost loved ones to Cancer. That is all well and good, and collectively these events and the charities that run them pull in a massive amount of money each year.

However. Despite the decades of "research" and the hundreds of £Millions, possibly £Billions donated by the public, we do not yet have a cure. What we do have is very expensive drugs produced by the Pharma industry that "manage" the disease, and other equally expensive drugs to "manage" the side effects of the treatments.

Now, my question was, if all that money is being collected for research, who is it paid to? You'd think that, if the research is publicly funded, the drugs would be in the public domain and cheap. But no! They are patented by the big Pharma players and sold for huge profits. So what is the point of donating for research, when the fruits of that research are used for monetary gain on a massive scale by private corporations? Why not let the big Pharma corporations fund the research in the first place?

When big charities start protecting themselves with expensive lawyers, to hide their activities and financial disclosure, then you know they have something damaging to protect and are up to no good. After all, they are supposed to be doing good work, not using the donated money to enrich the board members, play the markets and invest in industries that caused the need for the charitable donations in the first place.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1019095/pg1