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

Plastic Surgery Nightmare Leads to Woman Having Hands and Feet Cut Off

Apryl Brown remembers lying on the hospital bed as the doctor uttered those words. A sense of relief came over her.
"I didn't think about losing my children. I didn't think about leaving my mother," she said. She thought instead of how death would feel. "Although I will be dead, I will not be in pain anymore."
That searing pain came from an unimaginable source: a silicone filler, like the one Brown assumed plastic surgeons use daily. Hers was injected into her buttocks, with the hope of improving her appearance.
Brown never predicted the injections would land her here -- dying in a hospital bed in June 2010.
Her body was shutting down from a staph infection that doctors said was connected to the silicone injections. Her limbs were curling and turning black, the visible signs of necrosis. Brown recalled seeing her hands in the hospital, thinking, "Oh, my God. I am going to lose my hands. I looked at my feet ,and they were dead, too."
Doctors had no choice. To save Brown's life, they amputated her hands, feet and the flesh around her buttocks and hips in 27 surgeries. Somehow, she survived.
...
In 2004, while she was working on a new client's hair, she got her chance. The client happened to mention she did silicone injections cheaply. With a few sessions, she told Brown, she could obtain the shape she had always wanted. Brown was sold. A week later, she found herself in a house laying down in a bedroom receiving her first of four injections into her butt cheeks.
Following her second treatment, Brown remembers doubting her decision. "A voice just came to me like, 'What are you doing? Are you serious? You are going to allow somebody to inject something into your body and you have no idea what it is.' " Brown decided that day to stop doing the treatments and never went back.
The true cost of the injections would come later, following years of pain and visits with doctors.
...
Brown considers herself a living example of what happens when you're not careful.
She doesn't hesitate to tell others about how she suffered in extreme pain for five long years after the silicone injections. She explains how she watched her buttocks harden and discolor, seeing doctor after doctor to try to get help. She lifts what's left of her arms and explains what was actually injected in her buttocks.
When her doctors tested the substance injected into her body, Brown says it was bathroom caulk. Brown doesn't know what happened to the woman who injected her.
At 47, Brown has had to learn to do everything all over again with prosthetics. She is able to live on her own with the help of an aide that comes in to help her for a few hours a day.
She doesn't want pity; she wants people to listen to her cautionary story.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/01/health/diy-plastic-surgery/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

TruthLoader: Strange Medical Facts

This week we take a dose of bizarre medical facts. How much is your body worth? How long can you keep a dog's head alive for? What was the medieval cure for piles? All this and more. Just don't eat whilst watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOvBM9kRdAo 

North Carolina: Cover Up pf Exposure to Mad Cow Disease Exposed

Doctors in North Carolina are being forced to admit that 18 patients recently treated at an area medical facility may have been exposed to a rare, degenerative and incurable brain disease.
Medical instruments used by physicians at the Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC had not been properly sanitized, the facility’s president said during a press conference on Monday, and could have spread Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease to upwards of 18 patients.
Physicians at the medical center performed a neurosurgical procedure on a patient last month who has since been revealed to have the disorder, president Jeff Lindsay told reporters, but failed to use an enhanced sterilization process after to properly sanitize those tools.
Normal sterilization procedures were done on the instruments, Lindsay said, but physicians came short of conducting a more thorough process typically done to sanitize implements used when dealing with the deadly brain disease.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or CJD, is a degenerative brain disorder that normally affects only one-in-one million people around the globe each year. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, persons infected with CJD die usually within one year of onset of illness.
“While the CDC categorizes such risks as ‘very low,’ any risk of transmission is simply unacceptable,” Lindsay said, according to local television station WGHP.

http://rt.com/usa/creutzfeldt-jakob-north-carolina-563/