Compromised? 

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Cozy Relationships
The Komen group relies on longtime Washington lobbyist, Rae F. Evans, a self-described "corporate strategist" with little experience or interest in grassroots advocacy, who also doubles as lobbyist for Nancy Brinker's husband, restaurant magnate and polo champion Norman Brinker, of Brinker International. Norman Brinker made his fortune off restaurants such as Steak & Ale, Chili's, and Bennigan's.

Also on board for Komen's Patients' Bill of Rights efforts was Akin-Gump, the fourth largest lobbying firm in the country, whose roster reads like a who's who of anti-health care reformers. Akin-Gump has direct links to the 30-member Health Benefits Coalition, industry's leading PAC in the fight to stop a Patients' Bill of Rights that would boost patients' rights over their health plans.

For his part, Norman Brinker, a longtime Komen board member, was a bitter foe of a meaningful Patients' Bill of Rights, through the efforts of both Evans and the National Restaurant Association.

Through the years, the Brinkers helped deliver the state of Texas to George W. Bush, for the governor's seat and then the Presidency. Their phenomenal fund-raising skills earned them the moniker of "Bush Pioneers," followed up with committee positions for the Bush Inaugural Ball, which requires a minimum $25,000 donation. On her own steam, Nancy Brinker lists nearly $256,000 in Bush and Republican Party donations, from Bush gubernatorial races, GOP hard and soft money, and federal PAC hard money, according to FEC records.

Not surprisingly, the Komen Foundation has owned $162,843 in Brinker International stock during 2000, the only year for which records are available. The Foundation also owns stock in several pharmaceutical companies and in General Electric, one of the largest makers of mammogram machines in the world.

At 1998 Food and Drug Administration hearings, the Komen Foundation was the only national breast cancer group to endorse the cancer treatment drug tamoxifen as a prevention device for healthy but high-risk women, despite vehement opposition by most other breast cancer groups because of its links to uterine cancer. Its maker, AstraZeneca, which in essence founded Breast Cancer Awareness Month, has long been a Komen booster, making educational grants to Komen and having a visible presence at the Race For the Cure. Until a corporate reorganization in 2000, the company was a leading producer of pesticides, including acetochlor, classified by the EPA as a "probable human carcinogen."

Nancy Brinker also owns a half-million dollars' worth of stock in US Oncology, a chain of for-profit treatment centers (on whose board she sat at least from 1999 through 2001, according to company records). One of US Oncology's lobbyists in 2000, Alison McSlarrow of McSlarrow Consulting, is former Deputy Chief of Staff to US Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) -- a chief architect of the pro-HMO version of the Patients' Bill of Rights.

The Komen group's stock portfolios and cozy relationships with Republican leadership set them apart from most breast cancer patient groups. Even the Beltway insiders at the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC), who played a major role in creating the national research and early screening agenda that sprung up nearly overnight beginning in the early 1990s, are austere in comparison. So when the Patients' Bill of Rights compromise bill was announced, the NBCC, among many others, was appalled.

"Late at night, and behind closed doors," read the Coalition's August 2001 press release, "members of Congress rewrote what would have been a strong and enforceable Patients' Bill of Rights, turning it into a sham for patients while continuing to protect HMOs."

"Any corporate ties to a cancer-related industry raises huge credibility issues for a group that is trying to influence public policy," says Sharon Batt, author of a seminal book on the movement, Patient No More: The Politics of Breast Cancer, and current Chair of Women's Health and the Environment at Canada's Dalhousie University.

"Sitting on corporate boards and organizations that have vested interests in cancer policies is an even higher level of conflict than taking funds: a board member is expected to promote the interests of that corporation," said Batt.

"Even the NBCC takes money from the pharmaceutical industry, but I doubt (its leaders) sit on corporate boards," a fact confirmed by an NBCC spokeswoman in a recent interview.

San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Action goes one step farther, refusing all donations from corporations that make money off breast cancer such as pharmaceutical companies, tobacco and pesticide manufacturers, and cancer treatment facilities.

Explained BCA's executive director Barbara Brenner, "With the growing effort by corporations to look like "good guys' by supporting cancer organizations, it is difficult, if not impossible, to know whether an advocacy organization's positions are based on well thought out policies or on who's paying the bills."