The following verbatim quote is from a story in today’s Washington Post, not as you may think, from the pages of the National Lampoon —
“Von Eschenbach also faces potential conflict-of-interest issues because of his ongoing role as vice chairman of the board of C-Change, a nonprofit organization headed by George H.W. and Barbara Bush.” Now, you-ve probably never head of C-Change. Me neither. So I looked it up. “C,” in case you were wondering, doesn’t stand for “conservative” or “cabal” or “callous” — it stands for “cancer.” And Dr. von Eschenbach serves on the board with other well-known super-conservatives like Senator Diane Feinstein. Since you won’t find out more about the mysterious “C-Change” anywhere in the Post article, here is some verbiage direct from the organization’s website. First, their mission statement:
“C-Change is comprised of the nation’s key cancer leaders from government, business, and nonprofit sectors. These cancer leaders share the vision of a future where cancer is prevented, detected early, and cured or is managed successfully as a chronic illness.”
And do these folks gather in secret to further the vast right-wing conspiracy? No? Then what do they do? Thanks for asking, it’s more than the Post did. “One of the underlying principles of C-Change is to leverage the leadership and expertise of all sectors of society to eliminate cancer as a major public health problem at the earliest possible time. C-Change is both a forum and a catalyst for identifying issues and major challenges facing the cancer community and for initiating collaborative actions to complement the efforts of individual.”
Members of C-Change include representatives from:
* Governmental agencies with federal funding devoted to cancer research and/or applications
* Academic cancer centers
* Private, for-profit companies
* Nonprofit advocacy/consumer organizations
* Professional organizations representing groups of individuals and/or organizations with a common interest in cancer
* Congressional, administration, and state government officials
* The media
Yep. Sure sounds like a conflict of interest to me.
