A Look at the ACS Puzzle and Beyond

This is the last piece of the Association/Society/Foundation puzzle that we will look at. We currently have enough to make a general assessment of the piece that we have. This last piece was a little unusual in that the 2004 Annual Report of the American Cancer Society did not have any financial information and when the financial information was found is was in a unaudited consolidatd statement and only for 2003. There was no financial information for 2004. There was the standard section for the public, a section for healthcare providers and a section for researchers. Much of the 2004 annual report was "forward looking" (just like in the others), it wasn't until you see the consolidated financial statement that we see what has actually gone into research. After looking through the document I found the two numbers needed; 1. the total revenue and 2. the total expendature on research. The total revenue was listed as (for 2003) $836,296,000 and the total expendature on research was listed as $130,952,000, meaning of the total amount spent only 16% was spent on research. They list administation costs at 20% an the rest 64% as "education and promotion".

The question that remains to be answered, is why so little on research and so much on education and promotion. Education and promotion seem to be the main function of these associations, societies and foundations. The question here is how effective have these "charities" been and could more be done. There seems to be an association, foundation or society for every disease. This means that there is a clear roadmap to follow in exploring what's been done, a puzzle that will tell us what's left to be done in the puzzle of medical science.