In order to cure cancer you first have to fix the business
of cancer. This is true of all of
today’s mainstream diseases. There is a
simple fix though: the people who fund the research for the cure need to own an
equal share in the cure.
The Solution: The Stickman Model
Form a not for profit
co-operative with the following conditions:
·
The co-operative only funds research and not
cancer related programs
·
Two ways to donate: pure donation, or donation
including a lifetime membership with one voting share to the cooperative
·
A corporation can only make a pure donation and
can never own a voting share
·
An individual can only ever own one voting share
no matter how much they donate
·
Memberships cannot be transferred and there are no
proxy votes
·
The co-operative only funds research on one drug
at a time
·
The co-operative have limited partnerships or
ventures with outside entities
·
All research testing is to be completed in-house
and the facility funded 100% by donors
·
The co-operative is not for profit. Donors know in advance of making a donation
if a cure is found it will be offered to the public at cost, even to people who
did not donate to the co-operative. There is no money to be made. The pure goal
of the co-operative to find a cure and not to make a monetary return
·
The co-operative operate as a simple business
with simple and transparent banking procedures
·
The co-operative financial statements are
audited yearly and made public
·
The co-operative preferably not be deemed a
‘registered charity’….
Support for the
Solution
In business the owner takes on the risks and rewards of
doing business. In the current cancer
business model donors are not owners. We
donate to societies and not for profit organizations with well-respected board
members and business people the world over; however we are not in charge of how
the money is spent.
If the people in charge want to spend the money on popcorn
and candy the only thing donors can do is stop future donations to the
organization. Of course these wonderful
organizations do not waste money on non-cancer related indulgences, but how
often do you as a donor check out what they are spending the donated money on? Never?
If the answer is never then there is a flaw in this business model
because you are blindly investing your donations without knowing what you are
funding.
Go look at the financial statements of the last cancer
charity you donated to. Here is the trick
though: change from dollars to percentages (expense item cost divided by the
total dollars spent). Look at the percent
spent on cancer programs and the percent spent on cancer research. Some charities with the goal of curing cancer
are spending more money on cancer programs then they are on cancer research.
Spending a lot of money on cancer programs is not a bad
thing. These programs are a lifeline for
those living with cancer. But then the
cancer society’s goal shouldn’t be ‘curing cancer,’ it should be ‘helping those
with cancer today.’
The first fix to the cancer business model is splitting
these two functions up. Donors can then
decide which organizations to donate to: ones purely financing a cure and ones
purely financing programs beneficial to those living with cancer. One might make the argument donors will only
spend their money on cancer research and not cancer programs; but it’s the
donor’s money, it should be their choice.
Splitting the functions up is a good start to fixing the business
model, but the problem is not fixed yet.
We still are not in control of the money we donate. Control matters because the biggest problem
with cancer is how much money the disease makes, and when something makes money
there is motivation to maintain and protect it.
Current cancer treatments kill good and bad cells which effectively perpetuates
pharmaceutical companies’ profits. These
companies are not only making money off of cancer treatments but also make
money off the fallout from killing good cells.
Also, imagine if cancer was cured… would there be enough
resources to support an inflated population?
Would there be enough clean water?
Would Governments be able to manage an increased strain on their
countries’ resources even if they collected more tax dollars from an increased
population? Lastly, would a government
protect large companies (contributing to their GDP’s) from losing their revenue
stream? This is not the same thing as a
bank so these companies wouldn’t be deemed too big to fail in increasingly
fragile economies right?
These questions are not based on any real truths; they are
just made up questions and scenarios to test how strong the current cancer
business model is at preventing some random entity from blocking a cure. As it turns out the current model isn’t very
strong because today’s model cannot stop the following hypothetical scenarios:
·
An entity could persuade a cancer charity to
donate more money to cancer programs then cancer research without the majority
of donors taking notice by being a large donor or having some other significant
influence on the people who run the charity.
The majority of donors would not see this as a cure blocking strategy
·
If a university was testing a promising drug an
entity could put pressure on the university as a whole. It could threaten to cut the entire
university’s funding, or it could persuade a health authority to put excessive
and costly red tape in the way of the promising drug’s testing. A university might not be able to raise a voice
against such an injustice because it has to think of its funding and reputation
as a whole
·
The only way a pharmaceutical company would cure
a disease is if the cure would make more money than maintaining the
disease. Therefore they are not going to
spend millions of dollars testing drugs already in the market (generic drugs)
for their cancer fighting applications.
Likewise, they are not going to test natural cures either. If a natural
cure is found it would make sense for a pharmaceutical company to create a synthetic
version of it, then patent and sell it. They have a duty to their shareholders
to make money. The current model ensures the eventual cure will be expensive
·
This example is extremely farfetched and out
there (not based in remote reality but included any way): Insurance companies who pay out huge amounts
of money have motivation to test cheap promising drugs and bring them to
market, and they have the funds to do so.
If an entity wanted to stop this from happening it could make it illegal
for an insurance company to invest in research
The above hypotheticals could only happen in a world where
cancer is worth an unimaginable amount of money. Unimaginable… not millions, not trillions…
unimaginable.
How do we fix this broken business model? We start by taking the power of money out of
the equation. Next, we make it a stand-alone entity. And lastly, we think
outside the box. I am going to name this
setup “The Stickman Model.”
The Stickman Model
I defined the stickman model at the beginning of this
site. Here are the reasons for the set
conditions:
·
The co-operative only funds research and not
cancer related programs
o
For transparency
o
Ensures the mission
of finding a cure is not sidetracked
·
Two ways to donate: pure donation, or donation
including a lifetime membership with one voting share to the cooperative
·
A corporation can only make a pure donation and
can never own a voting share
·
An individual can only ever own one voting share
no matter how much they donate
·
Memberships cannot be transferred and there are
no proxy votes
o
The above four
conditions take the power of money out of the equation
o
No one donor is more
powerful than another and all donors have an equal say no matter how much money
they donate
o
All donors are
individuals
o
Donors are now
owners. They are now vested and if an
entity tries to block a cure, like say excessive health authority red tape,
than owners can be notified of the injustice and can lobby against it. This structure gives the potential cure more
of ‘voice’ then a university testing facility would have
The Stickman Model – Continued on Page 2
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