GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Planned Parenthood wins prestigious Lasker Award

domingo, 10 de septiembre de 2017

BioEdge: Planned Parenthood wins prestigious Lasker Award

BioEdge: Planned Parenthood wins prestigious Lasker Award

Saturday, September 9, 2017

Bioedge

Planned Parenthood wins prestigious Lasker Award

by Michael Cook | 9 Sep 2017 |

Planned Parenthood, the world-wide foundation for promoting reproductive health care and sex education, has won the 2017 Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award. According to the Lasker Foundation,

Without Planned Parenthood, many individuals would not have access to high-quality and affordable health care. Although the organization is most famous for aiding women, it helps men as well. In 2015, its almost 650 U.S. health care centers served 2.4 million people.

The prestige of the Lasker Awards is so great that they are regarded as warm-ups for the Nobel Prize. So Planned Parenthood could be in the running for a Nobel Prize in Medicine or for Peace. The award is a poke in the eye for Republicans who have called for Federal funds to Planned Parenthood to be slashed. President Trump has vowed to defund Planned Parenthood as part of a health care plan overturning Obamacare. Federal grants make up about 40% of Planned Parenthood’s budget.

The Lasker Foundation’s link to Planned Parenthood goes back 80 years, when Mary Lasker, the second wife of philanthropist and advertisting guru Albert Lasker, made a donation to Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League and later joined its board. It was Albert Lasker who suggested that the organisation’s name be changed to make it more acceptable to the American public.

In the information accompanying the award, the Lasker Foundation praised “Planned Parenthood’s crucial role in the U.S. medical care system” and cited its numerous backers, including the American Medical Association, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Public Health Association. However, it failed to mention anything about the allegations of sales of foetal body parts which kept Planned Parenthood on the front page of world newspapers for weeks in 2016.

Saturday, September 9, 2017

Planned Parenthood is an organisation which inspires both love and loathing. One of its admirers is the Lasker Foundation, which has just presented it with the Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award for services to reproductive health.

Since many Laskers have gone on to win Nobels, PP is suddenly on the starting blocks for a Nobel Peace Prize. If it were only for its success in promoting contraception and abortion, it might be too controversial even for the Norwegian Nobel Committee. However, as a one-fingered salute to President Donald Trump, who has promised to defund PP, it could prove nearly irresistible. Read all about it below.

On a completely different topic, if you happen to live in Melbourne and are free on Thursday evening, there will be a launch of my book, The Great Human Dignity Heist, in Carlton. The details are on our Facebook page. It would be great to meet lots of BioEdge readers there.

Cheers,