Komen Reverses Decision With Planned Parenthood

The event truly did wake up the American public on how women’s health is understood today or rather should I say “misunderstood” as you read the news the last few days, it was pretty vicious and I read enough of it myself. We live in a world of business analytics today, algorithms that give us parameters to digest information and we make our decisions based on them. I watched the original video from Komen on why the decisions were made and that was exactly what I came away with. Again doing this blog I read so much of similar press releases and stories on the web and this was just one more but unfortunately politics jumped in here big time.

In essence this a big awakening to the American public on how we are attacked by some algorithms (software is nothing but a bunch of algorithms working together in the words of Bill Gates) that are defined for “desired” results perhaps instead of “accurate” results. It happens all the time in the business world and as long the two are the same we don’t have a problem but sadly it doesn’t work that way.

This was a rather big awakening to remind us that “ethics” need to play a big role today and you can’t use mathematical formulas to mow people over when the lines cross. You won’t read this anywhere else on the web as most don’t understand or make an attempt to understand coding and math, but this is how I see the long and short of it without putting a big OMG spin in her. They still have this issue I think under political discussion to maybe look at too as we all know this one won’t die either as it will continue to come up over and over.

Komen Has Also Stopped Funding for Embryonic Stem Cell Research–Politics and Some of Business Intelligence Algorithms At Work Here?

I also do hope they have stopped their activity from last year of suing smaller charities for using the word “cure” as this again is counter productive of what philanthropy is supposed to be and $1 million can certainly pay for a lot breast cancer screens rather than lawsuits.

We do have other advocates in Healthcare and Wendell Potter is one that has to come to mind as he was one that had been there and done in a prior occupation and speaks out about how people get sucked in to the corporate brain washing that occurs and in his own words he said he found that he to was looking at algorithms and reports as numbers and forgot they were people until his awakening day with finding some missing ethics. You can can read his material all over the web to find out more and I think this is a bit of what we had going on here, folks were lost in the algorithms and all of a sudden when the “teeth” came out and made those decisions, people woke up.

Our new consumer protection chief, Richard Cordray has his hands full to in unwinding and getting the bottom of how ethics and business intelligence algorithms need to work in harmony so as not to harm consumers. At the link below are some links to some the prior Attack posts I have here that are defined with all pubic information and give some real glaring examples of discrimination by the algorithm.

President Appoints Richard Cordray as New Consumer Financial Protection Chief – Hope He Knows And Understands Correcting Flawed Math and Formulas To Battle the “Financial Attack of Killer Algorithms” On Consumers With Banks and Corporate USA

In one final thought here too as I always do talk about this, we have this big sense of digital illiteracy in Congress today and whenever things get over their heads with comprehension levels, they all go back to this “default” topic of abortions and you see it in the news all the time so some smarter Congressmen would definitely be in order here as they accomplish nothing and basically lead up to this big issue here with lobbying and trying to control where they have none. BD

Digital Illiteracy Still Plagues Law Makers–Severe Focus on Abortion Rights Proves It–Is This Where Our Lawmaking Knowledge Leaves Off or Even Begins? Scary…

This was truly a sad state of affairs but maybe some of those who are stuck in their “default” rhetoric will have the chance to take a look at themselves and see how the rest of the educated digital world views them. Again, sad that this methodology was unbalanced and even the Komen organization was snowed under with the rationale with being blind sided on the ethics and unintentional consequences that occurred.

No doubt when you see the NYSE stock exchange lit up in pink it does make you wonder where the powers of influence like and how mathematics are marketed and spun to where reality is such a far sight away.

This is yet one more chapter in the Attack of the Killer Algorithms. BD

We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.
The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.
Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.
Starting this afternoon, we will have calls with our network and key supporters to refocus our attention on our mission and get back to doing our work. We ask for the public’s understanding and patience as we gather our Komen affiliates from around the country to determine how to move forward in the best interests of the women and people we serve.
We extend our deepest thanks for the outpouring of support we have received from so many in the past few days and we sincerely hope that these changes will be welcomed by those who have expressed their concern.

http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2012/02/komen-apologizes-for-recent-de.html