They don't necessarily cherry-pick the cancer afflicted child. They do have a protocol on whether the child has been treated elsewhere before the patient is recommended to St. Jude. A child treated elsewhere is not in line with the experimental treatments they use. By experimental, I mean that it is usually a treatment performed in adults and they are now trying to treat children. There is some cutting edge research done there but it is also heavily infected by pharma sponsoring labs to study the company's drugs.

The most disgusting thing is ALSAC, the fund-raising arm.

The hospital pays about 30% below market except for the higher-ups. The children you see in commercials are cherry picked as they don't want children that are too sickly.

They got caught in the last couple of economic downturns where they invested their moneys in things like the stock market, they weren't supposed to, and they lost big. This set them back a few years on their expansion plans.

Think of it this way, there are classes of drugs out there that have been around for decades. They have known anti-cancer properties. This hospital is motivated by big pharma to do research with big pharma controlled drugs, usually adapting protocols for adults and applying them to children. The research that is being performed will never address or touch on -Azoles, Ivermectin, HCQ, or many many other drugs which are no longer under patent control.