So there has been a lot of icebucket challenges going around , over a million to be slightly more precise , however the question I want to raise is that firstly are we dontating to the correct charity and secondly pouring ice with water is not the best way to do things 
. So for the first one : ALS is not that deadly of a disease , it only really effects people who are already at an age when its difficult to perform normal tasks anyway. More obvious charities to donate to would be ones for heart disease , this is currently one of the biggest killers in the western world and yet recieves moderately low funding compared to things such as breast cancer. 2: if you are going to pour something over your head to show that you care , add some form of absorbant salt to it, Drops the temperature hugely , if you are really going to do it though then use dry ice or if you are really daring use some liquid nitrogen.
But what is the point youâre trying to make? Are you just implying that we support the wrong charity (and by we I mean people who did the challenge, since I havenât done it.). I agree with you that the money could be spent on something âmore importantâ like cancer or heart attack treatment. But every charity is good, so people who donate are already doing something good. Iâd rather see money spent on soccer players go to charity instead. They get millions of bucks and itâs not like they need it. Last year they calculated how most it would cost to build a new soccer stadium (in the Netherlands, my country), and someone posted on Facebook how much a new hospital dedicated to cancer would cost. It was way lower but for some reason people donât see whatâs really important in life.
That article you read exaggerates the size of those circles. look at the amount of money compared to the size of the circles. The amount of money is proportional to the radius, and humans judge the size of the circle by it area. So the difference in money is squared making it seem huge.
Also keep in mind that it is in Pharmacy companies interests to help out things like heart disease and cancer. They are profitable businesses. ALS on the other hand is not, so it needs all the help it could get. ALS has raised a ton of money. It is a deadly disease and it severely lowers the quality of life, even at a young age. At 40-50 you can barely use your arms anymore. Think of your cousins/parents/etc. who are around that age. Could you imagine if they could no longer move their hands, or even more of their body. If they were always in a wheelchair and had to breath through a damn straw, because it is not profitable to help them.
Stop turning people into numbers. ALS may be an easier problem to solve than Cancer (which is seemingly impossible to solve sometimes). They do not have the funding to find the cure, now that they do have more money, maybe they will do it. Making the quality of life better for more people.
Iâm sure if you knew someone with ALS your thoughts would be different. Also keep in mind that people tend to donate to things that touch them the most. If you have a lot of friends/family with cancer or heart disease or ALS you are probably gonna donate to that cause.
Anyway, what is your proposal. Should we all just donate to a government run company and have them distribute it according to deaths by disease? Should we tell people how to donate their money?
I donât think so, iâm gonna donate to whatever cause i feel most for.
The ice bucket challenge is pretty fun and went viral, it was a great publicity stunt for a good cause? What is wrong with that? No one is forcing anyone to donate to ALS, people are choosing to because right now it has the spotlight. Nothing wrong with that as far as I can see.
edit:
Also the ALS foundation has a higher rating on charity navigator than St. Judeâs and other famous cancer organizations.
edit2:
The misleading image I was referring to
?
ALS can begin at any age as far as I am aware, and it most certainly IS deadly as your chance of a fatal hearth-failure is very high.
At least thats what my mother told me about ALS and what it does.
(And she should know what it does because some of her patients have it)
Or am I (and my mother) wrong?
- Longor1996
Even if this isnât a troll post, why?
No you are nto wrong , my wording went a bit off there I meant its not as widespread or severe as other diseases , even looking at the values themselves almost a 100x more people die because of heart disease and yet the funding is only twice the amount of the funding for ALS .
Of course you should donate , dontating to any charity is good because it will always help someone , my point is that dont throw the money at one problem , it wont solve the rest. You should give money to ALS to Heart disease to cancer to unicef because it helps people but just giving all the money to one place leaves the others at difficulty, however going onto heart disease which is sometimes caused by people with things such as obesity and smoking whereas having ALS is currently not known to be caused by any human controllable factors.
I thought when I first heard about it that chilling your body or head has some kind of significance to ALS
but apparently the act of the ice bucket is just arbitrary and for publicity reasons.
As such I think its silly, I could just make a video saying âHi, I donated for ALS. BYEâ
So whats next, light your fart to advertise for cancer research donations ?
I guess I canât be angry or anything since its for charity, I just donât like whenever many people do something because someone else did it @ sheep behavior - granted not a bad thing here but still stupid.
This Ice Bucket Challenge is like ârace against cancerâ.
People want to do âweirdâ things (race, nominate), and what do they do? Connect it with something âgoodâ: âHey Iâm Chris and Iâm squeezing boobs for charityâ (this quote is real, three guys gave 20 dollars to charity per pair of squeezed boobs, itâs not really the same, but comparable).