“ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” a term everyone as heard of by now. Back in 2014 a famous challenge went viral on the internet in which millions of people took part in, but many people were unaware of what “ALS” actually stood for and were doing the challenge for fun and to cool off from that 2014 summer heat; while others were completely aware of what it meant and how terrible of a disease it can be to deal with. Not too long after the challenge started, more and more research was being done by people who were participating and eventually they found that “The search for a treatment for this deadly degenerative disease is rife with studies so poorly designed that they offered nothing more than false hope for people essentially handed a death sentence along with their diagnosis.” (pg.53) After doing research, people of course started donating their money to organizations and medical institutes to do more research to find a cure. But where was peoples money actually going?
According to ALS Association “ALS stands for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, some pretty big words which is why scientists cut it down to a small abbreviation. ALS effects nerve cells in your brain and spine. After being diagnosed, patients never receive a pure because there isn’t one. During this time a lot can happen to the patient. First motor neurons die (which are cell nerves that help impulses pass from yourbrain or spinal cord to muscles or glands in your body), and keep in mind that if your motor neurons die there is no way for the impulses to get to your muscles, leaving your muscles workless, which means you cannot move which translates to one being paralyzed and eventually death. I’d imagine after reading up on all of this, you’d want to donate to research organizations so that scientists can find a cure so that we can have less dates due to ALS.
The millions of dollars that were donated was going to research to find more cures for this disease and eventually scientist discovered a potential cure for ALS. After testing the product on mice, spending millions more, and waiting up to nine months for a test result back, they found that the “potential cure” didn’t have any potential at all. It was not making any difference in slowing down the process of ALS. Therefor, the multimillion dollar research project went to waste and money went down the drain. Almost the thing happened to Murphy, a six foot three guy who played sports. He agreed to go through a clinical trial, which if course costed money too. Money that came from donations from people. After spending more and more money for more research, nothing ever came through and the trials kept failing. That led to money going down the drain and still no cure or a medicine to even slow down the process. Unfortunately Murphy passed away due to his diagnosis to ALS.
People should be able to donate to whom ever, or what ever organization they’d like but I encourage people to do more research on the cause and even the organization they’re donating to so that they know exactly where their money is going and the cause it’ll be used for.
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