The whole Ice Bucket Challange has gone hyper-viral. Every celebrity, Facebook friend and Stephen King are dumping buckets of ice water on themselves to raise money for ALS (formerly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease) research and hopefully a cure. The cause is a very worthy one, obviously. The results of the disease are quite cruel. As the ASL Association defines the disease:
“Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease,” is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.”
Basically, it takes the ability from an infected individual to control their own body. Like I said before, it’s cruel.
On a side not, I wonder if they are calling it ALS again because no one 25 or under know who Lou Gehrig is. I know it is a dumb question, but these are the thoughts that keep me up at night.
If you want to raise awareness by dumping water and calling people out to do the same then go for it (though I am not sure awareness could be raised anymore than it is). I was going to just mail out cards asking people nicely to enjoy a glass of water while donating $100 online at http://www.alsa.org/, but I am humble that way. Or at least I was until David Grohl and the Foo Fighters upped the game for everyone with this amazing “Carrie” (the Brian De Palma version, not that crap remake) parody.
David Grohl may be the next step in human evolution and, if so, I really like where our species is headed.
Enjoy.
Update
Looks like Stephen King took up the challenge in his own way:
