Internet anti-socials and/or people wanting to rationalize to themselves why they shouldn't have to donate to charity.
http://www.alsa.org/news/media/press-releases/ice-bucket-challenge-082614.html
I really don't understand the cynicism behind this. People are complaining that it's not doing anything to actually spread awareness of what ALS is, but does it really matter?
Approximately 5,600 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with ALS each year. The incidence of ALS is two per 100,000 people, and it is estimated that as many as 30,000 Americans may have the disease at any given time.
Number of deaths (annual, in US) for leading causes of death
Heart disease: 596,577
Cancer: 576,691
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 142,943
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,932
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 126,438
Alzheimer's disease: 84,974
Diabetes: 73,831
Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,826
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,591
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 39,518
90 mil is a lot of scrilla for something that is relatively rare
For comparison:
90 mil is a lot of scrilla for something that is relatively rare
For comparison:
90 mil is a lot of scrilla for something that is relatively rare
For comparison:
As someone who has dealt with ALS personally, I feel this. It is a lot of money for a pretty rare disease. Could the money be better spent? I dunno.
The most common argument is that research up until this point has yielded no results.
Personally, I have no issue with the campaign at all.
You severely underestimate the cost of research and more importantly the cost of treating someone with ALS. And you forget that how many billions pharmaceuticals pump into things like heart disease.
All research yields no results until the point it actually does.
Unless you are personally affected or know someone who is, I don't really get understand donating to things that don't have a high lives-saved:$ ratio. Any charitable donation is better than none, of course, but I try to maximize effectiveness by donating to stuff like malaria nets.
People can donate to whatever makes them feel good, but I'd personally rather see that 90 million go somewhere more it can have more impact. More people die from malaria (1.2 mil) every year than will ever have ALS.
I know from past experience that few here will agree with me and I'm not looking to have another rational vs. emotional debate, but the OP was asking where the cynicism comes from and that's what I was trying to answer.
Unless you are personally affected or know someone who is, I don't really get understand donating to things that don't have a high lives-saved:$ ratio. Any charitable donation is better than none, of course, but I try to maximize effectiveness by donating to stuff like malaria nets.
People can donate to whatever makes them feel good, but I'd personally rather see that 90 million go somewhere more it can have more impact. More people die from malaria (1.2 mil) every year than will ever have ALS.
I know from past experience that few here will agree with me and I'm not looking to have another rational vs. emotional debate, but the OP was asking where the cynicism comes from and that's what I was trying to answer.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing w PJ but your last sentence is not the same nor anywhere near the same as what was presented by PJ. Just in case you thought it helped strengthen your logic.I'll just add that I don't think this is a rational vs emotional. Like I said earlier, rationally the money donated to ALS research can provide invaluable data on other diseases as well. This is the exact same logic that wonders why people are fighting for things like gay marriage in the US when there is genocide going on in the world.
I'll just add that I don't think this is a rational vs emotional. Like I said earlier, rationally the money donated to ALS research can provide invaluable data on other diseases as well.
http://www.alsa.org/news/media/press-releases/ice-bucket-challenge-082614.html
I really don't understand the cynicism behind this. People are complaining that it's not doing anything to actually spread awareness of what ALS is, but does it really matter?
That's a huge difference so I got curious and googled it and the first thing that came up was that over 1mil per year die from malaria. Granted I didn't fact check further but there seems to be discrepancies either way.1.2 million aren't dying from malaria. Latest estimate is 600 something thousand in 2012. Heart disease killed 7.4 million. Unless you have a personal connection to malaria, by your own reasoning there are countless other initiative more worthy of your money.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing w PJ but your last sentence is not the same nor anywhere near the same as what was presented by PJ. Just in case you thought it helped strengthen your logic.
I don't any research money for any disease is wasteful, but $90 million for ALS research might turn up something important years from now or it might turn up nothing of value at all.
$90 million in malaria nets would be guaranteed to save thousands of lives this year.
There are other examples but I am using malaria nets because that was the one I found when I was researching high impact charities. There's a lot of low hanging fruit in the charity world. There are still millions of people dying every year from diarrhea for cryin out loud.
1.2 million aren't dying from malaria. Latest estimate is 600 something thousand in 2012. Heart disease killed 7.4 million. Unless you have a personal connection to malaria, by your own reasoning there are countless other initiative more worthy of your money.
That's a huge difference so I got curious and googled it and the first thing that came up was that over 1mil per year die from malaria. Granted I didn't fact check further but there seems to be discrepancies either way.
My dad died with ALS. It's an incredibly mean and fucked up disease with virtually zero public awareness before this. Soo I guess I'm cool with the ice bucket challenges.
The most common argument is that research up until this point has yielded no results.
Personally, I have no issue with the campaign at all.
I'm getting my info from: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/feb/03/malaria-deaths-research
"Malaria kills twice as many people as previously thought, research finds
Malaria kills 1.2 million people every year, a finding that has implications for global efforts to eliminate the disease"
Was that changed again back to 600k?
Anyway, heart disease as a cause of death is nearly as vague as "cancer". There are many causes of it and many of them are preventable. If people ate less shitty and stopped smoking it would probably cut that number by a lot. Education, regulation, and access to good food are government issues to me, rather than charitable ones.
Also, even if certain things kill more than malaria, few if any are as cheaply preventable. A malaria net costs less than $4 delivered
Malaria charities get a shitload of private donation money, especially since the disease is one of Bill Gates' personal causes. ALS has never had this kind of attention before and I doubt it will continue.
Thinking about charity in terms of "high impact" and "high efficacy" ignores the fact that a lot of ineffective charities are ineffective because they don't get enough attention or enough money.
Better spent on what? Research into finding an ALS cure alone with provide invaluable data about the nature the brain and body not to mention treatments that could work for other diseases like Alzheimer's
Here's the top 10:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/
You didn't start this off as a nuanced comparison, so I really don't think you should retreat into one when the reasoning is scrutinized.
I was using impact in terms of the number of people that can be helped and how much they will be helped.
200 million people get malaria every year and 600k die from it (according to KHarvey16's WHO link), a large number of them children. ALS affects far fewer and generally only people who are 40+
Even granting metalslimer's argument that the ALS research could apply to other things..
Then why not donate to Alzheimer's research directly? It kills far more people and maybe a cure for Alzheimer's would help ALS
My comparison was dollars spent vs lives saved. If you can link a heart disease charity that saves lives for less money than malaria nets, please let me know so I can donate to it.
Nuance wasn't necessary when the comparison was between two singular conditions. Heart disease has many causes and like I said earlier, many of them are preventable.
You're just repeating things you've said already. You haven't addressed anything anyone has offered as rebuttal. The United States government gives 1.65 billion dollars per year to malaria-related causes. Canada gives 650 million. The Global Fund has asked for a total of $15 billion per year and is damn close to receiving it. Bill and Melinda Gates gave 50 million together in a single year.
Large donations and government projects are already helping people with malaria. Nobody has, to date, given nearly enough to ALS. This is their one opportunity.
Short term thinking like this would discourage donations toward research because it doesn't save anyone immediately, until one day it potentionally saves everyone.
Sorry, there's no spreadsheet curated by other people I can use to determine how to feel about sufferers of progeria.
If you want to give money to research instead of treatment/prevention, ALS would still have to rank low due to the relatively low number of people who have it.
http://www.progeriaresearch.org/
You can donate to that if you want and find a cure for the 80 total people in the world who have it.
If you believe that all money spent on research is equally valuable than I have no objection with using a facebook meme to guide your choice of charity. A dartboard would also suffice