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ALS Ice Bucket Challenge raises 88.5 million, growing at average of 9 million a day
- Thread starter metalslimer
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Bjomesphat
Banned
Isn't the definition of charity voluntary? No one should feel guilty for not donating anything. Or do what I do. Spread awareness, but donate to a charity I actually care about.
My sister did the ice bucket challenge this weekend. She didn't donate, but my aunt who she challenged did. I mean out of a string of 100 people if each one is challenged in a row then someone is bound to donate. What's the worst that could happen? The foundation doesn't make nearly as much money as they hoped? Still better than none.
Arkos
Nose how to spell and rede to
That's actually funny and neat, but start your own thread please tyvm
metalslimer
Member
metalslimer
Member
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
sixteen-bit
Member
What a success.
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.
ElectricBlanketFire
Member
Right. I was just letting the OP know what others (not me) are arguing.
SuperEpicGuy
Banned
I think why some people are not happy with this is because people donated to this charity many of them won't bother donating to any other one. Now that wouldn't be such an issue if in the 70 or so years we knew about this disease the only thing that we discovered is a drug that will increase the person's lifespan by a couple of months.
Plus it affects a very small amount of people compared to people who have heart diseases or cancer.
I saw this in a video but I do have to say that it makes sense somewhat.
Plus it affects a very small amount of people compared to people who have heart diseases or cancer.
I saw this in a video but I do have to say that it makes sense somewhat.
metalslimer
Member
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'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.
bengraven
Member
It's cynical because people don't like popular things. And people will try and bring them down because they hate popular things.
The reality: they created a "meme" that is raising money and making people aware of ALS - we all have heard of Lou Gerig's but didn't know much about it not hear the term ALS until this year. And now we are aware of it and now they are getting money to help them.
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.
metalslimer
Member
The logic that there are bigger issues to face so we should work on that?
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.
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
I wonder if this will translate to an actual awareness (so say in 5 years, if the average person knows what it is, and cares about it). I hope this isn't just a fad. I wonder if it can get to the level of "breast cancer" or "cancer" awareness.
Well that's the nature of research I guess, doesn't mean there won't be a breakthrough thanks to this funding so it isn't really a great argument.
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.
Malaria does seem to be nearly saturated in funding. Givewell.org has taken Against Malaria off its list of top charities due to uncertainty that more money would help.
If you are looking for an indie cause that can still use more money, they recommend deworming:
http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/schistosomiasis-control-initiative
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
Stay tuned to Weird Al's instagram, he'll let you know what you should donate to next
More nuance.
A factor you consistently don't account for is the delta between donations received. What is the utility of a dollar donated? That depends, partly, on how much is needed vs. how much has been received. You even posted something saying malaria is off the list of preferred charities because additional donations aren't needed (according to those doing the ranking).
Factors like these need to be weighted when trying to decide what the best charity is, and obviously that's entirely subjective. The idea that you can criticize the philanthropy of others based on your own personal subjective criteria isn't itself wrong really, but it should at least be recognized that the basis for the criticism in fact is subjective and not universal to any degree.
alfredofroylan
Member
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