Als ice bucket challenge

[Michael Vincenzo]

Before you contribute to this catchy fundraising trend, you should know....

 

Recent experiments funded by the ALS Association, mice had holes drilled into their skulls, were inflicted with crippling illnesses, and were forced to run on an inclined treadmill until they collapsed from exhaustion. Monkeys had chemicals injected into their brains and backs and were later killed and dissected.

What is the result of these experiments (other than a lot of suffering)? In the past decade, only about a dozen experimental ALS treatments have moved on to human trials after being shown to alleviate the disease in animals. All but one of these treatments failed in humans—and the one that “passed” offers only marginal benefits to humans who suffer from ALS. This massive failure rate is typical for animal experiments, because even though animals feel pain and suffer like we do, their bodies often react completely differently to drugs and diseases. According to the FDA, 92 out of every 100 drugs that pass animal trials fail during the human clinical trial phase. Sophisticated non-animal testing methods—including in vitro methods, advanced computer-modeling techniques, and studies with human volunteers, among others—have given us everything from the best life-saving HIV drugs to cloned human skin for burn victims. Trying to cure human diseases by relying on outdated and ineffective animal experiments isn’t only cruel—it’s a grave disservice to people who desperately need cures.

 

Please, help scientists make real progress toward treating and curing human diseases by visiting HumaneSeal.org to find and support charities that never harm animals and which pour their time and resources into advanced, promising, human-relevant cures.

[Frequentflier]

I hear you and if we're as smart as we think we are we should find a better way to test. For well over a year now we only give to:

 

Puppy Rescue Mission

Our local animal shelter where we adopted an amazing dog

 

Instead of the collection plate on Sundays we put money in the box for homeless, but the above great organizations get the most. Nothing makes us feel better than knowing our money helps animals, and (with PRM) soldiers who have rescued stray animals in foreign countries where they are on active duty.

[bigvalboy]

I agree 100% with you Michael. Others may not, but I did a little research into this, and found what you are saying to be true. Controversial? absolutely, but each has to decide how they feel about animal research. Thanks for posting. I know you don't post often, but when you do, it is usually for a good cause about animal rights. Keep getting the message out, anyway you can.

[rvwnsd]

Not to mention the fact that California (and other states) are experiencing the worst drought in years. It has been suggested that we flush our toilets only when we express, ahem, "#2" and these people are pouring perfectly good water on the ground to fund research that is cruel to animals and yields few, if any, benefits.

 

Like frequentflier, I support my local Humane Society (which aims to make San Diego a no-kill city by end of next year), my veterinarian's "good Samaritan" fund, the local LGBT center, and the local food bank.

 

Not to hijack Michael's thread, but the San Diego Humane Society has opened the country's first kitten nursery. Kittens can't survive without their mothers or without round-the-clock care. (They are born without immunity to most diseases. They receive their immune systems through drinking their mother's milk). Consequenty, many shelters immediately euthanize kittens because they can't care for them. The kitten nursery provides 24/7 care for kittens until they are strong enough to be fostered and eventually adopted.

[+ quoththeraven]

For some other critiques of donating to disease-specific charities like the ALS Association under these circumstances, see these posts:

 

The Ice Bucket Challenge Isn't Going Away (Slate) - But giving money to a disease-specific charity is a very odd, and peculiarly ineffective, way of spending your philanthropic dollar—especially when your donation is a one-off thing. What is the ALS Association going to do with all this money? They haven’t said. The organization’s primary focus is scientific: They fund research into the disease and potential cures. ALS is a tough nut to crack, however: After 30 years of work, we don’t seem to be any closer to finding a cure. And there’s no particular reason to believe that we’re $100 million away from finally getting somewhere. Even if a million Americans donate $100 each to ALS, the net positive effect on the world might well be very small indeed.

Throwing cold water on the challenge (Medium) - The most compelling, inarguable justification for objecting to the ice bucket challenge is that it shouldn’t be necessary in the first place. As many have pointed out, many elected officials who were willing to perform the stunt in ostensible solidarity with people who have ALS were also willing to cut funding to fight the disease.

 

The truth about the Ice Bucket Challenge: Viral memes shouldn't dictate our charitable giving (Vox) - As a rule, he explained, "donating money to the best developing world health charities will reach at least 100 times as many people than if you donate to developed world health causes." For example, consider the potential public-health impact of your dollars spent, using a measure of disease burden like the quality-adjusted life year. With ALS, he said that $56,000 would provide one quality-adjusted life year to a sufferer. On the other hand, he said, "the same amount of money could provide 500 quality-adjusted life years if you give money to bed nets for malaria."

 

And the opinion of someone with atrophied muscles confined to a wheelchair who I know via the Internet: "Despite having an ALS-like disease myself, and despite the fact that any medical breakthroughs that could help me will likely come out of ALS research, I do not care for the ice bucket campaign. Putting that money towards charities that provide support – wheelchairs, DME, modified homes and vehicles, home health aides, etc. – would improve many, many more lives than continuing to throw money at a decades-long search for a cure to a disease that affects few people."

 

As for something that directly helps needy people in the developing world in a way that is much more effective, there's the Rice Bucket Challenge. After seeing the dramatic results from the Ice Bucket Challenge, Indian journalist Manju Latha Kalanidhi was compelled to start something similar, but with an Indian slant. “I felt like doing something more locally tangible. Rice is a staple here,” Kalanidhi told CNN. “We eat it every day, we can store it for months. Why not donate rice to someone who is hungry?”

 

Source: Mic.com Tumblr

[+ Gar1eth]

Actually I'm for it. It's a horrible disease. I'm not saying there aren't other horrible diseases out there. But who knows what this money might lead to in breakthroughs. And if they discover something that doesn't help ALS, maybe it will help another disease. Progress in science is made on incremental efforts.

 

Gman

[+ quoththeraven]

I would rather listen to the woman with an ALS-related disease who would rather see that money spent on helping people rather than chasing an expensive cure that might never come to fruition and will only benefit a small number of people, She is an outspoken disability advocate, and as someone with a stake in this, unlike the rest of us, who probably also has a sense of what those suffering from ALS want, I'd defer to her. Otherwise we have the unseemly phenomenon of well-meaning people outside the community to be helped dictating how best they can be helped, just like that movement to apprehend the head of the Lord's Resistance Army and send him to the war crimes tribunal at the Hague ignored what the people on the ground in the countries affected wanted and felt was most helpful to them. In both cases, it treats the people who have the most at stake as props.

[+ Gar1eth]

I would rather listen to the woman with an ALS-related disease who would rather see that money spent on helping people rather than chasing an expensive cure that might never come to fruition and will only benefit a small number of people, She is an outspoken disability advocate, and as someone with a stake in this, unlike the rest of us, who probably also has a sense of what those suffering from ALS want, I'd defer to her. Otherwise we have the unseemly phenomenon of well-meaning people outside the community to be helped dictating how best they can be helped, just like that movement to apprehend the head of the Lord's Resistance Army and send him to the war crimes tribunal at the Hague ignored what the people on the ground in the countries affected wanted and felt was most helpful to them. In both cases, it treats the people who have the most at stake as props.

 

I respect your opinion. And I certainly don't discount the viewpoint of someone with ALS, but 30 to 40 years ago no one probably could have predicted the strides we have made with a disease like cystic fibrosis. Back in the 1950's children with CF weren't expected to be alive to make it to elementary school. Because of knowlege, slow incremental knowlege, by the late 1990's the median survival rate for a person with CF was in the 30's. Today the median survival rate for someone with CF is in the 40's. So maybe we are still in the equivalent of the 1950's in terms of treatment for ALS. But without the steady advancement of knowledge over the years, we never would have achieved the increased life span and improved life quality that people with CF have today.

 

So as I said- I do respect your opinion, QTR. From your postings, I think you are most likely a smarter and more insightful person than I am (which is why I almost always look forward to reading your posts). But in this case, I respectfully can't agree.

 

Gman

[armadillo]

The Ice Bucket Challenge can have chilling affects. Be careful!

 

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/917797-ice-bucket-challenge-death-cameron-lancaster-the-first-to-die/

[BSR]

In both cases, it treats the people who have the most at stake as props.

Wow, that is profoundly cynical to assert that researchers striving to find a cure or treatment are using ALS-sufferers as props. I can understand why those with ALS would rather see money go to helping the already afflicted as opposed to finding a cure because 75 years have passed since Lou Gehrig's "Luckiest Man Alive" speech, yet little progress has been made in finding a cure. Plus the disease progresses very quickly (most die within 2-5 years after diagnosis), which means they need help NOW. But to give up on finding a cure goes against the grain of the American character. We Americans are stubborn bastards who refuse to give up, no matter how great the challenge. One important consideration is that ALS research doesn't get that much funding ($40 million/year, compare that to the billions that have been spent on cancer or AIDS research) because relatively few people get ALS (about 1 out of 100,000).

 

 

Some progress, however, has been made:

 

Kevin Eggan, a stem cell researcher at Harvard, discovered a promising treatment by using stem cells from patients who died of ALS to re-create the disease in a dish. He then tested thousands of compounds on those cells to find one that could reverse electrical signaling problems characteristic of the ALS cells. That drug is scheduled for testing in patients later this year.

 

 

And some of the ice bucket challenge money is going toward treatment ...

 

The ALS Therapy Development Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has announced that it will direct its Ice Bucket Challenge money to a new sample collection effort that will study 100 ALS patients in unprecedented depth—sequencing their genomes, profiling their clinical history, using accelerometers to study their movements, and creating stem cells from their skin samples. The goal will be to develop therapies tailored to specific ALS subgroups.

 

I didn't make a donation until I saw

. It's silly and funny at first, then at the 2:00 mark, the tone takes a serious turn. I don't donate to every charity or fundraising effort. Heck, even Bill Gates doesn't have that kind of money (well, OK, maybe he does). But after seeing this ice bucket challenge, I just had to.

[bigvalboy]

Thanks for the post quoththeraven. Fascinating and compelling arguments, and let us not forget the comments from the OP. Michael has been a staunch advocate of animal rights since I joined this forum. His position on these matters has never wavered. I think it is easy to get caught up in the "celebrity" aspect of the 'Ice Bucket Challenge' but it would be behoove us to take a step back and think more deeply about the ramifications of such things.

[Bart]

I think some of the comments here are coming off saying that since the same number of people afflicted with ALS does not come close to cancer or AIDS that they should not have money directed there way. The point of the thread was animal research not the ALS Fundraising activity. The ice bucket challenge brought some life to a disease that has had little progress. If nothing else it has given the people and families of those afflicted something to look forward to in their lives. Michael's points are treat the disease just leave animals out of it. I love the thought that money may start going to support families who members afflicted. So despite the trendy affair keep the families supported. Thank yo.

[MiamiLooker]

Before you contribute to this catchy fundraising trend, you should know....

 

Recent experiments funded by the ALS Association, mice had holes drilled into their skulls, were inflicted with crippling illnesses, and were forced to run on an inclined treadmill until they collapsed from exhaustion. Monkeys had chemicals injected into their brains and backs and were later killed and dissected.

What is the result of these experiments (other than a lot of suffering)? In the past decade, only about a dozen experimental ALS treatments have moved on to human trials after being shown to alleviate the disease in animals. All but one of these treatments failed in humans—and the one that “passed” offers only marginal benefits to humans who suffer from ALS. This massive failure rate is typical for animal experiments, because even though animals feel pain and suffer like we do, their bodies often react completely differently to drugs and diseases. According to the FDA, 92 out of every 100 drugs that pass animal trials fail during the human clinical trial phase. Sophisticated non-animal testing methods—including in vitro methods, advanced computer-modeling techniques, and studies with human volunteers, among others—have given us everything from the best life-saving HIV drugs to cloned human skin for burn victims. Trying to cure human diseases by relying on outdated and ineffective animal experiments isn’t only cruel—it’s a grave disservice to people who desperately need cures.

 

Please, help scientists make real progress toward treating and curing human diseases by visiting HumaneSeal.org to find and support charities that never harm animals and which pour their time and resources into advanced, promising, human-relevant cures.

 

The Ebola vaccine is being tested on monkeys and appears to be showing promising results:

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2014/09/07/novel-ebola-vaccine-shows-potential-in-monkey-trial

Has PETA officially declared this testing to be unneeded and worthless? Or, will PETA wait until the tested vaccine is proven to be effective or not before they issue an armchair quarterback statement via their artificially big tittied resident expert, Pam Anderson?

[Guest AnthonyDriller]

I was challenged by all my instagram friends and did the ice bucket challenge like a few weeks ago when it was really popular. I had a blast.