Ice Bucket Challenge

These days Internet has gone viral with videos of celebrities and other popular personalities taking the “Ice Bucket Challenge” and daring others to do the same. It is an effort to raise awareness of ALS where participants must dump a bucket of ice-cold water and then dare someone to do the same. If they cannot, the alternative is to donate $100 to the ALS association. Let us see where it came from and how did it start?

The Ice bucket challenge went viral on Social Media after a US baseball player and the ALS patient, Pete Frates, floated the idea of challenge in a video on a Social Networking Site. ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) 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 muscle movement lost in the body, patients in most of the stage may become totally paralyzed.

More than 1.2 Million videos were shared on Facebook between June 1 and August 13. The Challenge was mentioned more than 2.2 Million times on Twitter since July 29, after appeal. According to ALS website, it has so far received nearly $53.3 Million from 1.1 Million new donors. Since June, several thousand people worldwide have recorded themselves getting drenched, then posted stunt online and challenged others to do the same, or pledge $100 to ALS research.

Former President George W. Bush took the Ice bucket Challenge in support of disease research on August 20, 2014, and challenged his democratic predecessor Bill Clinton to do the same. David Beckham, Justin Bieber, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Gates are some of the celebrities and business people to have recently taken ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Many Indian celebrities such as Akshay Kumar, Sania Mirza, Yuvraj Singh, Daler Mehndi, Abhishek Bachchan, Mahesh Bhupati, Sunny Leone, and Riteish Deshmukh have taken Ice Bucket challenge recently. US President Barack Obama refused to take Ice Bucket Challenge but then he donated for the disease.

About 5,600 new cases are diagnosed each year in the United States. The internet has helped raise support for such causes and to raise much needed money. The viral nature of effort surprised even the ALS association.