The ALS Ice Bucket Chal-lenge has taken over all social media sites after the prompting from Beverly Massachusetts resident, Pete Frates, who was diag-nosed with the disease in 2012, and his family. This challenge consists of people dousing them-selves with ice water to spread awareness, the person dousing nominates others to do the challenge and gives them 24 hours in order to proceed with the challenge. The “rule” is that the nominee is sup-posed to donate if they do not pour the ice water on themselves. While this is not really the rule, the nominees are en-couraged to proceed with the challenge and donate. Donations have gone up by an extreme amount since the beginning of this social media takeover. “This is a creative way to spread ALS awareness via social media and in com-munities nationwide,” said Barbara Newhouse, Presi-dent and CEO of The ALS Association. “We thank Pete Frates and his family for getting so many people involved in spreading the word about ALS.” Members of teams and

businesses, celebrities and individuals around the country have managed to participate in this attempt to spread awareness. Some celebrities such as Charlie Sheen have donated up to $100,000 to the ALS foun-dation in order to make a difference. All donations big and small are welcome in order to find a cure, while this is a terminal disease, a cure has not yet been found. According to the ALS Association Website, ALS was first found in 1896 by French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, but it wasn’t until 1939 that Lou Gehrig brought national and international atten-tion to the disease. While this disease was formerly adressed by his name, the new official name is Amyo-trophic Lateral Scierosis (ALS) which is described as a progressive neurodegen-erative 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 neu-rons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost.

With voluntary muscle ac-tion progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed. This disease com-monly affects adults ages between 40 and 70 and as many as 30,000 Americans have this at any given time. A man from Bayard, Nebraska named Blaine Quick has been affected by the disease within the last year. “I started experienc-ing trouble with speech in July 2013. I was diagnosed with ALS on December 11. I married later in life at 38 to Amy Quick and her three boys. A little over a year later, we had our baby, who is now five. Since my diagnosis, I have lost most of my speech and the use of my left arm. Some use of the right arm remains but it’s quickly leaving me. I can still walk, but that’s getting difficult. On the upside, I’m trying to stay positive, but it’s difficult when a fel-low loses stuff so quickly. My big hope is to see my children all graduate high school,” Quick wrote on the ALS Association website. No matter the amount, a cure to this disease needs to be found in order to help out these 30,000+ affected by this terminal illness, please donate and learn more by logging on to www.alsa.org.

by Morgan Wallace

Take the Challenge, spread awareness

InDepth News WritingAllison Baird, Sydney Havengar, Morgan Wallace, Bri-anna Eckerberg, McKenna CopseyGering High School

The ALS Ice Bucket Chal-lenge has taken over all social media sites after the prompting from Beverly Massachusetts resident, Pete Frates, who was diag-nosed with the disease in 2012, and his family. This challenge consists of people dousing them-selves with ice water to spread awareness, the person dousing nominates others to do the challenge and gives them 24 hours in order to proceed with the challenge. The “rule” is that the nominee is sup-posed to donate if they do not pour the ice water on themselves. While this is not really the rule, the nominees are en-couraged to proceed with the challenge and donate. Donations have gone up by an extreme amount since the beginning of this social media takeover. “This is a creative way to spread ALS awareness via social media and in com-munities nationwide,” said Barbara Newhouse, Presi-dent and CEO of The ALS Association. “We thank Pete Frates and his family for getting so many people involved in spreading the word about ALS.” Members of teams and

businesses, celebrities and individuals around the country have managed to participate in this attempt to spread awareness. Some celebrities such as Charlie Sheen have donated up to $100,000 to the ALS foun-dation in order to make a difference. All donations big and small are welcome in order to find a cure, while this is a terminal disease, a cure has not yet been found. According to the ALS Association Website, ALS was first found in 1896 by French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, but it wasn’t until 1939 that Lou Gehrig brought national and international atten-tion to the disease. While this disease was formerly adressed by his name, the new official name is Amyo-trophic Lateral Scierosis (ALS) which is described as a progressive neurodegen-erative 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 neu-rons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost.

With voluntary muscle ac-tion progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed. This disease com-monly affects adults ages between 40 and 70 and as many as 30,000 Americans have this at any given time. A man from Bayard, Nebraska named Blaine Quick has been affected by the disease within the last year. “I started experienc-ing trouble with speech in July 2013. I was diagnosed with ALS on December 11. I married later in life at 38 to Amy Quick and her three boys. A little over a year later, we had our baby, who is now five. Since my diagnosis, I have lost most of my speech and the use of my left arm. Some use of the right arm remains but it’s quickly leaving me. I can still walk, but that’s getting difficult. On the upside, I’m trying to stay positive, but it’s difficult when a fel-low loses stuff so quickly. My big hope is to see my children all graduate high school,” Quick wrote on the ALS Association website. No matter the amount, a cure to this disease needs to be found in order to help out these 30,000+ affected by this terminal illness, please donate and learn more by logging on to www.alsa.org.

by Morgan Wallace

Take the Challenge, spread awareness

InDepth News WritingAllison Baird, Sydney Havengar, Morgan Wallace, Brianna Eckerberg, McKenna CopseyGering High School