by Sayer Ji
(GreenMedInfo.com) With $80,000,000 of your dollars raised, the ALS foundation openly admits only 27% of the funds go to ALS research, and sadly, virtually none of your donated money goes to already proven natural solutions.
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You’ve probably already heard about ‘pinkwashing’ — breast cancer awareness months’ most shameful cause-marketing campaign that paints pink anything from breast-cancer causing cow’s milk products, buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and synthetic perfume products – anything to make a quick buck by triggering a consumer’s charitable instincts.
Or, how about ‘greenwashing’? – the purposeful labeling of toxic chemicals with ‘green’ marketing copy, e.g. Simple Green cleaner, making you think you are saving yourself and the planet from the chemical apocalypse, but, in fact, ensuring you and your family are on the fast-track to arriving there.
Well, if that weren’t enough to create Orwellian cognitive dissonance in your life, now you can add ‘icewashing’ to the mix, which uses emotional triggers and promises of doing good to generate donations to ‘find a cure’ for ALS, but whose approach may be diametrically opposed to fulfilling its stated promise promise.
Case in point…
The ALS Association’s super-viral ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ meme has brought in $80 million dollars in donations, since the time of the writing of this article – and will likely surpass $100 million in the next week or so.
But where will your donated money actually go? Will it go towards identifying ALS’s true causes and cures?
Historically, the ALS Association only directs 27% of the money raised to actual research into finding cures for the condition.
Take a look at the ALS Association’s own pie chart to see where the rest of the 73% goes.
While fundraising costs, education, and patient and community services seem legitimate enough, the administrative costs are the most suspect.
Any ‘non-profit’ organization that dedicates six figure salaries to its officers should raise a red flag of concern:
Jane H. Gilbert – President and CEO – $339,475.00
Daniel M. Reznikov – Chief Financial Officer – $201,260.00
Steve Gibson – Chief Public Policy Officer – $182,862.00
Kimberly Maginnis – Chief of Care Services Officer – $160,646.00
Lance Slaughter – Chief Chapter Relations and Development Officer – $152,692.00
Michelle Keegan – Chief Development Officer – $178,744.00
John Applegate – Association Finance Officer – $118.726.00
David Moses – Director of Planned Giving – $112,509.00
Carrie Munk – Chief Communications and Marketing Officer – $142,875.00
Patrick Wildman – Director of Public Policy – $112,358.00
Kathi Kromer – Director of State Advocacy – $110,661.00
Even if 100% of the donations went into researching the causes of ALS and finding a much needed cure, the reality is that the already $99 million dollars the ALS Association claims it has committed to “find effective treatments and a cure” has gone mostly to pharmaceutical interventions – interventions that require multi-million dollar investments in human clinical studies (requiring close to a billion dollars be spent up front to fund these patented chemicals and biological), are almost entirely patented, explicitly for-profit medicines, and which can not provide help to those who are suffering from ALS, right here, right now.
Even more concerning is that there is a huge body of research published in peer-reviewed journals that indicates that there are over 60 natural substances that can be used right now to alleviate suffering from the condition. Our ALS research page is teeming with highly compelling studies that show natural interventions – from simple dietary intervention to cost-effective and safe nutritional supplementation – can be used right now to help those in need.
You can view the entire database on our free-to-access natural ALS interventions page, which covers not only 60+ natural substances with proven utility, but problem substances – chemicals and drugs – and therapeutic actions – from yoga to deep breathing – that can provide patients of ALS immediate tools and strategies to take back control of their health immediately.
Let’s zoom in to some of these compelling studies so you can see how clearly the ALS foundation’s fund-raising efforts are out of sync with the already well-known natural interventions available today:
Vitamin E: “CONCLUSION: A high intake of PUFAs [polyunsaturated fatty acids] and vitamin E is associated with a 50-60% decreased risk of developing ALS, and these nutrients appear to act synergistically.”
Smoking Cessation: “After adjusting for age, sex, region and education, ever having smoked cigarettes was associated with an increase in risk for ALS [70% increased risk].”
Reducing Lead Exposure: “ALS was also associated with blood and bone lead levels, with a 1.9-fold increase in risk for each mug/dl increment in blood lead and a 2.3- to 3.6-fold increase for each doubling of bone lead.”
Vitamin B12 (methylcobalamin): “To develop a symptomatic treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, we compared the effects of ultrahigh-dose and low-dose (25 and 0.5 mg/day, intramuscularly, for 14 days) methylcobalamin on averaged compound muscle action potential amplitudes (CMAPs) in a double-blind trial. No significant changes in CMAP amplitude were found in 12 patients who had the low-dose treatment at either 2 or 4 weeks after start of treatment. By contrast, 12 patients assigned to the ultrahigh-dose group demonstrated a significant increase at 4 weeks. This method may provide a clinically useful measure to improve or retard muscle wasting, if a larger extended trial fulfills its promise.”