One thing I sometimes think about when people are trying to spread awareness about different illnesses and dangers, is how much good it actually does. I imagine one can only keep so many things in ones head at one time. I worry that for example if I start telling people about a rare illness that I have experienced, it takes away focus from something that is much more common.
What are your thoughts in this? I think when it comes to myself, I tend to remember the last few things I heard about, and forget the rest.
Spreading awareness only helps if it makes a positive difference. If we have no reliable, safe, effective screening tests or practical therapeutic interventions for the problem then making the general public more aware of the issue generally doesn’t yield any significant benefit.
Sure, but there were advances in our understanding of ALS after the ice bucket challenge raised 115 million dollars.
As of July 2015, the Ice Bucket Challenge had raised $115 million for the ALS Association.[150] Many celebrities have taken part in the challenge.[151] The Ice Bucket Challenge was credited with helping to raise funds that contributed to the discovery that the gene NEK1 may potentially contribute to the development for ALS.[152][153]
ETA, but to be fair, this was on a scale orders of magnitude bigger than a handful of people posting the same thing to facebook over and over for a week to find a cure for something or another.
@Joey_P I definitely agree with you that raising funds to help research for better treatments falls under the heading of making a positive difference. My wife and I have given a lot of funds to the CF foundation over the decades. They took that money and did research and found vastly improved treatments for the deadly disease which improves health and extends life for CFers.
