Hey, as a whole, it's raised almost a hundred million dollars at this point. You can call the movement dumb, but it's gotten some pretty fine results. caelum19: As to the distribution of donations, I don't think anyone can really claim fairness until millions start pouring into the neglected tropical diseases. Heart disease is by far the largest killer, but it's also the biggest treasure for pharmas to go after. I'm personally cool with people giving money to any uncommon disease, since cures don't normally disappear once discovered.
Knowing the name of something != Knowing what the things is. Even if they learn that it is a motor neuron disease, they are more aware of it than they were before.
No, not at all. I'm just saying, knowing what ALS stands for, especially when the words are somewhat technical, is not the metric by which you should be judging people's knowledge of the disease.
You're right, of course. I think it's depressing that the plight of our most famous modern scientist, an ALS victim who has contributed a huge amount to our modern understanding of a lot of things, is not what spurs donations to foundations that fight ALS. But money is the bottom line.