ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Okay, I'll admit it.  When the ALS Ice Bucket challenge started making the rounds on the social media sites, I rolled my eyes.  I even shared the Salon.com link about how you don't have to do the ice bucket challenge, just give money.  It was snarky (why I didn't link it here), and it was sort of self-righteous.
And then something amazing happened: videos and more challenges kept coming in.  Families touched by ALS made their own videos of gratitude for the money raised and the awareness created.  Last time I read about it, ALSA was up to $23 million raised in a few weeks.  It won't be sustained, no one is fooling themselves into thinking that.  This is literally a flash in the pan.  But that's okay.
The majority of medical research done in this country today is funded via either academic grants (which come from government sources such as the National Institutes of Health, or NIH) or via grants from private industry.  Obviously, private industry grants, primarily the pharmaceutical companies, are generally driven by a profit motive: we find the new treatment for this disease, we patent and sell that treatment, we make money.
Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with making money.  Nor do  I believe that there is anything wrong with doing medical research with the intent to make money on discoveries made, although that is a very murky area, ethically for me.  The inherent problem with this model is that there are diseases that just do not lend themselves to profitable treatment.  Pediatric and childhood cancers, ALS, Rett Syndrome, and multiple sclerosis are all examples of such diseases.
The beauty of this sudden infusion of money to the ALS Association is that research done on ALS specifically can be applied to neuromuscular diseases in general.  Now we're talking about benefits to multiple sclerosis, to Rett Syndrome (a genetic neuromuscular disease that affects girls), and possibly even Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
Hopefully the ALSA will be wise and understand that this infusion will likely be short lived, even if the challenge continues for several more months.  Hopefully, they will use the money wisely and carefully, and, in the words of everyone's parents when we were handed a surprising amount of cash, they won't spend it all in one place.
Either way, I'm here to say it, "I was wrong."  I was wrong about "just give money" instead of giving into an internet meme.  The more videos are made, the more people watch, the more that they're aware of the campaign to raise money and awareness and the more money is donated.  If you just give money (and you're not Patrick Stewart), then there is no sense of  passing the challenge to give on to your friends and family.
So, in that spirit, here are the videos my family made to raise money and spread awareness both for ALS, as well as for Rett Syndrome (and in my case funding for the NIH, as determined by our members of Congress).