The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Has ACTUALLY Made A Difference

If you cast your minds back to 2014 you’ll probably remember one particular fad dominating the Internet: The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

It felt like not an hour would go by without another celebrity uploading another video of themselves being doused in ice cold water in a bid to raise money for charity, with many cynics blasting the trend as ‘slacktivism’ at its finest.

However, it has now been reported that profit from the viral challenge has helped to fund a major breakthrough in research into Motor Neurone Disease.

Take that, haters.

At its peak, the Ice Bucket Challenge raised as much as £75million in one month as celebrities from Kim Kardashian to Leonardo DiCaprio to One Direction took part in the craze, with Matt Damon even going so far as to dunk a bucket full of toilet water over his head in a bid to highlight the importance of not wasting water.

Now Project MinE, a campaign funded mostly through the Ice Bucket donations to the ALS association, have announced the discovery of a new gene, NEK1, which is linked to the disease - opening the doors for potential new treatment.

According to Nature Genetics, NEK1 is now among the most common genes to contribute to Motor Neurone Disease and scientists now have a new target for therapy development.

Lucie Bruijin explained: “The discovery of the NEK1 highlights the value of 'big data’ in ALS research.

"The sophisticated gene analysis that led to this finding was only possible because of the large number of ALS samples available.

"The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge enabled The ALS Association to invest in Project MinE’s work to create large biorepositories of ALS biosamples that are designed to allow exactly this kind of research and to produce exactly this kind of result.”

In short, maybe next time we shouldn’t scoff and complain when something is going viral for the greater good, eh?