Ghanaian actress/TV personality-Ama K. Abebrese is one of the many African celebrities who have been bashed online for their participation in the on-going ALS Ice Bucket Challenged, aimed at raising funds for ALS. So far the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has raised over 50 million dollars…
Though Ama K. Abebrese is more than a friend to this blog, we still could not sit back without telling her the obvious truth—we did so in our yesterday’s publication.
Defending her action, Ama K Abebrese has said among other things that, she does not know when donating money to a charity became a problem, because that is exactly what she did.
The question is; which charity did she take part in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to donate money to?
She had previously mentioned that there is no ALS charity in Ghana and so she was going to donate to the Children’s Heart Foundation Ghana. No one has a problem with her donation, but you do not have to take part in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to be able to donate to the Children’s Heart Foundation Ghana—and this is where many of us think she got it wrong.
The whole ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has become a celebrity publicity gimmick, especially among the African celebrities…
Somewhere in the world, former Baywatch star and a life-long animal rights activist-Pamela Anderson has turned down the Ice Bucket Challenge over ALS animal testing ethical issues.
“Sorry – I can’t bring myself to do your Ice bucket challenge,” she wrote via her Facebook page.
“I enjoy a good dare – It’s always good to bring awareness – in fun, creative ways. I don’t want to take away from that, but it had me thinking. Digging a bit deeper, I found that we may not be aligned – in our messages.
“So I thought Instead I’d challenge ALS to stop Animal testing. Recent experiments funded by the ALS Association, mice had holes drilled into their skulls, were inflicted with crippling illnesses, and were forced to run on an inclined treadmill until they collapsed from exhaustion. Monkeys had chemicals injected into their brains and backs and were later killed and dissected.
“What is the result of these experiments (other than a lot of suffering)?”
She continues: “In the past decade, only about a dozen experimental ALS treatments have moved on to human trials after being shown to alleviate the disease in animals. All but one of these treatments failed in humans—and the one that “passed” offers only marginal benefits to humans who suffer from ALS.
“This massive failure rate is typical for animal experiments, because even though animals feel pain and suffer like we do, their bodies often react completely differently to drugs and diseases. According to the FDA, 92 out of every 100 drugs that pass animal trials fail during the human clinical trial phase.”
“Trying to cure human diseases by relying on outdated and ineffective animal experiments isn’t only cruel—it’s a grave disservice to people who desperately need cures.”
She concluded with the following plea: “Please, help scientists make real progress toward treating and curing human diseases by visiting HumaneSeal.org to find and support charities that never harm animals and which pour their time and resources into advanced, promising, human-relevant cures.”
My problem is, many of us join social media campaigns without taking time to understand the direction, the ethical issues and accompanying protests. In fact, we have Ebola, Malaria, Child Labour and other pressing needs in Africa which we can look at, yet, our stars seem not to have any interest in these…
Anyway, check below for what Ama K. Abebrese had to say in full…
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A84CyfNgOeU
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