Kentucky: Firefighter hurt in ice bucket challenge dies

Press Democrat ^ | September 20, 2014

[rey]

LOUISVILLE — A central Kentucky firefighter injured in an "ice bucket challenge" has died a month after a power line shocked him and another man.

Campbellsville Fire Chief Kyle Smith says 41-year-old Tony Grider died Saturday. Grider was a captain with the department on Aug. 21. He and 22-year-old firefighter Simon Quinn were on the fire truck's ladder when it got too close to a power line after dumping water on Campbellsville University's marching band in the charity stunt to raise awareness for the disease ALS.

Quinn was released from the hospital Sept. 15.

Two other firefighters were injured, but were released from the hospital.

Campbellsville University, a private college, is a Christian institution that has about 3,600 students, according to its website. It is about 65 miles south of Louisville.

[rey]

I didn’t catch your typo, but that made me laugh even harder. I think we do need an awareness event for those who do not realize they have fallen and can’t get up or are so apathetic as to spend their remaining days prostrate.

[SkyDancer]

I think that if there were to be a concerted effort to bring prostate awareness month the fema-nazi's would howl about male something or other taking over awareness events or something.

[rey]

The pink thing drives me nuts. I had a woman dang near beat the crap out of me at a rodeo because I wasn’t wearing pink, as though that would change anything or save someone’s life.

[rabidralph]

“Who? Who will not wear the ribbon?!”

[rabidralph]

You’re absolutely correct about that!

[fieldmarshaldj]

[rey]

I don’t watch TV so I had to look up your pop culture reference. Good one, however I am not sorry it was lost on me.

[discostu]

“Awareness” is disease charity talk for “money”, of which they got millions.

[rabidralph]

Not a problem. I thought about that as I posted it. Here's the video from Youtube. All these charities are pretty much guilty of this, as well as political causes.

[rabidralph]

Still cracks me up.

[discostu]

Actually it IS prostate health month right now.

[Fiji Hill]

ALS, aka Charcot’s disease took the life of one of my childhood Sunday school classmates, and an acquaintance of mine has a son who is afflicted with it.

However, although it seems to be an effective gimmick to raise money for research in order to find a cure, this ice bucket thing seems silly and can even be dangerous. One might recall that football coach George Allen died of pneumonia after he was doused with Gatorade after a game.

[Magic Fingers]

Thanks.

[dfwgator]

For a brief time, the NFL had a prostate cancer awareness month but then it disappeared into a sea of pink

I thought they colored the footballs brown to bring awareness to prostate cancer.

[PieterCasparzen]

So-called awareness campaigns are propaganda and typically a marketing campaign for the for-profit entities behind the non-profit. For example, celebrities are typically invovled in such campaigns, but the campaigns always have the planned side effect tied of increasing the celebrities' sales and public image, as they are tied in with performances and marketing campaigns. Not only that, but the celebrities are reducing their own tax bill in the process. It's really a way to market yourself and have all the related activity you engage in generate tax deductions for you.

The "non-profit" organization is really a tax-exempt conduit for sales to flow through to profit-making medical businesses and to pay the salaries of the staff of the "non-profit".

Consider the money flow if a tax-exempt organization funds medical research.

Normally, pharmaceutical and other medical businesses would spend money on research; such spending is an expense that directly lowers net income, or EBITDA.

If charitable organization pays the for-profit pharm company $1,000 towards funding their research, that's $1,000 of no-effort sales, so the specified research expenses are covered without denting income. It's revenue where there otherwise would be no revenue. Just imagine going to your auto mechanic, paying your bill then smiling and handing him an extra $500, and saying he has to spend that on a new piece of equipment. Sure, thanks !

Perhaps the other organization helps actually do some of the research itself; things like conducting clinical trial tests, i.e., managing the process of signing up volunteer test subjects, administering the experimental medicine and the placebo, tracking, monitoring and reporting the results to pharmaceutical companies, etc. Say the effort spends $200,000 for a clinical trial. Now we have work done that the pharmaceutical companies would otherwise have to have paid for. If they paid for this effort, they would have spent $200,000, but since they did not, their expenses are $200,000 lower than they would be if they paid for their the research effort, but they have the results which are "donated" to them. In this case, their profit is $200,000 higher than it would have been if they did their own research.

Thus, if you really track the money flow, donations to medical charities are really an indirect pass-thru to net income or sales for the medical industry.

[The KG9 Kid]

I’m going to try to get a new awareness campaign of my own started: “Drink A Beer To Promote Rabies Awareness.”

[rabidralph]

Ha-ha.

[ansel12]

That has nothing to do with my post.

How did this fireman story become about the fund raising?

[rey]

That was pretty good, The best part is at the end with the cop who doesn’t seem to care someone is in trouble. I still don’t want TV tough. I mean, everyone wants TV which is why I don’t want it. I should have to have TV. THis is America, after all.

[SkyDancer]

Right - and how much money is spent on “administrative costs”? - there are some org’s that keep 90% plus ...