IRA LOSCO ACCEPTS SWAG'S ALS ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE
By The Swag Team - August 25, 2014 
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Early last week SWAG nominated Ira for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that had started in the US and spread around the world. As she started to receive more challenges, she decided to accept, taking it seriously and doing research on the ALS website to check the rules and learn what the challenge was all about.
Although the website states that the challenge should be taken up within 24 hours, Ira decided to wait until other challenges had been made before she accepted to be doused in ice-cold water and make a donation.
This morning, the princess of Maltese pop came to the SWAG offices and made her donation online, as you will see in the clip. She had received eight challenges and decided to donate €50 for each.
We then accompanied her to the seafront at Ta’ Xbiex, collecting a packet of ice on the way.
Considering there were so many challenges, the SWAG team decided to fill two buckets with seawater instead of just one to make the challenge even more worthwhile. We used seawater so it could make its way back into the sea and not be wasted away.
We waited a couple of minutes for the water to absorb the ice and become chilled while Ira listed who had nominated her and also expressed her hope that one day it will be possible for the use of animals in medical or any other testing to cease. She also prepared her own list of nominees for the challenge.
Then it was time for the reckoning! Watch the clip below.
THE ALS ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE
According to the ALS website, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis was first found in 1869 by French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, but it wasn’t until 1939 that athlete Lou Gehrig brought international attention to the disease.
Ending the career of one of the most beloved baseball players of all time, the disease is still most closely associated with his name. It is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.
Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.
Most commonly, ALS strikes people between the ages of 40 and 70 and it has cut short the lives of notable individuals such as actor David Niven, the creator of Sesame Street Jon Stone, British football player Jimmy Johnstone and the former vice president of the United States Henry A. Wallace.
According to Wikipedia, the challenge commonly known as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge went viral online in early August. A contestant will fill a bucket full of ice and water; they will then state who nominated them to do the challenge and will summon three other individuals of their choice to take part in it. The contestant then dumps the bucket of ice and water onto themselves.
The contestant should then donate $10 (or a similar amount in their local currency) to ALS research at the ALS Association or Motor Neurone Disease Association in the UK. Any contestant who refuses to have the ice and water dumped on them is expected to donate $100 to ALS research.
Many celebrities have taken part in the challenge including Cristiano Ronaldo, Roger Federer, David Beckham, Lady Gaga, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, as well as many Maltese, including the PM and Leader of the Opposition and well-known arts, media and sports personalities.
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