If you had any type of social account in the fall of 2014, you probably remember the #IceBucketChallenge videos filling up your newsfeed mayflies along the Riverfront. Skeptics claimed people were doing it to get in on a viral challenge and not exactly to help ALS. Regardless of the intentions of some, the viral challenge raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Lou Gehrig’s disease research, the biggest fundraiser in the ALS Association’s history.

Here’s the video I did. WBNQ is my old radio station, and a sister station of Nash.

$1 Million went to fund Project MinE which recently released the discovery of the NEK1 gene, which was found in both patients who inherited the disease and those who did not. There’s a lot more science-y stuff in this article, but the biggest takeaway is that this is a HUGE discovery, and can lead to bigger and better treatment of the debilitating disease.

So for those of you who were tut-tutting at this fad, science proved you wrong. SCIENCE!

But really, this is SO AWESOME, and I hope to see other viral challenges bring more awareness and money to other medical advances.

-Kristin