Ice bucket challenge leaving Turkish donors cold

Social media feeds have been clogged with videos of people undertaking the 'ice bucket challenge' and although the global trend went viral in Turkey this week, local campaigners for motor neuron disease research have said it has not raised as much money as hoped.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is a progressive disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord, which results in progressive weakness, usually with muscle wasting, according to a Turkish ALS charity.

Yakut Kilic, an official from the Turkish ALS Association, said the foundation has received 330,000 Turkish lira ($151,000) in donations since the campaign to raise awareness about the illness started.

Kilic says the association is aiming to establish a clinic for ALS patients but said that the money collected so far is not enough.

"The collected money is far behind what we have expected," he said.

Kilic noted that there are over 7,000 ALS patients in Turkey, adding they have 1,078 ALS patients registered to their own foundation.

The ALS Association in the U.S. says it has received $70.2 million in donations compared to $2.5 million during the same time period last year (July 29 to August 24).

The association said these donations have come from existing contributors and 1.3 million new donors to the association.

Corey Griffin, the man who helped make the Ice Bucket Challenge go viral, died in a diving accident August 21 in Nantucket Island, Massachusetts.

While celebrities like Lady Gaga, Tom Cruise and Mickey Rourke took the challenge and dumped a bucket of ice-cold water onto their heads, Canadian actress Pamela Anderson refused to take the challenge because of purported links to animal testing.

Some Catholic bodies have also boycotted the challenge, questioning the ethics of contributing to ALS charities that fund research using embryonic stem cells.