Wealthy footballers asking fans to donate and save a child's life

[Eastie77Returns]

A premier league footbal club in my area has posted pictures of a little boy who is very ill meeting players before a recent game. He urgently needs life saving treatment that costs hundreds of thousands of pounds. The pictures are lovely and he's clearly having an amazing time kudos to those players. The players and club have sent out an appeal to fans, asking everyone to urgently donate money for the child's treatment.

The players in the pictures earn millions a year. Hundreds of people have pointed out in the post comments that if each player in the team donated £10k, an amount they would barely notice, this precious boy would be able to get this treatment. The club itself posts revenue of millions each match day and could cover the cost without blinking. They've spent £100s of millions on new players ffs.

AIBU to not understand this. The manager of the team earns £10 million a year. He has children of his own. I don't understand how you'd sleep at night, leaving a child you've met to die when you have the means at the tip of your fingers to potentially save them? (and it could be done discretely as I understand the club wouldn't want everyone to know).

Really?! Poverty and starvation in Africa could be solved by a 'few pop stars'? Are you thinking that Live Aid solved Africa's issues? Because I hate to break this to you, Live Aid was a masterclass in how to support causes but one concert and every pop star in the world is not going to 'solve it'.

The lack of understanding of how charities work in this thread (and the gazillion other threads that appear solely to bring down charities) blows my mind.

Generally for good ethical reasons.

if the stats won’t improve quality of life or survival significantly, most of these kids are better on symptom management.

the NHS has excellent paediatric cancer centres. There’s not many treatments they have elsewhere we don’t. In fact if it’s not available here, and a panel seems it medically valuable, the nhs will pay. I know a family sent to the US for proton beam therapy before we had that available for paeds. Shortly after it became commonplace here.

bear in mind privatised medicine like in the US, will treat you if you can pay. The ethics of whether it will be effective is less important. They will keep people on life support with no hope of recovery as long as they get paid. 20 years for one 3 year old after brain death.

I know David, Elton and Freddie had a few quid but there was no way they could feed the world.
I think Band Aid/Live Aid blazed a trail and you could sense that Bob at least was very, very passionate about it. I’m not saying nobody else cared but he kept on going with it.
Now we are fed so much cynicism but at the end of the day if you want to get a top
person to run a huge charity then you have to pay them a salary to match.
I think there have been so many controversies that it’s hard for people to trust sometimes but there are so many charities which still do fantastic work.
You just have to find the ones which align with you personally.

I’ve just had a quick google and unfortunately the child has relapsing neuroblastoma.

the therapy they want is still in very early clinical trials, it hasn’t been shown to be effective for relapsing NB.

i think it’s less about what the players can afford-I am not sure it’s morally right for them to be asking for donations to these medical campaigns unless the treatment can be shown to be worth it. They aren’t asking “for donations to save a child’s life”, they’re asking for money to put a child through a new regime on the last ditch hope it might work.

interestingly the hospital is not named, but chances are it will be the very Catholic Bambino Gesu- not unfamiliar with controversy.

Agree. I think it needs to be crystal clear that the treatment is still on trial so that people understand what they are funding. I've seen a few that have run major funding campaigns for overseas treatment only for the person to sadly die. There's always lots of 'the NHS won't fund' type narrative with little explanation that the NHS don't fund treatments that are not proven to work. You can't really blame the families for trying to raise the money, I'm sure we'd all do everything we could for our kids if we were in their position. Just as long as they are fully clear that there is a very high risk that it won't work.

There was a couple who raised hundreds of thousands to ship their child to America for treatment that didn't work. There were people on the Go Fund me thing saying they were giving £5 as it was all they could afford. Meanwhile the father was a corporate banker, he will be on mega-bucks! There was loads of videos of the giant house they lived in and the mother was and still is always tripping around the world. It's devastating for them, I don't begrudge them their lifestyle, but is it morally right that they're taking a stranger's last fiver for treatment that is unproven whilst they're living a considerably better life than most?

I think the problem is when you have people earning obscene amounts of money asking people, often with very little, to donate.
Some famous people/footballers do quietly/anonymously donate - the story of
Sadio Mane which came out is amazing.

I think the OP was just saying that if the players did this anonymously alongside the public then treatment would be quicker etc instead of trying to fundraiser what could be afforded. Yes it does help with charities in future but no ones wants the child's health to be at further risk ( I dont know the story)

I was listening to a podcast and they mentioned a famous actor had donated a substantial amount to a charity (totally cant recall details) and the presenter said heaps of praise were lauded to him but percentage against earning was around the same as average joe giving £35. Obviously the charity were over the moon because to them it was substantial but noone was publicly cheering on 'Tom' down the road for £50 which would actually have been personally a more substantial donation.
My DM always said poorer people were much more generous and believes it was because they knew what ut was like to have nothing (which also links back to the Sadio Mane story)

I also think we need to address the uncomfortable truth that often the child would be better off being made comfortable.

being dragged around for yet more procedures, more time in hospitals, for it to inevitably fail.

i understand why parents do it. But I recently saw a relative spend their last 6 months suffering, in and out of a&e, confused, ambulances, only to die anyway. The nhs had wanted to make him comfortable with palliative care, the family got on the “nhs refused to treat him” wagon, and went private. The chemo killed him far faster than no treatment at all. It was brutal. But they were paying so they got the treatment.

this is one reason i never want private healthcare. When money and profit enters in comfort and what’s actually best leaves.

i’d rather see fundraisers to make their last few months special. The kid is currently getting treatment which stabilises the neuroblastoma, but they want to go more aggressive.

I assure you, the clubs and players will be receiving numerous begging letters every day.

If they funded everyone who came to them with a worthy cause, they'd soon have no money left.

It's best to say no and donate quietly and anonymously in the background.

This case will already be receiving tonnes of publicity and donations from the profile of the club.

You may as well ask why they don't give the same publicity boost to every sick child in the UK.