Amy Bruce Charity Forward Message, Make Wish Foundation: Fact Check

Story:

Charity to Amy Bruce

15 year old girl holds hands with her 1 year old son.
People call her a “slut”, no one knows she was raped at age 14. People call another guy “fat”, no one knows he has a serious disease causing him to be overweight. They call an old man “ugly”, no one knows he experienced a serious injury to his face while fighting for our country in the war. Re-post this if you are against bullying and stereotyping. I bet 88% of you won’t, the other 22 aren’t heartless and will.

Hi, my name is Amy Bruce.

I am 7 years old, and I have severe lung cancer. I also have a large tumor in my brain, from repeated beatings. Doctors say I will die soon if this isn’t fixed, and my family can’t pay the bills. The Make A Wish Foundation, has agreed to donate 7 cents for every time this message is sent on. For those of you who send this along, I thank you so much, but for those who don’t send it, what goes around comes around. Have a Heart. Put this as your status.

Fact Check:

The message circulating on social media sites like Facebook purports to mention a ‘heart touching’ story coming from a 7 year old girl Amy Bruce, who explains that she is suffering with severe lung cancer and a large tumour in her brain caused from repeated beatings. The girl seems to say that her family cannot pay the medical bills, and that Make A Wish Foundation has agreed to donate her 7 cents every time her message is passed on or forwarded to others. Although the story sounds sad, the message asking for ‘charity’ via forwarding the same is not a fact.

About the Amy Bruce Charity

The story in question, the charity messages from 7 year old girl Amy Bruce has been circulating through emails since many years, requesting ‘kind people’ to forward the story to others. Later, quite similar messages have also been sent as text messages to mobile users; the same old story has now appeared on social media sites as well, requesting users to post the message. The Make-A-Wish Foundation mentioned in the message does exist in United States, but they work to grant the wish of children diagnosed with life-threatening medical conditions; they do not collect donations for their medical care. Moreover, charity donations for medical conditions generally do not happen by forwarding or sharing a particular message. As you can see in Related Stories section below, there were many such ‘sensitive’ hoax messages in the past.

So in short, the ‘charity’ forward messages in the name of a 7 year old girl Amy Bruce through Make A Wish Foundation are nothing but hoaxes. Forwarding such false messages will be of no use to anyone.