Real behaviour in a virtual world

The American Cancer Society is organising its second Second Life Relay for Life. Basically, this involves Second Life users in various parts of the meta-verse (and physical world) taking part in a 24 hour relay.

This is wonderfully strange on several levels:

1. Cancer is something which can affect anyone, therefore the alleviation, or ideally, the eradication of it is something that everyone should be interested in. However, when it comes to fund raising, it seems as though people feel that the fund raisers should 'do' something in order to justify soliciting donations. I wonder where that comes from
2. Real people, engaging in a virtual race to raise money in the real world

I wonder if we will start to see real races being run in the real world to raise money for things which happen in the virtual world. Actually, I rather like that idea, perhaps we should start a charity addressing social issues in the virtual world.