16 ms·

Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

• a13n 10y ago
  "Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan announce $3 billion initiative to ‘cure all diseases’" http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/21/mark-zuckerberg-and-priscilla-chan-announce-3-billion-initiative-to-cure-all-diseases/ http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/21/mark-zuckerberg-and-prisci...
  • SEJeff 10y ago
    I suspect it would have been much better for them to simply partner with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where they're actually curing diseases. They've literally almost eradicated polio globally[1]. [1] http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Polio
    • xixixao 10y ago
      And Bill just walked onto the stage :)
    • melling 10y ago
      Did you know that the vaccine for polio has existed for decades.
      • SEJeff 10y ago
        I did. Did you know that much of Africa didn't have access to said vaccine due to funding shortages? This was one of the efforts where the Gates foundation literally just threw money at the problem until it went away.
        • melling 10y ago
          Sure, I know that. The point of the new effort is trying to cure diseases. That's a completely different type of effort. Getting people together to travel to different parts of the world to make sure people are vaccinated, for example, requires a different group of people than scientists researching cures for diseases. Both groups are needed, of course. But you giving the example of "curing" polio as an example of what the Chan Zuckerberg foundation is trying to accomplish is inaccurate.
          • SEJeff 10y ago
            Ah I see the semantics of your argument and you're right. I just think other than the prestige argument (which is likely what this is) they could actually do more work working with someone who literally spends more on this than the entire USG.
            • deleted 10y ago
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    • maxerickson 10y ago
      Largely by funding the effort. http://www.polioeradication.org/Portals/0/Document/Financing/HistoricalContributions.pdf http://www.polioeradication.org/Portals/0/Document/Financing... Which I don't mean as a criticism, it's just that they aren't really driving the effort, they are participating by providing a lot of resources.
      • deleted 10y ago
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      • SEJeff 10y ago
        Based on that link, the Gates foundation is providing $2.86 billion. The second biggest donor is the US Government at $2.64 billion. I'd consider the entity with the most money in the game as the driver of really anything.
    • onewaystreet 10y ago
      > I suspect it would have been much better for them to simply partner with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Based on what? The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has plenty of money. Better for the Zuckerbergs to focus on other areas.
      • SEJeff 10y ago
        Based on the Gates foundation's existing accomplishments on eradicating diseases, of which Malaria and Polio are shining examples. While we've had Polio vaccines and Malaria pills for years in much of the western world, much of the poorer parts of the world aren't so lucky. So instead of duplicating something that already exists and works well, partner with them and get it done faster together. References: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Neglected-Tropical-Diseases http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Negl... http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Polio http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development... http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Malaria http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Mala...
        • melling 10y ago
          They aren't duplicate efforts. You keep missing that point.
          • SEJeff 10y ago
            "Cure all diseases" is a bit hand wavy just like a static code analyzer claiming to "find all software defects". What is the point that I'm missing? They don't really want to cure all diseases?
            • melling 10y ago
              Hey, Bill Gates is pretty excited. Maybe you could tweet him and ask him what you don't get? “Thank you mark, it’s an honour to join you all after this incredible milestone. The Chan Zuckerberg initiative is already doing some very promising work in terms of improving education for all students (and so) that is a really thrilling thing. And it is amazing that today they are taking on another bold challenge, this idea of curing and preventing all diseases by the end of the century. That’s very bold very ambitious, and I can’t think of a better partnership to take it on,” Bill Gates said.
    • ams6110 10y ago
      Well honestly that's a much easier task. Polio is a solved problem. The vaccine has existed for decades. It's just a matter of money to get it out to enough people. Curing "all" disease is a bit more ambitious. Not to say that in the end, Gates isn't helping more people today.
  • 0xmohit 10y ago
    Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan announce $3 billion initiative to ‘cure all diseases’ The title contains a typo: s/initiative/investment/ From the article: Today’s announcement follows the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s investment in Andela, a startup that trains and outsources work to developers in Africa.
    • onewaystreet 10y ago
      That investment and this announcement aren't the same thing.
  • thaw13579 10y ago
    For a point of reference, NIH's annual budge is about $31 billion.
    • Brakenshire 10y ago
      On the other hand, UK funded medical research is only about £500m a year. $3bn is a significant amount of money, and there's also potential that it could be spent in very targeted ways, or to pursue goals which might not get funded elsewhere. Seems like a very interesting project.
      • thaw13579 10y ago
        True, in particular, it would be great to see an organization like this help scientific software development and distribution, which something incredibly useful that is hard to fund through NIH (not sure about elsewhere).
        • lunula 10y ago
          Funding open source scientific software is a huge part of what the NIH does! Unfortunately there isn't a requirement that the code developed under grants is released as open source, but there is a lot of movement to make it so. Furthermore, researchers have strong incentives to provide reusable software implementations of their research. (I know many people say the incentives run against this, but it is now clear that useful software gets more citations and scientists forget so at their own risk!) I don't have a recent budget handy, but at least 10% of research funding is going to various forms of software development. I am happy to be shown wrong but 10% seems like a low estimate as literally all analysis is mediated by software. It's not like people crack out slide rules when they get a data set from a sequencer or mass spec. They go to GitHub and download some obscure domain-specific open source analysis package. Point being: a tiny administrative change could ensure that we direct $3B a year to open source scientific software in biomedicine! And further, it nearly looks this way already.
    • gmarx 10y ago
      yes but those people aren't silicon valley smart. Now that the tech billionaires are working on it we should have human health solved in a jiffy. It's like how medical informatics was in a pathetic state for decades until James Clark decided to take it on. After Netscape it was a simple matter and thanks to Healtheon all our healthcare software is good enough!
• deleted 10y ago
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• nenadg 10y ago
  Oh that's just great, another billionaire philanthropist curing all diseases. Like Gates did. I don't know whether their passion loses momentum inside 'initiative/fund' or it was doomed to be opposite of it's cause from the start?
  • dewitt 10y ago
    That's a strange reaction. Hasn't the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation been one of the most successful philanthropic organizations of all time? I thought they've saved millions of lives fighting malaria alone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...
    • nenadg 10y ago
      There is literally nothing on that article about how many lives their initiative saved. Just standard corporate propaganda about how much they spent on this and that. If I've spent 80 millions on Vaccines does that mean that I've saved hundreds of lives? No. I don't want to be a truther here, nor I'll paste links that would confirm partial statement wrapped inside my question, but it would be great if one could be open to critically observe actions of our beloved philanthropists, there is complete universe beyond local news feeds.
      • stanleydrew 10y ago
        I think your opinion is probably interesting and potentially valid, but your tone in the original comment is limiting your ability to communicate effectively. Less sarcasm would serve you well.
        • nenadg 10y ago
          sarcasm is better part of life, it's not limiting it's enriching :) I fail to understand why people hate it?
          • 10y ago
• sealthedeal 10y ago
  But doesnt Bill Gates want the world to have less people? Im confused...
• vegabook 10y ago
  Very nice. Some context: Mark Zuckerberg is worth 55 billion dollars. This is 5% of his net worth. Mark Zuckerberg spent 20bn on Whatsapp. At his 28% shareholding in facebook that's a 5.6bn USD personal commitment. The top 5 global pharma companies spent 42 billion USD on R&D in 2015 alone. Total pharma sector R&D is circa 200 yards. Every singe year. They aren't anywhere near "curing all diseases". This intiative would fund them for 5 days. Very generous, but let's keep some perspective.
  • United857 10y ago
    I wonder how much of that 42 billion is duplicating each other's work due to competitive/secrecy concerns. That wouldn't be an issue with this initiative, and I think it's very significant that they're partnering with academia on this.
    • vegabook 10y ago
      because Pharma doesn't partner with academia??
    • patall 10y ago
      It still does not work out. I am working at a major cancer center with 2.*00 employees incl. 1200 scientists. We have a budget of ~250 million. So you could pay for this centre for 15 years with Zucks money. Hardly enough time to treat all diseases or even "just" cancer, and I can assure you, we are not slacking off.
  • jonknee 10y ago
    > Mark Zuckerberg spent 20bn on Whatsapp. At his 28% shareholding in facebook that's a 5.6bn USD personal commitment. That's not how it works. Whatsapp was an investment, Chan Zuckerberg Science is not an investment. If he had announced a new for-profit drug company with $20bn of Facebook's money you would have a point. It still doesn't work out as a personal commitment though, Mark's shares of FB weren't suddenly worth $5.6b less (in fact shares have surged since!).
    • 10y ago
• lostmsu 10y ago
  I really wonder why those techy multibillionaires invest in medicine rather than techy stuff. I'd rather like to see fusion and hardware research done. Speaking globally, that might just bump global economy so significantly, the illnesses would go down just because more people would be able to afford education and medical care easily.
• limeyy 10y ago
  I wonder why, all these billionaires first want to make billions, and then do philanthropy. How about making their services/business/products more affordable with which they are making all this money with in the first place? For example: MS Office used to cost 4-500 euro for the average home user a few years ago. That was ridiculous. If you have a small shop and 2000 Facebook page likes, Facebook rips you off each time you want to reach them. Maybe market dictates these prices but then again, they would be in the position to dictate the prices in the first place.
  • _RPM 10y ago
    The Government gives incentives for charity donations via tax benefits.
  • harryh 10y ago
    You'd really rather have a cheaper MS Office than eradicate polio from the world?
    • limeyy 10y ago
      It's not that he made Office overpriced, just to eradicate polio.
  • mliker 10y ago
    You wonder why, yet these billionaires aren't wondering, they're doing.
  • yannyu 10y ago
    Mis-pricing your offerings, high or low, can ruin your chances in a market. There shouldn't be any particular connection between a company's pricing strategy and philanthropy, especially for a company selling something that isn't essential for people to live.
  • xorgar831 10y ago
    It's a "me first" attitude, once folks get what they want, then they'll consider others. Pretty normal unfortunately.
• 2pointsomone 10y ago
  Feeling so privileged right now; what a great time to be alive and see such visionary leadership. Thank you Mark, Priscilla, Bill, and the thousands of people whose names I don't know who work tirelessly on these problems.
  • deleted 10y ago
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• tschellenbach 10y ago
  This is great. Great achievements as a startup founder and now philanthropy. For those comparing this to pharma companies. Pharma companies invest in drugs that they can make money with. It sounds as though this $3 billion is aiming at more general research and making it publicly available.
  • metaphorm 10y ago
    maybe you should hold off on the praise until there's some results to show for it. making a press statement is not the same thing as curing a disease.
    • hsod 10y ago
      I'm comfortable praising someone for giving away 3 billion dollars to fight disease, even before the results are in.
      • ams6110 10y ago
        Indeed. In fact most of the wealthy people I know are quite charitable, in contrast to the way "the rich" are portrayed in the media and politics. And a high profile commitment like this from a high profile person could encourage that.
  • forgetsusername 10y ago
    >Pharma companies invest in drugs that they can make money with And they also do a lot of philanthropic work: http://www.forbes.com/2007/01/16/leadership-philanthropy-charity-lead-citizen-cx_hc_0116charitable.html http://www.forbes.com/2007/01/16/leadership-philanthropy-cha... The idea the "Pharma companies" act any one specific way is only something you'd read on HackerNews. This is great of Mr. Zuckerberg, but it doesn't require us to downplay the charitable work of other people, or in this case other industries.
• ryandrake 10y ago
  Not to take the wind out of anyone's sails, but there is a concern to be raised about relying more and more on charities to fund the public good. When a democratically elected government funds the public good, at least in theory, the public at large has a small say in choosing what counts as "public good". When you leave it to charity, you're relying on the morals of individual wealthy donors to decide what counts as a "public good". I don't claim to know which method is more risky in terms of mis-allocation of resources, but it's something to think about.
  • deleted 10y ago
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  • melling 10y ago
    As someone has already pointed out the NIH's budget is $31 billion dollars a year, for example, so we are still spending a lot of public money, for example. I really don't understand your worry. I'd like to see more public and private money put to work.
  • gmarx 10y ago
    The super rich have been doing this sort of thing at least since the robber baron era. Government funding of research went up dramatically anyway
  • bmmayer1 10y ago
    Why do you assume that government politicians and bureaucrats have a higher moral position to decide what counts as public good?
    • ryandrake 10y ago
      I never assumed that.
    • lunula 10y ago
      It is pretty hard to ignore the fact that they are elected and meant to serve as representatives of the people. SV billionaires: not so much.
• meira 10y ago
  Charity with evaded money is very evil.
  • dmix 10y ago
    Public tax policy that either provides plentiful loopholes or high enough tax rates where billionaires/millionaires can (and are highly incentivized to) shift their money and use tax saving schemes are what's really evil. If people spent time focusing on increasing government tax revenue from the rich rather than increasing tax rates on the rich - which just pushes more and more wealthy people to stash their money in tax shelters (see Ireland) rather than investing it at home - they'd actually succeed in improving the inequality situation. And most importantly boost the economy and create more middle income jobs (by keeping money as job-generating capital instead of sitting dormant in off-shore shelters). Instead of expecting humans to stop acting out of self-interest, how about: a) Creating incentives for businesses and the wealthy to not move money elsewhere by having competitive tax rates. The simple fact is having them pay something rather than further incentiving them to pay nothing would massively increase revenues without increasing rates. b) Massively simplify the tax system to close the myriad of loopholes that allow these wealthy people to continue operating locally while shifting all tax liability elsewhere. Make it obvious exactly how much each person owes their governments at the end of each year. Creating a tax policy that's grounded in the reality of human behaviour (you can call it evil if you wish) rather than idealistic fallacies of how people should act is the real solution here.... Assuming this whole thing Zuckerberg is creating is partially a form of tax sheltering in the first place.
• johansch 10y ago
  Hubris, much? Yes, this is a commendable effort, but I don't think they have the smarts/money for this. Even at an investor/patron level.
  • jonknee 10y ago
    It almost certainly won't happen, but you could have said the same thing about starting a social network that includes over a billion daily users.
    • M_Grey 10y ago
      That's like comparing the discovery of a new fundamental force, with the discovery that mythical dragons have been living in secret among us as our lawyers. It's true that both are unlikely, but one is ridiculous and the other merely very very challenging.
      • hmate9 10y ago
        Not sure which one is the ridiculous and which one is the very very challenging...
      • jonknee 10y ago
        I don't think it's all that ridiculous, it's over 80 years in the future. 80 years ago we were dying of all sorts of [now] easily preventable and curable diseases. Penicillin was not used until 1942!
        • M_Grey 10y ago
          And now it's practically useless. It's not a one-sided battle we're in, and we're heavily outnumbered.
          • jonknee 10y ago
            The point was that so much has changed in the previous ~80 years that I don't think it's ridiculous to think things will be radically different ~80 years into the future.
• idlewords 10y ago
  Pharmacology is an interesting example where better technology and scientific understanding have made things worse than earlier, low-tech methods ("inject plant extracts into animals and see what happens"). The number of new drugs discovered per dollar of research has been dropping since 1960, and obvious explanations (like "the easy ones have already been found") turn out not to explain the phenomenon. [http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v11/n3/fig_tab/nrd3681_F1.html http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v11/n3/fig_tab/nrd3681_F1....] This is something we should try to understand better, since it goes against the intuition that technology is an unalloyed good in scientific research. I applaud the money they're spending, but the level of technophilia in the announcement gives me pause.
  • notahacker 10y ago
    I can't speak for the past, but I think the big deal for the testing of the future will be shifting from "forty percent of the test subjects responded positively to the drug; none of the side effects were that bad" to "80% of test subjects carrying thought-to-be-marginally-relevant gene Y showed positive responses to the drug but none carrying gene Yvariant; those also carrying not-suspected-of-be-relevant gene X exhibited much stronger side effects" That should make initial testing a lot more expensive, but in the long run launches of new drugs less risky.
    • jonknee 10y ago
      And even farther in the long run make it possible to virtually test therapies against arbitrary genetic information.
    • theptip 10y ago
      I've been thinking along these lines recently; we currently design treatment plans using statistical methods, i.e. averaging effects across 'representative populations'. But imagine if you took your car to the garage and they said "90% of cars showing this symptom respond well to this treatment". When we truly understand how these biological systems work (which could be more than 100 years from now) we'll be able to measure what is different from the individual's baseline, rather than extrapolating based population averages.
• M_Grey 10y ago
  I plan to conquer the world and all of its inhabitants... long after all of us here are dead or senescent. I guess it is easy to make empty statements if you make them apply to a far enough future. Mars colonies from Musk (still working on getting the colonists there in one piece of course), and all disease tackled!* *With $3Bn
  • adventured 10y ago
    The difference being that you don't have an army or the power necessary such that I'm going to consider your plans to be serious in the least. With $56 billion, I'm inclined to take Zuckerberg a lot more seriously. He currently has eight times the annual R&D budget of Pfizer in paper wealth that has been increasing in value at a rapid clip (emphasis on paper, in that of course it may go up a lot more or down a lot, who knows). Tackling all disease is beyond grandiose; wiping out numerous diseases however is not - that would be an extraordinary accomplishment.
    • M_Grey 10y ago
      Well, to be fair I am responding to the grandiose statement that he made, not the more reasonable one that he could have made.
      • socmag 10y ago
        And again, trolley problems... There is $3B on on one track, with a note pinned to the top.. "To cure all diseases - <3 MarkZ". A train is barreling down. On the other track lies you, with a hoodie and a ham sandwich. Watching to the side is HN... HN can pull the switch and change the points, thereby saving the $3B, but killing you... in the hope the $3B will cure all disease. On the other hand HN can say screw the cash and let's save a ham sandwich, because (ummm, let's face it, sorry kid, you aren't going to amount to much) Little did HN know, you ARE MarkZ!
        • M_Grey 10y ago
          Are you actually replying to me, or are you... what the hell are you talking about?
• unknown_apostle 10y ago
  The commitment is very big, my comment is very small. Whatever exists needs to be challenged continuously to keep existing. Any naive attempt to suppress all adversity forever will backfire.
  • hmate9 10y ago
    Ok, so you would rather Zuck not spend his money trying to cure diseases?
    • unknown_apostle 10y ago
      No, but the sanguinary headline made me imagine a future where all biological stressors have actually been eradicated. Our species would be at its weakest. I guess I was briefly taking the donator's unicorn propaganda literally. Sorry.
      • Hondor 10y ago
        We're already partly there. Infant mortality is way down, allowing weak babies to live on to reproduce. Antibiotics and immunization of course. A lot of the good things we do for individuals are probably bad for our species because they remove stressors.
      • projektir 10y ago
        That's a very strange definition of "weakest" you're using there.
• helthanatos 10y ago
  New diseases will come to be. Possibly, the cures will cause the new diseases, possibly something else, but all disease won't be conquered. Does this ambitious projection include only disease or does it also include disorder? I think it would be cool to cure disorder before disease.
• Animats 10y ago
  Probably not feasible without some genetic re-engineering to design out vulnerabilities to common diseases. That's how aging will probably be solved. There's a big debug time problem, though. It takes about two generations to be sure you got it right. We'll probably have very long lived mice decades before it works for humans. (Many cancers in mice can be cured now. This doesn't translate to humans.) Then there will be species conflicts. Merck people won't be able to mate with Novartis people because they'll be too different genetically.
  • jychang 10y ago
    > Then there will be species conflicts. Merck people won't be able to mate with Novartis people because they'll be too different genetically. I don't think this will be a problem if you get to the point of genetically engineering people. You just can't mate the old fashioned way, but if anything that's a benefit- free birth control. IVF + genetic modification of the egg cell, assuming your technology is that advanced, should be the easy solution.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • qsymmachus 10y ago
    > Merck people won't be able to mate with Novartis people I think I'll stick with cancer for now
  • rawnlq 10y ago
    > That's how aging will probably be solved I read in some article of the Google equivalent version of this, Calico, that even if you cure all of cancer the average life expectancy will probably only increase by ~5 years (off the top of my head, can't find link).
  • sidcool 10y ago
    CRISPR is quite promising.
  • dredmorbius 10y ago
• hmate9 10y ago
  Not sure why there is a lot of negativity here. It doesn't seem that ridiculous of a goal. I think by 2100 we will have extremely powerful AI that will make fighting diseases extremely easy compared to methods available today. To be honest, it seems like an achievable goal. I wish Zuckerberg and Chan the best in this.
  • kafkaesq 10y ago
    I think by 2100 we will have extremely powerful AI that will make fighting diseases extremely easy compared to methods available today. Right. Just like the jetpacks and lunar colonies we have easy access to now, as promised in the 1960s.
    • mmaunder 10y ago
      As soon as we stop calling categorization algorithms "machine learning". It doesn't help to not know what machine intelligence isn't.
    • dwaltrip 10y ago
      Would you trade the development of the internet for jetpacks? I wouldn't.
      • kafkaesq 10y ago
        The point is that most predictions of what the future holds for us (based on spike developments in the past 5-10 years)† usually prove to be quite silly. † And in ML's case, ridiculously successful branding (per the sibling comment of yours).
  • goatlover 10y ago
    What sort of diseases do you suppose extremely powerful AI might be able to manufacture for militaries, terrorists, dissatisfied hackers, etc?
  • deleted 10y ago
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• kendallpark 10y ago
  I'm glad they're putting money into medical research, but I kinda roll my eyes when people make big claims about curing X, especially when X is something incredibly broad like "cancer" or in this case, "all diseases." AI/ML has barely scratched the surface of its potential in medicine, however, I find it naive to think that you can throw AI/ML at any random disease and always get a cure. Even after a century. Will we have a cure for trisomy 21? For antisocial personality disorder? For obesity and addiction? These things are far more complicated than just creating the right drug. But as much as I'm rolling my eyes at their blanket statement, the spirit of "yes we can!" does way more for science and progress than naysay of critics.
  • user731955373 10y ago
    "yes we can!" built the atomic bomb.
    • kendallpark 10y ago
      Which is a remarkable scientific achievement, independent of its use.
      • goatlover 10y ago
        Remarkable in the same way a future gray goo invention would be. And it was a military initiative, developed for military reasons.
        • EGreg 10y ago
          So was the internet. You never know if we will need that arsenal against asteroids.
          • czep 10y ago
            And from whose rocket are you going to trust launching those nukes? I'm not interested in even being in the same Hemisphere as such a launch! And everyone knows lasers are the solution to errant asteroids. Perhaps attached to evil sharks :)
• drcross 10y ago
  EDIT: JWZ disagrees that this is all rainbows and puppydogs. Archive.org link because JWZ dislikes HN- https://web.archive.org/web/20160818144913/https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/12/zuckerberg-has-not-donated-anything-you-gullible-credulous-pinheads/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160818144913/https://www.jwz.o...
  • elevensies 10y ago
    NSFW due to testicle. JWZ has some referrer detection so you might want to open it in a private tab to get around.
    • zach 10y ago
      And a perfect illustration of why "I'll just leave this here" is so much worse than a simple description of the link target.
  • ColinCochrane 10y ago
    Beware to anyone who follows that link directly (jwz isn't a big fan of HN referrals, for those who don't know).
• troels 10y ago
  How does one even define "disease"?
• karmicthreat 10y ago
  By 2100 I hope we have a patchable structures that just need an electronic update to generate the new immune cell/protein/expression.
• mmaunder 10y ago
  All disease with $3bn? https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/budget https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/budget
  • jonknee 10y ago
    Why would an 80+ year project receive all of its funding on the first day?
    • inopinatus 10y ago
      $3bn/day isn't a bad estimate to cure all diseases.
  • jaggederest 10y ago
    3bn is, one assumed, being used as leverage rather than a primary mover. If you have matching donations or can kickstart an otherwise self-sustaining process, the end-to-end cost doesn't have to add up to 3bn to be feasible with a 3bn pool of initial capital. Think of it as venture research.
    • throwaway729 10y ago
      > If you have matching donations or can kickstart an otherwise self-sustaining process They won't have been the first people funding research to have thought of this... it's a criteria sometimes used in evaluating in NIH grants, for instance. > Think of it as venture research As opposed to?
      • jaggederest 10y ago
        As opposed to more standard research funding which isn't as goal oriented. I assume they're looking for a "billion dollar exit" from their research funding.
        • alsocasey 10y ago
          Overemphasis on commercialization is a common complaint of the current funding situation in medical research, so I don't think we're failing for lack of interest in commercial exits. In fact, many scientist are serial entrepreneurs. Moreover, many discoveries that went on to make a lot of people a lot of money had no obvious commercial application when they were first being researched... Predicting future markets is hard.
• aestetix 10y ago
  Step 1: shut down Facebook.
  • socmag 10y ago
    Sorry to see you got downvoted for voicing your opinion. Remember, Stockholm Syndrome is a disease.
    • sanderjd 10y ago
      That opinion adds nothing to the current discussion. This isn't just an open "tell us any random opinion you might have!" forum; the idea is to contribute thoughts relevant to the topic.
      • socmag 10y ago
        I think the OP here was hinting along these lines perhaps: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/245251.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/245251.php Facebook is by some considered an addiction, so in some regards a disease that should be tackled along with others.
      • idobai 10y ago
        No, HN is the "random junk on the home page" forum; the idea was to post IT related content. But the quality of the content is entry-level for a dev. This site == r/programming + NYT/etc. articles.
• danielmorozoff 10y ago
  In this vein, Some very interesting work is being done by the church group at Harvard to encode cells to withstand all viral infections at the genetic level. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2101657-synthetic-supermicrobe-will-be-resistant-to-all-known-viruses/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2101657-synthetic-super...
• supergirl 10y ago
  any money spent on research is good but, 1. governments around the world probably spend hundreds of billions yearly on research in medicine alone. and zuckerberg wants to solve everything with his 3bn? 2. our current technology is not even close to good enough to make the kind of major breakthroughs needed to say we 'cured cancer'. for example, the biggest neural networks we trained have the order of 10bn parameters while the human brain has 100bn neurons, each, I'm guessing, having at least 10 parameters. similarly for very small scale technology. I think we need to tone down a bit the hype in AI and computing.
• pkaye 10y ago
  I just feel this is too broad and unbounded. They should have focused on a specific diseases and a shorter timeframe. By 2100 most of us will be long dead by current standards.
• yazaddaruvala 10y ago
  Including aging as a disease?
• languagewars 10y ago
  I'm sick of this contrarian disruptive nonsense. Redd Foxx got to choose his fate, but what am I going to do while forced to sit around the hospital dying of nothing? Find a socially acceptable alternative to disease before you eliminate it. (Ok, to put it more clearly: get off my damn lawn and my damn planet you stupid non-exponential function understanding kids.. Please!)
• sams99 10y ago
  The absolutely crazy thing is that in this day and age the vast majority of diagnosed paediatric cancers are not sequenced (no germline, tumor or RNA seq) It actually makes me feel quite sick that there is so much information out there that is not being mined or analyzed. I hope this money does not go into some sort of "in 100 years from now moonshot" as opposed to, we have huge urgent needs for money right now.
• calsy 10y ago
  I know it's more of a western problem, but it would be good if someone could find some real solutions to the obesity crisis. If you ask many GPs in the west they will tell you that a majority of illnesses they address are related to weight and diet. With an aging, increasingly overweight adult population alongside a sharp rise in child obesity come big consequences for health care over the next half century. Im not saying its an easy task you can just throw money at, but if trends continue as they are now the health and economic impact on society will be huge. Bar some sort of national catastrophe (for e.g. war, famine, disease) is it a crazy idea to think we could see a reduction in obesity levels? Are we simply resigned to the fact that we will just get bigger and bigger in the future?
  • roadnottaken 10y ago
    Um, I know a solution to the obesity crisis....
    • calsy 10y ago
      Eat less, exercise more? Easy to say right, but the simple message isn't working obviously. Obesity levels have doubled over the last 40 years. Its not sporadic either, it's affecting the entire population now. Why is this happening?
      • ams6110 10y ago
        The government (and medical science) was wrong about what it told us to eat for the past 40 years.
      • asp_hornet 10y ago
        people believing there is some mystical cause to their obesity is the problem. People like to blame some magical undiscovered illness when they are just eating too much, eating too many bad foods, not exercising enough or a combination of those. there is no mystery to obesity but I do believe we can do more to educate people on better / healthier lifestyle habits.
• snappy173 10y ago
  this is marginally better than the Bluth family's fundraising efforts to cure TBA ...
• whybroke 10y ago
  This is lovely and all. But he is in a much better position to work on the curious problems of ever increasing political polarization in our new Post-Factual world. If I were to guess, over the next century that problem is going to result is a vastly more misery than a slight speed up to medical technology could compensate for.
  • projektir 10y ago
    I am much more concerned about social/ethical/cultural problems in general. I think if those problems were solved, all other issues with effectively evaporate in a very short time, because we waste a tremendous amount of energy on, well, random crap. Sometimes technological/medical/governmental/etc. changes do move the social forward so there's hope there.
    • whybroke 10y ago
      I agree entirely. And, looking at a small but easier part, I believe that there is a particular piece that Zuckerberg can work on very effectively. His company is now a key part of the way people form their view of the world. The algorithm/process that selects what ideas they are exposed to chooses only the most outlandish and memorable ideas that also serve to reinforce the viewers already existing preconceptions. This, after all, makes facebook quite attractive: an echo chamber of stimulating impressions that always reconfirm your world view. Obviously accuracy is irrelevant in this model and evidence is unheard of. This is a specific problem that is contributing to a completely credulous world view, worsening political gaps based on untruths and, worst of all, creating the belief that fact is just another word for opinion. And this problem is exactly in his area of expertise on a platform he has control of. At any rate, if not worked on pretty quick, a re-established House Un-American Activities Committee will make it awfully hard later.
• grownseed 10y ago
  These acts of apparent philanthropy from ridiculously wealthy people rub me the wrong way. It feels like those rich patrons from older times who would bestow their "generosity" as they pleased, except that in modern times most countries have frameworks in place to make this sort of work happen, and these rich people choose to ignore them, or worse, disparage them. Companies like Facebook (and people like Mark Zuckerberg) actively avoid paying taxes whenever they can, in a lot of countries that, for example, have public healthcare and other public institutions that would normally benefit from these taxes. It's a bit like repeatedly stealing some kid's lunch, and then making fun of the kid for her weakness while appearing strong (and stronger in comparison to the weak kid) and compassionate when the kid passes out and you carry her on your back.
  • wineisfine 10y ago
    Very true. Empires build by companies with low ethics and that are known for bullying competition and poor integrity. Some skepticism here would be appropriate. I guess it's still better then them buying more, eh, yachts. Still, I can't shake the feeling that instead of making a horrible closed product, Facebook, that's basically eating the internet like a cancer, itself -- how about fixing that too? These people are so powerful they have presidents kissing their ass.
  • sanderjd 10y ago
    I think peoples' perspectives on this are basically divided by the question of who they think is more effective at using these pools of money: foundations run by certain wealthy people, or governments. I've waffled on this question my whole adult life, but now more than ever, I'm pretty happy that, for instance, the donors to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were able to donate all that money, instead of seeing it under the control of the current (or last few iterations of the) US congress...
• chris_wot 10y ago
  I'd like to see their efforts in stopping the spread of the most rapidly increasing disease to challenge humanity in any man's lifetime. It's called Facebook.
• lucyfor 10y ago
  So now we're expected to trust the billionaire that gave us a crappy OS and the billionaire that gave us a shitty social media website with eradicating all disease within the next 84 years ? "Modern medicine is only 100 years old" ? Seriously ?
• karmicthreat 10y ago
  So lets say this were possible. Where would be the best place to throw this money? Just researching X disease one by one isn't going to be successful. There are not enough resources available to make that happen that way. Period. So what if a big leap in computational biology happened? Making faster machines is relatively easier and largely unregulated. So you focus on simulating disease and some form of automation that tries to cure it. We have the problem of building these models for the computer to crunch on. So why not build them from people. Continuously monitor everything about someone. DNA, the various omics, self reports. All the while machine learning is trying learn these models. So other automations can change them. So the first thing we need is a way to collect all this data. Itself a major medical breakthrough. How much data do we need to build the models? This seems to be the first breakthrough we need to even approach this.
• ravenstine 10y ago
  All disease? I hope they mean specifically pathogens, because there are plenty of diseases that are caused by other things or have unknown causes, and you can throw ten times the net worth of Facebook at them and they probably wouldn't be cured noticeably sooner. If it's just pathogens, I could believe that if we programmed nanoprobes that could target them, making antibiotics/antivirals permanently obsolete.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• bitL 10y ago
  Saw this on Reddit, maybe someone can comment: --- From Wikipedia: The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is not a charitable trust or a private foundation but a limited liability company which can be for-profit, spend money on lobbying, make political donations, will not have to disclose its pay to its top five executives and have fewer other transparency requirements, compared to a charitable trust. Under this legal structure, as Forbes wrote it, "Zuckerberg will still control the Facebook shares owned by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative".
  • jakewins 10y ago
    First, so we are on the same page: An LLC and "a non profit" are two orthogonal things. "Non-profit" is a tax status granted to any entity recognized by the IRS, an LLC is a state construct, not recognized by the IRS. LLCs exist in the court system - they can be liable for things done under the legal umbrella of the LLC, meaning they be sued, and so on. This is the "Limited Liability" part; the members of an LLC are, for some things, not personally liable for any legal trouble. LLCs do not exist, as far as the IRS is concerned. Because of this, an organization can be an LLC in it's local state, registered as a corporation of some kind with the federal gov't - and that corporation can be Non-Profit; eg; an LLC can be Non-Profit, and nothing can be "a" Non-Profit, because Non-Profit is not an entity, it's a tax status. So. You are Mark Zuckerberg. You hold a lot of Facebook stock, and you want to commit that stock to Philantropy. Cool. You could start a federal corporation (which would be recognized by the IRS) and file for Non Profit status. But why would you? You're not accepting other peoples donations, so you don't need to help them make tax-deductible donations. Your money, "moved into" the LLC, still goes on your personal taxes (remember, the IRS does not care that your state has invented some court construct called an LLC - unless you're a federal corporation, your money goes on your regular tax return), meaning any donations made to, say, a Non-profit research fund, will be tax deductible just like it would any other day, so you don't loose out on any taxes. Creating a Non-Profit of some kind would mean a lot of legal work, a lot of complexity in terms of how this new federal entity uses it's $3B Facebook stock to vote, if you set up as a foundation there are rules around holding too much stock in individual companies, et cetera et cetera. TL;DR: There's a lot of downside and the only upside is that some guy on Reddit would whine about how you're a fraud in some other way. If I wanted to set aside $3B of my personal stock and tell the world "I'm gonna donate this money, over time", I don't see why I wouldn't just pay the $50 filing fee to get some legal distance from lawsuits in the form of an LLC and call it a day. Edit: I should say that this is a short-term perspective. I would expect, as Mark grows older, he may want to move this money into an actual non-profit entity of some kind, with a board and so on that could oversee the management and dispersement of the money over the long haul, or whatever. But in the short term, it just seems like a lot of legalese for no benefit.
• Arkaad 10y ago
  Why does the author keep saying "Ms Chan"? Aren't they married?
  • gammarator 10y ago
    Should be Dr. Chan. She has an MD.
• Arkaad 10y ago
  I wonder what they plan to do about the anti-vaccination movement.
• bunkydoo 10y ago
  Addiction is probably one of the worst diseases, and I am not sure that you can 'cure' it.
• mungoid 10y ago
  What about new diseases that are discovered between now and then?
• stevefeinstein 10y ago
  I would never discourage them, audacious goals are how real change is achieved. But in the history of the world, every time you conquer one disease, a worse and scarier one seems to fill the void. And if you wanted to get pedantic, it could be said that Humanity is a disease of the Earth. Eliminating that infestation might qualify under the goal. Perhaps AI is not going to solve the problem by eliminating disease, but eliminating that which can be diseased. Kill the prey, and the predator dies.
  • projektir 10y ago
    Pedantic or simply oddly foolish? That's not a precise statement at all. The concept of humanity-as-a-disease makes no sense outside of a highly misanthropic and Stockholm-syndrome-ish view of the world. "Earth" is not a sensing entity, for one, so you cannot commit moral crimes against it (i.e, bring forth to it the very real suffering that a human experiences from a disease), and it's also the source of both humanity and disease in the first place. We have diseases because "Earth" runs a process by which various creatures are continually created and torment each other to figure out who survives better. Removing humans would do nothing more but restart the misery process again, until another intelligent vehicle appears to try to resist it, assuming that intelligent vehicles are a low energy state that evolution-style processes like to reach. Such a vehicle is our best bet for the disease truly going away. The intelligent vehicle, of course, will be highly influenced by the natural world it came from. You could go for a Sargeras-style crusade and decide to extinguish all life in the universe and make all planets uninhabitable so that nothing can ever evolve again to cause diseases anywhere, but you would still need such an immensely powerful vehicle to enable that that you could as well stop wasting your time and make utopias instead because if you can handle FTL travel you can handle some microbes. > But in the history of the world, every time you conquer one disease, a worse and scarier one seems to fill the void. There are plenty of awful diseases people used to get from unsanitary conditions, malnourishment, and direct contact with nature that we don't talk about anymore because nobody gets them in first world countries or because they have been eliminated.
• partycoder 10y ago
  Most likely by year 2100 Mark and Priscilla won't be alive, and people that read about this claim won't be alive either. Then, it is not a legally binding claim. I think it's a way to promote their foundation.
• meitham 10y ago
  To achieve this goal, Mark will need access to the entire world medical records, selling our data to insurance companies. Sorry Mark, but I refuse to trade my privacy, and the safety of millions that cannot afford medical insurance with a promise of living in a world without disease.
• subcosmos 10y ago
  I built a visualizer of the top causes of death. We've got a lot of diseases to cure! https://www.infino.me/mortality/usmap https://www.infino.me/mortality/usmap
• idobai 10y ago
  *Scripter-kid created a website - now off to save the world! At least they've resources and 83 years...
• NicoJuicy 10y ago
  I don't think it's a good thing to make us disease-free in terms of evolution. I think it's better to just cure the diseases that kill us ( long/short-term) eg. cancer, aids, ... or make us immoble for longer term ( parkinson, ..) Why? Because i think the best defense is a good immune system. You don't get a good immune system by staying inside and infection free and using medication all the time. Let people become sick ( not lethal ones) and let nature fight it off.
  • darius180 10y ago
    This is the comment I've been looking for. Even aside from evolution - we are reliant on our gut microbe to survive. Unfortunately, in some cases, what makes us sick is stuff from our gut microbe! We're literally a biome unto ourselves - and who knows what would happen if we removed all X. Our immune systems are pretty damn good at killing stuff off, and we've also seen that the elimination of worms (ew) from our biome may have cause or contributed to a number of autoimmune conditions. This sounds very much like an unintended side effects scenario. I definitely agree that we need to eliminate lethal and incapacitating conditions. However getting rid of "all disease"... it may cause more problems than it solves. And then there's the sociological angle too
  • projektir 10y ago
    You're essentially advocating that a huge amount of people would die off, FYI.
    • NicoJuicy 10y ago
      I am not. I am saying that getting sick is not a bad thing, a sickness that kills is.
• caub 10y ago
  as long as smoking will be removed the planet I'm fine
• pokemongoaway 10y ago
  Such a joke. If they were anyone else we would be calling them out. Is there any evidence that this wealth won't be concentrated in the same industry, whose stock prices would decrease if their drugs worked to treat any disease causes. A claim like this can be dismissed without evidence.
• apatters 10y ago
  This is difficult to say without sounding snarky, but will 'all disease' include the mental disorders (both discovered and undiscovered) that Facebook inflicts upon its users? Depression from seeing other people's perfect lives, obsessive compulsive dopamine-fueled update checking to maximize Zuck's ad revenue etc. I'm glad he's spending his money this way but how about the way he makes it. Facebook is not a particularly benign product and when you throw in the rising privacy, censorship, and "Free Basics" concerns, I would argue it's creeping towards having a net negative impact on the world. I would have much more respect for Zuckerberg if he took a profit hit to fix his product and how his company interacts with the world. It's worth noting that Bill stepped away from Microsoft before he got deeply into philanthropy, in part to avoid conflict of interest. He knew he had a checkered past and he made a break with it. Zuck has a checkered present. Curing diseases in the developing world while pushing your product on it at the same time is somewhat morally ambiguous in my view.
  • norswap 10y ago
    I'll take some depression* if I can avoid cancer. I'm much more confident in my ability to beat depression than cancer. (*) Not to be confused with depressive disorder, a clinical condition that Facebook cannot create on its own.
  • estefan 10y ago
    You're seriously equating looking at someone's photos with catching HIV, Ebola or developing cancer? Pathetic.
    • apatters 10y ago
      No, I'm not. Do you always assume that people who have differing opinions from yours must be heartless monsters and insult them? That must be a serious impediment to constructive discussion. To put my point succinctly Zuckerberg hasn't demonstrated a great deal of social responsibility in running his business. There are problems much closer to his influence (literally caused by his product) which he doesn't even discuss in public, let alone try to solve. So when he announces he and his wife are going to effectively end the greatest cause of human suffering, some skepticism about his motives is totally legitimate. For instance, what strings will be attached to the receipt of this money?
• zaro 10y ago
  I don't remember who's quote is but sounds relevant for this article : We won't have cure for diseases until first we have a cure for greed.
• wiz21c 10y ago
  Who will own the intellectual property rights on the discoveries ? If it's Zuck, then I'm not interested.
• bwindels 10y ago
  These self-congratulatory billionaire philanthropists and their tax evasion schemes really irk me. Everything won't be peachy in the future. We're well on our way to warm up the planet by 4 degrees Celsius by 2100, because of the globalized world in which you could gain your fortune. Stop exerting power of money that doesn't belong to you, pay your taxes like everyone else, and maybe governments would have more means to improve issues that were democratically prioritized, with more oversight. These flashy single issues funds with vague goals are mainly there to serve the ego of whoever funded them. The school of life has a good video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTAE5m3ZO2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTAE5m3ZO2E
• dschiptsov 10y ago
  Not bold enough. Let them tackle nondeterminism first.)
• BorisVSchmid 10y ago
  Most infectious diseases in humans are known to have originated from wildlife, so eradicating all current diseases will still leave us with new diseases entering the human population. Current rate at which new diseases establish themselves in the human population is about ~1 per year, moreso under unstable climate [Greger, Woolhouse]. http://czbiohub.org/projects/infectious-disease/ http://czbiohub.org/projects/infectious-disease/ Looks like Chan and Zuckerberg's initiative on infectious diseases is focused on a rapid response once a disease establishes itself in humans. There is certainly a lot to win there, but it is still acting after the fact, rather than prevention. Would have liked part of the effort to be focused on monitoring wildlife to understand which diseases are at risk of jumping over. Greger, M.Crit. Rev. Microbiol. 33, 243–299 (2007). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18033595 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18033595 Woolhouse, M .E.J. Trends Microbiol. 10, s3–s7 (2002). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12377561 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12377561