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Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan Announce $3 Billion Initiative To 'Cure All Diseases' (venturebeat.com)
Yesterday, researchers on behalf of Microsoft said they will "solve" cancer within the next 10 years by treating it like a computer virus that invades and corrupts the body's cells. Today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced a $3 billion initiative to "cure all diseases." VentureBeat reports: The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a company created by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan to "unlock human potential and promote equality," today announced "Chan Zuckerberg Science," a $3 billion project that aims to cure, prevent, or manage "all diseases in our children's lifetime." "That doesn't mean that no one will ever get sick," Mark Zuckerberg later said. But the program hopes to eventually make all diseases treatable -- or at least easily manageable -- by the end of the 21st century. "Our society spends 50x more treating people who are sick than on finding cures. We can do better than that," said Zuckerberg. A press release from the Initiative says Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan will provide "at least $3 billion over the next decade to help jumpstart this work." "The plan," as Zuckerberg called it, is to "bring scientists and engineers together, build tools and technology, [and] grow the movement to fund science." That plan includes a program called Biohub, a partnership between Stanford University, Berkeley, and UCSF that "will focus on understanding underlying mechanisms of disease and developing new technologies which will lead to actionable diagnostics and effective therapies." You can watch the full Chan Zuckerberg Science presentation here.
If there is anything I said that was bad about FaceBook I take it back.
This is an awesome idea !
Since that's a disease at the heart of the body politic. No, he didn't say he would do this, but if he were serious, he would.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Yesterday, researchers on behalf of Microsoft said they will "solve" cancer within the next 10 years by treating it like a computer virus that invades and corrupts the body's cells. Today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced a $3 billion initiative to "cure all diseases."
"I see how it is. Fine. I, Jeff Bezos, pledge an end to all human suffering by sometime in the next six months."
Throw money at it. That'll fix it!
Wow, spend 3 billion dollars? If only someone had thought of that solution sooner!
He's like a part-time stock trader who just realized how much money you can make with options.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yesterday, researchers on behalf of Microsoft said they will "solve" cancer within the next 10 years by treating it like a computer virus that invades and corrupts the body's cells.
Well, leaving aside the rather vast differences between a computer virus and cancer, I think the fact that they haven't "solved" computer viruses yet suggests that it's a bit premature to think that they can move on to something tougher.
I've been waiting for a cure to sitting on my ass. So far the best that anyone has come up with involves exercise.
snowcatxx87 in the house!
This self-promoting a-hole has too much money for the good of man.
You could, you know, fix the GDP-destroying medical system rather than spend three billion dollars on a program to kill everyone (the only sure way to cure all diseases).
Dream on. $3B vs. the several $trillions spent by national labs. Ha ha ha.
"Our society spends 50x more treating people who are sick than on finding cures."
That's because there's no money to be made curing people. Better to keep them sick and hooked on pharma.
...Zuck means "patent all the medications, so I can get fat off the overinflated profits".
If he wanted to make a meaningful difference in the world, he'd work to make existing medical care affordable, not piss away money on pie-in-the-sky initiatives to "cure all diseases".
They will be stunned when they try to find out how just a single cell organism works. Software, even the large kind of wankery like Facebook, while large, is a piss in the ocean compared to the complexity of biology.
Richard M Nixon, remember him, declared a war on cancer 50 years ago...
Dear Mister Zuckerberg,
We think that you're grossly underestimating the size of the effort.
But thank you for diverting a bit of your fortune to our cause.
It's a refreshing change from counting on big pharma corporations to divert a bit from their marketing budget....
- The scientists in the life-science field
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
http://www.usnews.com/news/art...
U.S. Spending on medical research 131 billion there. Hey he is just that good.
When corporations make huge donations with such glowing and impossible goals, one figures the money will mostly go to paying graft. (both to local politicians and to leaders of countries in other parts of the world.) And usually the donations end up getting the corporation some favored status while cutting down the taxes they have to pay.
Also, if they are a takeover target because they have lots of cash, this is one way to stop the takeover threat.
That said, there probably is some little portion of good intention. But if the corporation really wanted to help
Yesterday, researchers on behalf of Microsoft said they will "solve" cancer within the next 10 years by treating it like a computer virus that invades and corrupts the body's cells. Today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced a $3 billion initiative to "cure all diseases."
"I see how it is. Fine. I, Jeff Bezos, pledge an end to all human suffering by sometime in the next six months."
I, Larry Ellison, will eliminate all humans in a week!
I believe the real solution would be to invest the billions in AI. Which is also a problem that already has a lot of people working on it, but as you say, less so than the amount already being poured into medical research.
Just figure out how to create AI and raise it in such a manner that it views humans as somewhat dumb but amusing pets. Then stand back and let it cross reference all the existing medical knowledge and figure out how to save us. And it could probably solve a lot of other non-medical problems at the same time.
(The downside is that it may also decide to spay or neuter most/all of us to keep the population in check, but if i get a significantly longer and healthier lifespan in a wealthier and more peaceful world i think i can deal.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Shouldn't Microsoft actually cure computer viruses before they go on to use the same method for cancer? Just sayin..
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If such an invention, whatever it will be, that really cures all (or even merely most) illnesses, ever comes to fruition, why should it not be treated as Uber et al are treated today?
That is, why wouldn't Mark and Priscilla be asked pointed questions about doctors and nurses who — despite spending years and thousands of dollars on education and certification — will become obsolete? What of the hospitals and other health-care infrastructure, that is no longer necessary?
Will we be expected to sympathize with the struggling medical personnel beating up staff of whatever corporation/organization is set up to make the new method and burn their vehicles? Will we have "insightful" comments on Slashdot demanding "level playing field" between this hypothetical new method and the old ones?
Will the FDA meekly disband itself, or will they keep fighting for relevance (and their cushy jobs) the way cities' "Taxis and Limousine" commissions do today?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm not gay, but I did see the first few minutes of the Scream Queens season 2 premier yesterday.
The rich dean bitch character had a thing going about how she wants to CURE diseases instead of profiting off of endlessly (and unsuccessfully) treating patients and their symptoms. She was starting a new institute with her own money to find cures for everything. Obviously, it was some sort of evil plot.
That said, this leads me to conclude:
- Zuckerberg watches Scream Queens (and you know what that means)
- This new plot Zuckerberg is evil, like all his other plots
- This new plot will fail spectacularly
headlines like "live to 1000 years old" "cure death" and "pre-crime" and now this.
all fucking 100% absolute nonsense
Deciding to spend money on research is good and all but not completely realistic.
Throwing money at a problem doesn't a guarantee that a solution will be found.
i.e.
There will always be the homeless and the poor. Money isn't going to change that.
Making grandiose, over the top statements, is laughable at best. Especially when they fail, and fail they will. Hard. Being more discreet would be more prudent in the long run.
...TIL
Bill Gates > Mark Zuckerberg.
No news there.
Well, the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon earned about $2.4 billion from 1966 to 2009 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jerry_Lewis_MDA_Labor_Day_Telethon) to look for a cure to muscular dystrophy.
So good luck to this attempt with $3 billion instead.
Ahh, the hubris of the ultra-rich. We have been throwing money at the "war on cancer" for almost half a century now ($500billion since 1971), and yet the age-adjusted death rate of cancer is almost unchanged since the 1950s, according to the CDC.
$3billion over 10 years isn't even a drop in the bucket to cure the various cancers, let alone "all diseases".
</captain_obvious>
Will Facebook be on the list? He did say all diseases.....
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
It's like they are trying to one-up each other:
Microsoft: "We'll cure cancer."
Zuck&Chan: "Oh yah? We'll cure everything!"
Trump: "I'll cure everything twice as fast and make the germs pay for it!"
Hillary: "I already did all those, but unfortunately misplaced the emails with the formulas."
Table-ized A.I.
I guess the megalomaniacs at Microsoft and Facebook should be given some credit. Unlike megalomaniacs of the past, like Hitler or Stalin, they're not interested in curing the world of all the Jews or Capitalists, but target diseases instead. Still, there's something both amusing and tremendously idiotic about grand narcissistic declarations like "We're going to fix CANCER" or "We're going to cure all the diseases!"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
We can "cure" all diseases just as easily as "ending" all "homelessness", "hunger" and "Facebook".
cure=treat
ending=hiding
homeless=long term pedestrian
hunger=foodeater
people=distractees
facebook=distractors
Problems solved. Now wheres my cut of the money ol' Zuky?
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Forgive my doubt, but if country names are any indication, an initiative to "unlock human potential and promote equality" will do anything but.
Does that include the disease known as Islam ? Islam has infected the minds of many humans and is more dangerous than ebola or HIV.
This stupid idiot really thinks the answer to everything is "throw more money at it". If Fuckerberg wants equality so badly, perhaps he should start by shutting down his exploitative company.
Or maybe totalitarianism? Which his Chinese wife gladly accepts.
Both Zionism and Totalitarianism have killed more people than cancers, aids, heart attacks etc. This new "CDC" idea of his, aka Rockefeller created and controlled health system. Anything that goes against it will be labeled "junk science", just like our current "health system".
Couple that with Bill "I'll vaccinate your whole country" Gates's initiative announced within days of each other, to cure all cancer with a computer, and you can see a similar trend emerging here.
Do not trust the Zuckerberg's or Bill Gates' of the world with your computing, data, and especially health. These are people with very selfish agendas, built to enrich themselves under the guise of being some kind of hero of history. Both Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are parasites, tricking retarded humans.
Corporations offer stock options to low-level employees, since that's one way for the the top executives to get them, too. In this case, curing the diseases of the masses translates to curing that one disease that might affect me.
Hulda Clark says "hi"
"ohhhh, I'm a billionaire, me so smrt!"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Now I applaud them for using their money to try to help people. However there is a degree of arrogance common in the tech/business sectors that they have the formula to success. While working in technology and in medical uses a lot of similar types of thinking there are a few major differences.
1. Technology isn't alive. You can copy it, test it, break it, completely gut all the parts and rebuild it. Ethically you cannot do that with people and animals. And right now if it dies, it is dead you can't undead yet. Unlike technology, it dies you can bring it back to operational again.
2. We know how technology works at its most fundamental level. We know the chemical properties of semiconductors we know how to make gates and memory... You can take the world's most advanced computer and software, and every part and component there will be someone who can explain it. Technology we build from the ground up. And every step has a degree of documentation for it. The human body is something that needs to be discovered (That sounded bad) We are learning more and more about it every day. While we had mapped the GNOM the interaction with all the parts is still to be discovered. As well we are finding things that we thought were dormant or useless actually do important things.
3. Money can't buy Eureka!. It can put more people onto the project hoping to increase the chances of an Eureka! moment. But still it could take decades for that one person in a billion to make the right connection, and then be able to explain it to the next guy. Or a little more further away from Eureka, would be just the luck to look for something that no one looked for before.
4. Institutional attitudes. The tech sector is rather modern Academia and Health Care as Institutions are rather victorian in nature. The people you hire, may not want to find the cure for all, and share the credit, they want the credit and recognition so they may hide information until they can provide it in a way they will gain further credit.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I believe the real solution would be to invest the billions in AI.
Do you want terminators? Because that's how you get terminators.
Build an AI and ask it to eliminate all diseases.
Better to blow it all on beer and dressing monkeys up as civil war reenactors. That way we keep the number of gunshot wounds down to a reasonable level.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This just in!
John McAfee says he'll abolish Monday mornings and Friday afternoons!
Top that Bezos!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I hate to sound cynical, but this really does sound like just one of those 'feel good' ideas that come up over a few drinks, that totally ignores your lack of knowledge on the subject, or anything else related to reality. We, as a species, have been trying to 'cure all disease' for thousands of years, and while we've come a long way in that time, we've only scratched the surface -- and along the way we've created more problems. We're starting to run out of antibiotics that actually work. Our own technology and civilization itself has caused more diseases. For all we know, genetically-modified foods, over the next, say, 100 years, might cause diseases. If I give Zuckerberg the benefit of the doubt, I'd call him naive; if I don't give him the benefit of the doubt, then I'd call him arrogant. Either way, even if he liquidated Facebook and all his other holdings, business, personal, or otherwise, he still would only have a tiny fraction of a percent of what it'll take to 'cure all diseases'. More likely than not, this is just a public relations stunt to improve the optics of Zuckerberg and Facebook. He'll pledge some large-sounding sum of money to some medical research or other, get a nice tax write-off, then no one will hear about it again.
You're actually spot on. Facebook is, in many respects, a great contributor to heart disease from sedentary lifestyles, which is the #1 killer. So if Mark Zuckerberg is really interested in saving lives he should shutdown FB for half the day every day and encourage people to go outside. He won't do that, though, because he's not really interested in helping people.
that their wealth has warped their minds, being rich does not always mean they are wise, a fool and his money, if i was rich i would do some philanthropy too but i would not come up with such pie in the sky crazy ideas, i would work with real world problems with real world solutions, maybe donate a few billion to provide medical treatment to poor children that could otherwise not afford it, have some cargo planes airdrop food in emergency situations where people are starving, thats that actually benefit real people in the real world right now, not some impossible pie in the sky research ideas that will never come to fruition
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
Totally tone deaf given that many treatable and manageable diseases today go untreated thanks to strong profit motives and broken healthcare systems. It is more profitable to squeeze every penny out of the richest half of the desperate and sick people than to set a price that provides modest profit and widespread availability for virtually everyone with the need.
Today there would be a lot more bang for your buck spending the $3B to fight shady patents in medicine, and to bribe politicians into doing the right by the population than finding more treatments that will get sucked into the Wall Street and DC maelstroms of greed and corruption. Until medicine is working primarily for the patient's good with profit secondary (not zero) I don't see our current frigged up mess getting better no matter how many cures we have.
Hopefully Elon Musk is pretty close with that giant spaceship, we might need some extra room.
The average cost to develop a new drug, advance it through all clinical trials and bring it to market in the US, Europe and Japan is currently about 2 billion USD. 3 billion of donated funds are *nowhere* near the investment needed to make a sizable impression on the pharma landscape.
I, Larry Ellison, will eliminate all humans in a week!
This one I believe.
First of all, become a doctor and discover a marvelous cure for something. And then when the medical profession really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do, and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be any diseases ever again!
How to Do It
Facebook ?
i.e. The list of diseases ?
My initial reaction to this and the MS announcement was to look at the calendar, and make sure it isn't April first, since /. gets particularly silly around that time of year.
My second reaction was to not really care. I hear a lot about fancy pants billionaires buying and selling companies, and promoting crazy ideas, but rarely do they seem to have much of an impact on society.
I settled on: It is a good thing if the latest billionaire dick measuring competition is to see who can cure the most diseases.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I know that's an odd subject for this thread, but Texas beat them to this by almost 10 years.
CPRIT (Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas) was founded in 2007 and chartered with spending $3B over 10 years to develop new approaches to cancer prevention and treatment. If you're in the cancer research space, you know about CPRIT. It's the single largest research fund for cancer outside the NIH.
To get an idea of what $3B can do, check out the CPRIT site http://www.cprit.state.tx.us/a....
If you don't want to do that, basically you can fund a few companies and a number of research projects, but it's nowhere near enough to make a dent in the problem.
There's also the problem of fairly allocating the funds. CPRIT ran into this problem early on when it was found that many of the early, large grants were awarded without proper review to friends of the board. This prompted the entire scientific board to resign and CPRIT to essentially reset. It's moving along OK now, but it's still an open question as to how many of the investments will yield actionable results.
Given Facebook's proclivity to reward friends with purchases at outrageous valuations, I won't be surprised if this fund runs into the same nepotism issues CPRIT did.
There are many other lessons that they can learn from CPRIT, but the most important probably is that $3T is probably a more realistic number.( See also all the comments about the tech industry's hubris when it comes to these types problems - curing cancer/disease is not the same as slapping together some APIs to create a "world changing" app. )
-Chris
misquoting Steven Wright: "you can't cure everything - where would you put it?l
the 'comfortably rich' - those part of a big IPO who never need to work again, typically 'invest' in a botique or spa for da spouse.
This is the same, but it's just super, super sized.
Just Ms Chan gets to be the VC fund who doesn't need to make a return.
all that said, good for Mr Zuckerberg, giving back, and funding stuff. I really wish him well , very sincerely... and hope that he hires in the best and brightest (a la space x) and he doesn't confuse his clear amazing biz savvy and intelligence being fungible toward curing disease. In a manner similar that Dan Snyder, Washington Redskins owner, confused his biz savvy with an ability to run a wining football team.
Mr Zuckerberg is going off and attempting real change the world stuff, unlike the much maligned on /. evil under-lord, who purchased the Lakers. Good for Mr Z. I hope that he lives to see the fruits of his labors produce results. Humanity would all benefit.
Stop thinking with your dick Mark. You can't cure all diseases no matter how much money you have. Just give it to me.
The body already has the systems in place to cure and repair itself (bacterial infections, breaks, cavities, cancers, etc...). The biggest issues are that we don't perform the proper maintenance nor fuel it properly. You don't need scientists and engineers building more tools and technology, all you need is better food distribution and a change in focus on what's grown and marketed. That'll solve the majority of health issues.
Unless the money is being spent on tech and science to grow food with less pesticides (see the recent stories of glyphosate/Roundup being found in the majority of consumers' water and food supplies), they're wasting it.
Other objects that they wish to tackle by the end of the week are:
The multi-user, infinite lasting condom.
Wife-nullifying, argument winning translation software. A win for males ever time!
Immaculate Conception on first sight.
Democrats that don't lie, cheat, or steal. Any one of those is beyond imagination.
I think that the mothership is about to take them away. If not the men in white. ROFL. Idyiots. Anyone that believes these fools.
This idea may or may not be reasonable but it shows an individual can do more in research (which may never pan out) than the entire US government.
A lot of diseases happen more frequently as we age. If we could affect the aging process, many of those diseases would go away.
I think the issue would be "which half of the day". ;-) Having it shut down while everyone is asleep would benefit only the other half of the world. No, no, he should shut it down completely.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Can they even imaging the Billions in 2016 dollar-valuation that have been spent already and they only pony up a measly $3 Billion Dollars?
Chump change!
There will always be the homeless
Why would you believe that? Houses aren't even all that expensive.
Ok, a $300M annual charity gift is a big deal, and that's great. But this is not going to drastically change things. Nationwide, the NIH annual R&D budget is about $30B. The USA as a whole has spent over $100B annually on medical research for several years now. This is ~60% more than the total VC investment across all fields in the USA last year.
Cure according to Johny Depp's transcendence. One for all, all for one, a hive mind.
They will get all patents and fix the price later.
Yesterday, researchers on behalf of Microsoft said they will "solve" cancer within the next 10 years by treating it like a computer virus that invades and corrupts the body's cells. Today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced a $3 billion initiative to "cure all diseases."
"I see how it is. Fine. I, Jeff Bezos, pledge an end to all human suffering by sometime in the next six months."
[fineprint]Only for Prime Members[/fineprint]
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Bezos: "Look how huge my rocket is!!"
So - seems that biologists are hot and heavy on this thing called Evolution. Zuck must be low on Science creds - seems to me that attempts to "kill" disease would cause them to mutate and get around whatever road block is in the way.
$3 billion fighting evolution? Who will win? Place your bets!
Working on prevention of diseases has the highest potential of having a disease free world. Unfortunately, here in the US, "healthcare money" goes to insurance, in which they rarely pay out to simple but effective prevention measures, such as paying for a gym membership, or for clinically proven supplements such as resveratrol, s-acetyl-glutathione, etc.
You can't see a difference between "can we cure all diseases in our children's lifetime?" and "I will cure all diseases with my $3 billion!" Stupidity is one disease he definitely won't be able to cure.
in one of his slides he listed hunger as the cause of 3.1 million deaths each year, as these are preventable deaths but not a death that could possibly affect zuckerberg, it was marginalized and not part of the effort that this money will be put towards.
I haven't looked closely, but most responses seem to be the usual cynical (or worse) posts. I would like to commend Mark Zuckerberg and family, Bill Gates and family, Microsoft, or whatever other person or organization with the available resources for whatever efforts they choose to make to improve the public health and welfare. Those who wish the money would be better spent elsewhere can of course state their opinion and/or find alternate sources of funding. But I for one would like to strongly celebrate all such philanthropic activities. It is clear to me that all of the above entities have serious interest in their causes. With any luck, some of their funded activities will bear significant fruit.
They are idiots. There's no point in analyzing it any further.