Bill Gates Pledges $100 Million To Find an Alzheimer's Cure, His First Commitment To a Non-communicable Disease (reuters.com)

At present, there is no treatment to stop the Alzheimer's. Bill Gates wants to make a sizeable attempt to change that. From a report:He is to invest $50 million in the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital fund that brings together industry and government to seek treatments for the brain-wasting disease. The investment -- a personal one and not part of Gates' philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation -- will be followed by another $50 million in start-up ventures working in Alzheimer's research, Gates said. "It's a huge problem, a growing problem, and the scale of the tragedy -- even for the people who stay alive -- is very high," he said. Despite decades of scientific research, there is no treatment that can slow the progression of Alzheimer's. Current drugs can do no more than ease some of the symptoms.

Comments

Venture capital fund - Is this another investment?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of Bill's philanthropy is actually for-profit investments. A treatment for preventing Alzheimer's could be very profitable, so this may turn out to be a lucrative investment if it pays off.

That's not to say there's anything wrong with Bill's approach. Giving people money with no strings attached generally results in that money being wasted (see: the government). I think Bill's more commercial approach to philanthropy has a far better chance of delivering results.

Re:There will never be a cure...

[ArhcAngel]

That may not be entirely accurate.

Re:Venture capital fund - Is this another investme

[Geoffrey.landis]

Giving people money with no strings attached generally results in that money being wasted (see: the government). I think Bill's more commercial approach to philanthropy has a far better chance of delivering results.

That's a very libertarian sentiment, but it's sometimes true and sometimes not.

I am happy to live in the twenty-first century, and one of the things about our time that I am most proud of is that I live in a world in which smallpox does not exist as a disease. It was wiped out. It was wiped out by a deliberate, concerted campaign by the World Health Organization, by doctors who really had nothing personal to gain by eliminating smallpox from villages in the third world that they would never visit.

(On television, the planet has been saved by the actions of Doctor Who. For much of the planet, however, the real work in saving the planet was actions of the WHO doctors.)