Zuckerberg: can my $3bn clear the world of diseases

Zuckerberg: can my $3bn clear the world of diseases

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Discussion

glazbagun

14,259 posts

196 months

Thursday 22nd September 2016
quotequote all
Ayahuasca said:
Good on him.

Malaria would be a good place to start.
Bill & Melinda Gates fund has been working on that one. IIRC, the B&MGF started by picking solvable problems that could benefit from the scale that billions could bring, as opposed to trying to crack unsolvable problems. Though an old flatmate of mine said they donated to her Cancer lab so I'm not sure how true that is anymore.

sirtyro

1,824 posts

197 months

Thursday 22nd September 2016
quotequote all
Part of the project is to create a chip that can be embedded into the body which can monitor and look for diseases.

Based on what FB currently do with all the data they have on you, who they share it with, who they sell it to, would you be happy with them selling your health information to a pharmaceutical company so you get ad's for drugs before you even know you need them?!?!

The fact that MZ has to cover his camera and mic tells you how much he values his privacy but puts a different type of value on yours. If I didn't need Facebook for work, I'd be more than happy to leave it.

Crook

6,714 posts

223 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
Ex Pres Jimmy Carter has only been at this since '86 and he's on the cusp of eradicating one. Out of a further one hundred only six infectious diseases have been identified as eradicable.

Source: Carter Centre

JagLover

42,265 posts

234 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
dandarez said:
Not read it, but surely he doesn't want everyone to live forever?

Becoming disease free for a lifetime doesn't prevent you dying ...eventually. Does it?
Life has a 100% mortality rate.

If one thing doesn't get you another thing will.

For example rising life expectancy has meant your chance of developing cancer at some point in your life has increased from 1/3 to 1/2 (per cancer research)

If all cancer is treatable then other age degenerative conditions will become more prevalent.

Leaving aside Sci-fi solutions like reversing the ageing process all we are talking about is advancing medical technology extending life-spans by a few years.

Something to be welcomed IMO, as long as those extra years are healthy ones, overpopulation elsewhere in the world is an irrelevance.

CrutyRammers

13,735 posts

197 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
Talksteer said:
Secondly "cure all disease" is just a target to simulate visionary research. Similar to Sweden's vision zero (no road deaths by 2020, set in 1997), they could have estimated how much they could reduce road accidents based on historical progress.

However no road deaths by 2020 is just the right side of impossible to capture the imagination. They won't reach it but by 2030 I expect Sweden will probably have negligible road deaths.
Yes. AKA an "outrageous ambition" to head towards. Like landing on the moon within a decade. Not an uncommon approach and can be successful.

Jasandjules

69,825 posts

228 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
Kermit power said:
Plus from a cynical viewpoint, if you're a big pharma company, curing all diseases is your worst nightmare! There's far more profit - for a much longer period of time - in treating the symptoms and slowing the decline than in actually curing things.
Indeed. Find a cure for cancer, watch your back, there's 100 Billion a year riding on it......

judas

5,963 posts

258 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
13m said:
steveT350C said:
Microsoft aiming to crack cancer code using artificial intelligence.....

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/20/microsoft-wants-...
They can't even fix their own software, so I'm not holding out much hope that they'll cure cancer.
Would you really want Microsoft reprogramming your body? Just imagine the fun of all the regular patches and service packs it will need just to stop your arms dropping off randomly! biggrin

turbobloke

Original Poster:

103,742 posts

259 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
judas said:
13m said:
steveT350C said:
Microsoft aiming to crack cancer code using artificial intelligence.....

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/20/microsoft-wants-...
They can't even fix their own software, so I'm not holding out much hope that they'll cure cancer.
Would you really want Microsoft reprogramming your body? Just imagine the fun of all the regular patches and service packs it will need just to stop your arms dropping off randomly! biggrin
Freezing up for no apparent reason would be bad enough, then shutting down momentarily for a re-start could be unnerving - particularly if you still end up with the blue screen face of death.

KaraK

13,177 posts

208 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
BlackLabel said:
A few days ago we had this:

"Microsoft has vowed to “solve the problem of cancer” within a decade by using ground-breaking computer science to crack the code of diseased cells so they can be reprogrammed back to a healthy state."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/09/20/micr...


Will the tech companies really have more success at tackling such diseases? (Compared to say drug companies, and more conventional medical scientists).
To be fair Microsoft's efforts (which are aimed initially at improving cancer detection and treatment) are being mainly carried out by cross-discipline personnel with some pretty heavyweight biology/medical scientific credentials. They haven't just taken a few people off the Excel dev team but instead have hired actual experts and have been applying computing methodologies and technology in ways that make a lot of sense but would be beyond most "traditional" medical research facilities simply because they don't have access to the sort of cutting edge computing researchers and technology and their approach has already shown some promising results.

It's also worth a mention that quite a few great medical advances have come from outside the medical profession - take MRI as a classic example. That came from a team up between a physicist and a chemist thumbup

As for Zuckerburg, I really don't like the odious little douchenozzle and I'll acknowledge this might be colouring my perception a bit here but I can't help thinking that this is really isn't as impressive as he's trying to make us all believe. $3 billion over 10 years sounds like an astronomical sum of money to those of us who will never see $1 billion (let alone 3!) in our whole lives yet in reality it is fk all compared to the over £21 billion the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given in the last 6 years ($5.5 billion on infectious disease control alone). So they'll get some very good stuff done and that's fantastic and something I genuinely think should be recognised and applauded but all this "let's cure all diseases" guff is just him giving his ego an expensive handjob.


El Guapo

2,787 posts

189 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
turbobloke said:
judas said:
13m said:
steveT350C said:
Microsoft aiming to crack cancer code using artificial intelligence.....

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/20/microsoft-wants-...
They can't even fix their own software, so I'm not holding out much hope that they'll cure cancer.
Would you really want Microsoft reprogramming your body? Just imagine the fun of all the regular patches and service packs it will need just to stop your arms dropping off randomly! biggrin
Freezing up for no apparent reason would be bad enough, then shutting down momentarily for a re-start could be unnerving - particularly if you still end up with the blue screen face of death.
scratchchin

Troubleatmill

10,210 posts

158 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
$3 Billion... = nada in pharma R&D worldwide.

Nice gesture though.

Will help move things on a bit.

But a drop in the ocean.


poo at Paul's

14,116 posts

174 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all

davepoth

29,395 posts

198 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
Big Pharma come at their research from a particular direction - it's incremental, "standing on the shoulders of giants", as Newton put it.

It gets done that way because it's safe. Every treatment goes through long testing processes.

My guess is that Zuckerberg will be throwing his money at getting medical research onto a tech company cycle - innovating, testing and evaluating new treatments in weeks instead of years. If he can do that, and research he funds will see results exponentially quicker than the conventional methods. The risks are higher, but so are the rewards.

dandarez

13,246 posts

282 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
JagLover said:
dandarez said:
Not read it, but surely he doesn't want everyone to live forever?

Becoming disease free for a lifetime doesn't prevent you dying ...eventually. Does it?
Life has a 100% mortality rate.

If one thing doesn't get you another thing will.

For example rising life expectancy has meant your chance of developing cancer at some point in your life has increased from 1/3 to 1/2 (per cancer research)

If all cancer is treatable then other age degenerative conditions will become more prevalent.

Leaving aside Sci-fi solutions like reversing the ageing process all we are talking about is advancing medical technology extending life-spans by a few years.

Something to be welcomed IMO, as long as those extra years are healthy ones, overpopulation elsewhere in the world is an irrelevance.
I realise all that, I was being facetious to Cloggs - he said Zuckerberg now wants everyone to live forever. Obviously not possible!

dandarez

13,246 posts

282 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
turbobloke said:
judas said:
13m said:
steveT350C said:
Microsoft aiming to crack cancer code using artificial intelligence.....

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/20/microsoft-wants-...
They can't even fix their own software, so I'm not holding out much hope that they'll cure cancer.
Would you really want Microsoft reprogramming your body? Just imagine the fun of all the regular patches and service packs it will need just to stop your arms dropping off randomly! biggrin
Freezing up for no apparent reason would be bad enough, then shutting down momentarily for a re-start could be unnerving - particularly if you still end up with the blue screen face of death.
I've had it. Just been to the GP. He said I've got Windows 10. eek
Oh god, noooooo. The big W. W10. Oh fk! What st luck.
I knew, I just knew it was serious.
fking hell, if only it had been 7 or 8 I could have survived.



biggrin

turbobloke

Original Poster:

103,742 posts

259 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
hehe

Not the big W...still a cure is imminent...

shout calling Zuckerberg

Talksteer

4,843 posts

232 months

Saturday 24th September 2016
quotequote all
Troubleatmill said:
$3 Billion... = nada in pharma R&D worldwide.

Nice gesture though.

Will help move things on a bit.

But a drop in the ocean.
Over a ten year period this funding represents around 10% of that which will be spent by the UK's research councils on all science.

In terms of funding this is significant.

Sparkyhd

1,792 posts

94 months

Saturday 24th September 2016
quotequote all
I sense that Facebook is about to become chargeable. Making all of us live forever will extend the revenue streams.

mondeoman

11,430 posts

265 months

Saturday 24th September 2016
quotequote all
poo at Paul's said:
An

7795

1,070 posts

180 months

Monday 26th September 2016
quotequote all
Talksteer said:
Troubleatmill said:
$3 Billion... = nada in pharma R&D worldwide.

Nice gesture though.

Will help move things on a bit.

But a drop in the ocean.
Over a ten year period this funding represents around 10% of that which will be spent by the UK's research councils on all science.

In terms of funding this is significant.
I agree; we need a few other to get on the band wagon.