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Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

bbc.com

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Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#221

Post by maxerickson »

idlewords wrote: post #65

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.…

Apparently that paper coined Eroom's Law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroom%27s_Law

the 'better than the Beatles' problem is at least superficially compelling. When Benadryl was discovered, the bar for allergy drugs was pretty low. Today you have to improve on drugs that have several advantages over Benadryl (and cost ~$0.50 a day OTC in the US).

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#223

Post by angersock »

kendallpark wrote: post #75

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…

So, I think the interesting question is--take them at their word, and what do we then do with the resulting population explosion?

It's kinda like efforts to modernize (read: give Western lifestyles to) a lot of South Asia and Africa...a lot of pollution and ecological destruction that is probably not a good thing.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#226

Post by segmondy »

kendallpark wrote: post #75

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…

People would have rolled their eyes, if someone said. I wanted to connect the world. I want to connect virutally everyone, where you can just reach anyone at anyplace at any time for cheap.

30 yrs ago, in a different part of the world. My father had to catch a bus from a village to the city, then catch a plane to a major city to make international phone call to the US to his business partners. Today, people in that same village can sign on to HN and reply to this very post. Or tweet and facebook real time.

Maybe they won't be the one to solve it, maybe it would take a bit longer, who knows? Gotta give it a shot. Maybe we won't cure all the disease. Perhaps we eliminate 85%. That would be great too. Stay optimistic my friend.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#227

Post by jaggederest »

throwaway729 wrote: post #115
jaggederest wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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?

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.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#228

Post by wyager »

kendallpark wrote: post #75

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…

General-purpose nanorobotics would pretty much allow us to do arbitrary medical procedures with cell-level accuracy. Cancer would be easy. Modifying brain structure would be easy. Pretty much everything would be easy.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#229

Post by M_Grey »

socmag wrote: post #212
M_Grey wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you actually replying to me, or are you... what the hell are you talking about?

I was making an abstract defense in your favor based on the parent comment where someone appeared to be claiming you had neither the power nor the cash to have any say in the matter. For all we know you might have billions or a machine for curing all diseases already working. (Or be MarkZ). Yes, probably time for my bed, it's rather late. And far too late for moral philosophy.

No no, I think I just missed it, my bad. Either way though, sleep well.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#230

Post by DavidWanjiru »

segmondy wrote: post #226
kendallpark wrote: post #75

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…

People would have rolled their eyes, if someone said. I wanted to connect the world. I want to connect virutally everyone, where you can just reach anyone at anyplace at any time for cheap. 30 yrs ago, in a different part of the world. My father had to catch a bus from a village to the city, then catch a plane to a major city to make international phone call to the US to his business partners. Today, people in that s…

It seems to me like the biggest things are impossible to see with a "normal" outlook. It's as if you either can't see the big thing, or you see it in a fantasy world, a fiction of some kind (science or otherwise).

Take connecting the entire world. Even after the technology existed and had been deployed (the very early system that gave rise to the internet as we know it), people didn't look at that early version connecting a handful of places and think, "Wow, this could connect EVERYONE!" They didn't stand there, looking at the terminals of two connected computers, and imagine a connected world like the one we live in today. They didn't talk about ecommerce and social media global events being reported on in near real time. No one had to roll their eyes, because no one was making these grand claims.

I can't find the link now, but I read somewhere that it took YEARS after the Wright brothers had achieved first flight to get the attention of the world. People didn't see how transformative that thing could become, yet the proof of concept was there.

When you look at all the big tech moments in (recent-ish) history, the car, modern computation, the PC, aviation, you don't see people coming out with these grand declarations before the fact. And it's not for lack of intelligent, visionary people.

So it makes me wonder, whenever a person makes such grandiose plans, and they're not fiction writers, what's so different about them that they'd be able to see so far ahead?

Maybe they're different. How would I know? But history makes me skeptical.

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