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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

#291

Post by darius180 »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #282

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 s…

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

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

#292

Post by kbart »

vegabook wrote: post #17

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 wo…

"The top 5 global pharma companies spent 42 billion USD on R&D in 2015 alone."

Pharmacy companies are are not aiming to cure diseases, they aim to invent drugs that make good money. Eradicating diseases is harmful to their business.

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

#293

Post by apatters »

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.

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

#294

Post by norswap »

apatters wrote: post #293

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 particul…

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.

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

#297

Post by estefan »

apatters wrote: post #293

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 particul…

You're seriously equating looking at someone's photos with catching HIV, Ebola or developing cancer? Pathetic.

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

#298

Post by melling »

SEJeff wrote: post #122
melling wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't duplicate efforts. You keep missing that point.

"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?

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.

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

#299

Post by pseud0r »

DavidWanjiru wrote: post #230
segmondy wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conne…

In 1915 Nikola Tesla wrote in the New York Times

"Some day there will be, say, six great wireless telephone stations in a world system connecting all the inhabitants on this earth to one another, not only by voice, but by sight. It's surely coming."

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

#300

Post by chii »

jamesrcole wrote: post #287
vectorpush wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindsight is 20/20. You can look back on many innovations and say that they'd be impossible to imagine in the past, but that doesn't have any bearing on the inherent viability of a given idea. I'm not saying that the Zuck/Chan moonshot isn't a worthwhile endeavor, only that examples of past skepticism prove nothing about what is actually possible.

> You can look back on many innovations and say that they'd be impossible to imagine in the past I'd suspect that most innovations would have had plenty of experts and other people saying why they weren't possible.

There are lots of extraordinary claims being made everyday. It's the correct rule of thumb to be as skeptical possible, for there are many more outrageous claims than there are legitimate ones.
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