Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, just announced the next phase of their philanthropy efforts: curing all diseases by the end of this century.
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The couple announced its pledge to give away 99 percent of their wealth over the course of their lifetimes to coincide the birth with of their daughter, Max, around Thanksgiving 2015.
“Can we cure, prevent or manage all disease by the end of this century?” While the science focus comes second to that, it is still a major goal, and one that, hopefully, will result in a better future for everyone…one where diseases of all kinds are either eradicated or manageable.
Zuckerberg said that they also want to focus on tools to help scientists make more breakthroughs, including artificial intelligence software for brain imaging and machine learning to help analyze data about cancer genes.
To begin with, it will invest $600 million in a project called Biohub, which is an independent research center located at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF). “It’s not that we won’t ever get sick, but that our children and their children will get sick a lot less”.
Dr Chan said they had launched the initiative following the birth of daughter Max previous year, with the goal of dramatically improving the lives of all other children in her generation.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is the company in which the two have jointly invested shares in.
The new program, called Chan Zuckerberg Science (CZS), is part of the CZI that will bring together teams of scientists and engineers to build new tools for medical research.
Chan, who spoke through tears at the event to announce the initiative, also said she hoped to spare parents the pain she had seen while delivering hard news as a pediatrician. “It’s a big goal”, said Zuckerberg.
“Their vision and generosity is really inspiring a whole new generation of philanthropists who will do incredible things”, Gates said. It will likely take years for the first tools to be developed through this initiative, and even longer before they are used to cure diseases.
Now overseeing the world’s biggest social network, which he co-founded in 2004 when he was a college student, and working determinedly to bring internet connectivity to remote and underdeveloped parts of the planet, he also has his mind set on curing all diseases within the next 100 years or so.
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“We have to be patient”.
