I suspect it would have been much better for them to simply partner with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where they're actually curing diseases. They've literally almost eradicated polio globally[1].
Based on the Gates foundation's existing accomplishments on eradicating diseases, of which Malaria and Polio are shining examples.
While we've had Polio vaccines and Malaria pills for years in much of the western world, much of the poorer parts of the world aren't so lucky. So instead of duplicating something that already exists and works well, partner with them and get it done faster together.
It's possible for them to work together through open research and collaborative efforts, if their work ends up crossing paths.
But it's not clear there's any reason or benefit for them to be under the same central organization.
Plus they will be greatly incentived when working under their own label 'Chan Zuckerberg Institute' to make their own lasting impact on the world. Just pumping more cash into Bill Gates existing project isn't a very exciting driver. And motivation/morale is important with any big project.
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.
Well honestly that's a much easier task. Polio is a solved problem. The vaccine has existed for decades. It's just a matter of money to get it out to enough people.
Curing "all" disease is a bit more ambitious.
Not to say that in the end, Gates isn't helping more people today.
I did. Did you know that much of Africa didn't have access to said vaccine due to funding shortages? This was one of the efforts where the Gates foundation literally just threw money at the problem until it went away.
Sure, I know that. The point of the new effort is trying to cure diseases. That's a completely different type of effort. Getting people together to travel to different parts of the world to make sure people are vaccinated, for example, requires a different group of people than scientists researching cures for diseases.
Both groups are needed, of course. But you giving the example of "curing" polio as an example of what the Chan Zuckerberg foundation is trying to accomplish is inaccurate.
Ah I see the semantics of your argument and you're right.
I just think other than the prestige argument (which is likely what this is) they could actually do more work working with someone who literally spends more on this than the entire USG.
On the other hand, UK funded medical research is only about £500m a year. $3bn is a significant amount of money, and there's also potential that it could be spent in very targeted ways, or to pursue goals which might not get funded elsewhere. Seems like a very interesting project.
True, in particular, it would be great to see an organization like this help scientific software development and distribution, which something incredibly useful that is hard to fund through NIH (not sure about elsewhere).
Funding open source scientific software is a huge part of what the NIH does!
Unfortunately there isn't a requirement that the code developed under grants is released as open source, but there is a lot of movement to make it so. Furthermore, researchers have strong incentives to provide reusable software implementations of their research. (I know many people say the incentives run against this, but it is now clear that useful software gets more citations and scientists forget so at their own risk!)
I don't have a recent budget handy, but at least 10% of research funding is going to various forms of software development. I am happy to be shown wrong but 10% seems like a low estimate as literally all analysis is mediated by software. It's not like people crack out slide rules when they get a data set from a sequencer or mass spec. They go to GitHub and download some obscure domain-specific open source analysis package. Point being: a tiny administrative change could ensure that we direct $3B a year to open source scientific software in biomedicine! And further, it nearly looks this way already.
yes but those people aren't silicon valley smart. Now that the tech billionaires are working on it we should have human health solved in a jiffy. It's like how medical informatics was in a pathetic state for decades until James Clark decided to take it on. After Netscape it was a simple matter and thanks to Healtheon all our healthcare software is good enough!
http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/21/mark-zuckerberg-and-prisci...