
Can we cure all diseases in our children's lifetime? - _nh_
https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/can-we-cure-all-diseases-in-our-childrens-lifetime/10154087783966634
======
binalpatel
I don't understand the vitriol. They may, or may not, reach their goal, but
it's certainly worth trying.

Even if they don't cure all diseases - if they advance our understanding of
some of them, or help cure some, then humanity will be advanced by that much
more.

~~~
gozur88
>They may, or may not, reach their goal, but it's certainly worth trying.

Well, maybe. It's a worthy goal in the sense that eliminating disease would be
great. But they may just end up blowing a lot of money that could have been
spent more profitably on reasonably attainable goals.

The first emperor of China spent a nontrivial amount of his country's economic
output trying to find the secret of immortality. Would that have been a good
thing to learn? Certainly. Was it worth trying? No.

~~~
binalpatel
I guess my frame of context is, it's their money, and they can spend it
however they may, but at least with this there is a chance of benefiting
society as a whole.

While your example seems fitting at first glance, I don't really think it's
relevant. This is private money spent on something that may be a public good,
and in this case we do have a basis for saying that, yes, we can eradicate
diseases, we've done it before and we're getting close again with others.

~~~
gozur88
I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed to spend the money. I'm a big
property rights guy - if you have money and you want to make a hundred foot
tall shrine to Elvis, knock yourself out.

All I'm saying is you can end up wasting a lot of money by stretching for a
goal that's too far ahead of current technology, and in that sense it might be
a more efficient use of money to attempt something more near-term.

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shirro
Ha! Some countries don't even have universal healthcare.

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neumann
Maybe - but by then climate change might make that irrelevant with food
shortages, unliveable conditions and further inequality. Perhaps rather than
following Bill and Melinda's footsteps, the new generation should use their
considerable lobbying power and personal wealth to start pushing for change in
reduction in climate change. But hey, it's their ridiculous amounts of money
and vanity - so they can do whatever they want with their name on the self-
congratulatory banner. At least they didn't start another space company.

------
analog31
If we were to cure all known diseases of today, new diseases would emerge, and
in fact, our definition of "disease" could even evolve. Case in point:
Homosexuality was once considered to be a disease.

~~~
unclenoriega
And could be again. The floodgates may open once we can "fix" things like
that.

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london888
We will all be dead so we will never know.

~~~
farresito
Well, biology is on the verge of a revolution. Given the research that is
being put into reversing aging, I wouldn't be surprised if you made it.

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hprotagonist
No. (cf
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)
)

------
analognoise
Step 1) Be a myopic silicon-valley bubble child. Step 2) Confuse "disruptive
apps and services" with something difficult, like medicine. Step 3) Be naive.
Step 4) Finally give up.

~~~
dang
This sort of snarky dismissal is what we're trying to avoid on HN. If you have
a substantive critique you're welcome to share it, but merely splashing
vitriol degrades the quality of discussion we're hoping for. That's true even
if the implied critique is right (i.e. even assuming you're right, that
doesn't make it ok), and despite the invariable popularity of snarky comments.

Also, this is name-calling:

> _myopic silicon-valley bubble child_

... and that is not allowed:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

so please edit it out of your posts here.

~~~
dekhn
A more political way to state this is to say that those of us who were trained
in biology and medicine find it frustrating when people who are successful in
Silicon Valley making a product that makes money, but isn't particularly
valuable in a social sense, suddenly think they can transform all of
healthcare in a rapid way, simply because "it's easy", only to learn "it's
actually really hard! there are structural problems in addition to engineering
and research problems that require decades of work!"

That said I've read what Zuckerberg said,
[https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/can-we-
cure-a...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/can-we-cure-all-
diseases-in-our-childrens-lifetime/10154087783966634), and his thesis is not
completely lunatic. It's more nuanced, and actually hits most of the critical
points:

1) he's talking about disease amelioration, not true cures for all diseases.
2) he's got a more realistic timeframe (not "solve cancer in 10 years") 3)
he's focusing on tool building, and addressing some key structural
deficiencies around how research is conducted 4) he's got a great collection
of leaders to run the institute 5) it's tightly integrated with the existing
research system, so it's likely the results of the research will be published
in prominent journals

This places Zuckerberg and Chan in the "likely to show impact over time"
category.

That said I still have to deal with lots of short-sighted people in Silicon
Valley who believe that machine learning is going to cure cancer tomorrow, and
that is myopic, naive, and, well, isolated from reality.

~~~
dang
This is an interesting comment. It could be summarized as: "1\. Some people
are idiots; 2. The people in this article aren't idiots, have done their
homework, and are getting this mostly right. 3. Still, some people are
idiots."

The secret to substantive discussion on HN is having the discipline to address
the specifics of what's interesting in a story, and resisting the temptation
to let loose on unrelated idiocy. That's hard, because letting loose on
unrelated idiocy feels good. But it stuffs the discussion with junk.

(This is a general point, not just about your post. If everyone did it the way
you did we'd all be much better off.)

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alpineidyll3
No

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chris_wot
No

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charlesism
No

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johansch
No worries, Zuck and Priscilla will do it.

------
booleandilemma
I wonder how Big Pharma feels about this.

I'd imagine a lot of a pharmaceutical company's revenue depends on the fact
that a lot of diseases haven't been cured but are nonetheless treatable.

~~~
rayiner
I imagine what they're thinking is that Zuckerberg spent the last decade
building Facebook while they turned AIDS and Hep-C from death sentences into
manageable conditions.

~~~
booleandilemma
I think you're missing my point.

HIV/AIDS is a good example actually.

The lifetime cost of treating HIV is estimated at more than $500,000, and
there are more than a million Americans that have it.

If HIV/AIDS is cured, instead of being turned into a monthly payment plan,
this would hardly make any business sense for pharmaceutical companies.

Edit: Grammar

~~~
unclenoriega
My guess is rayiner didn't miss your point but responded that way because it's
a bit of a conspiracy trope that "Big Pharma" is actively
hiding/preventing/whatever cures from being developed or marketed to keep
their revenues up. Your point in and of itself is probably true, but it is
really close to that trope, which is quite tiresome to people who have
encountered it too often. That is probably why you got the response you did.

