
Google Aims a $50M Moonshot at Curing Heart Disease - cryptoz
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/google-aims-a-50-million-moonshot-at-curing-heart-disease/
======
abalone
Or, 0.8% of the NIH's annual funding for curing heart disease.

That's nice, but the tech press is doing is pretty poor job conveying the
overall role of public vs private funding in basic science research. Same
issue came up around YC Research.

It's true that Google's approach is to hand more money to one team instead of
spreading it among many investigators. But the overall tone of the article is
there are "swings" in funding and private companies are stepping in with
"jackpot" grants to save the day. If you didn't read closely you might even
think public funding is drying up and Silicon Valley private investors are the
future of core science research.

This fundamentally and completely confuses how core science research happens
and in fact how Silicon Valley itself was created and functions today (with
respect to core tech research through agencies like DARPA as well as medical
science via NIH). Collaboration with the private sector is an important piece
of that but this one figure puts it in perspective: The annual NIH budget for
heart research alone is $1.2 billion. Bottom line, you can still thank Uncle
Sam and taxpayers for most major research.

~~~
melted
Take it for what it is: a cheap way to score PR points. Most Google "moonshot"
projects not related to ads fall into this category. Fucking internet in
Africa from self driving robotic balloons.

~~~
buyx
Internet in Africa from balloons would solve many issues. Mobile internet has
far more penetration than fixed-line broadband because of infrastructure
challenges. Providing another means of low-cost wireless connectivity to
millions of people would be a powerful enabler, and drive costs down.

I constantly find myself surprised by how quickly Africans, who are pretty
much written off by most people, adapt to new technologies.

~~~
melted
Polio, malaria, sanitation, nutrition should come first. A-la the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation. On the priority list for those people getting
showered with ads is somewhere towards the bottom.

This whole situation very much reminds me of the scene from The Fifth Element
where the deaf guy throws the protagonist a couple of billiard balls instead
of a gun.

~~~
dllthomas
Polio, malaria, sanitation, and nutrition are far more important, first order.
However, improving communications (and I don't know whether self driving
robotic internet balloons is the best way to do that) might reasonably make it
quite a bit easier to address those.

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randcraw
$50M over 5 years is a "moonshot"? Let's hope Wired is to blame for such hype;
Google surely knows better. Even $50B is no moonshot. Try $500B to $5T and a
commitment of many thousands of man-years. Now THAT's a moonshot. $50M is not
even "A War on Heart Disease". At most it's a skirmish.

To wit, $50M/5 years is $10M per year. In Silly Valley, that buys you up to 20
staff, with no lab. So in 5 years, 20 Googlers armed only with whiteboards
will succeed beyond the thousands and billions and decades of scientific
research that have gone before?

Gotta love the reality distortion field that is SV.

~~~
tinco
They're going to cure heart disease, not write the next snapchat. I bet in
most states and most cities it'll buy you a lab and 50 staff and enough goods
for a while.

They won't have to actually produce the cure, just develop enough theory and
experiments to convince investors to drop a billion on them for going through
everything that's needed for human testing.

~~~
nugget
Statins alone are a >$10b annual market, down from $20b annually before
Lipitor's patent expired. Pharma companies have proven that curative
treatments can be priced near the net present value of all future disease
management costs, making cures the most lucrative area of pharma (a good thing
if it leads to more of them). There are billions of private dollars being sunk
into heart disease annually. I'm not sure exactly what Google is after here
but $50m is not going to move the needle from a funding or incentive
perspective.

~~~
randcraw
Right. "Heart Disease" is a huge space of medical pathologies, from
atherosclerosis to stenosis to cardiomyopathy to abnormal signal creation /
propagation to so much more. Hoping to "cure" any one of these is a goal
greater than even a giant pharma or major medical research institute would
entertain, especially in just 5 years.

If creating the average new drug to merely _treat_ a disease usually costs an
experienced pharma between $2B and $6B, then $50M quite simply will not "cure
heart disease". To suggest otherwise is akin to promising a miracle cure to a
dying child's mother. It's either clueless or manipulative. Let's hope that
foolish verbiage arose from careless reporting, and not from Google.

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danieltillett
A bit late google. Depending on what you mean by heart disease (it is a very
broad category), but if you mean heart disease caused by high cholesterol then
it has already been cured and available as a license monoclonal - Evolocumab
[1]. We know that knocking the protein it targets (PCSK9) is without side-
effects in humans [2]. It will take a few years before everyone is on it, but
basically all the science is done.

Edit. Personally I like the vaccine approach [3] as it could be low cost and
avoid the need for monthly injections, but I doubt we will ever see this taken
through to market. If google wanted to do some good then spend their money
sponsoring a human trial of the PCSK9 vaccine.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolocumab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolocumab)

2\. [http://www.nature.com/news/genetics-a-gene-of-rare-
effect-1....](http://www.nature.com/news/genetics-a-gene-of-rare-
effect-1.12773)

3\.
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X15...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X15013201)

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nonbel
>"For instance, the entire project will be in the hands of a single leader.
That person is far from pre-determined.

With a laugh, Conrad said the screening process began with the announcement
that the job exists. He wants proposals that can fit on a single piece of
paper.

The single most important requirement is a creative vision.

“It could be a teenager in Wisconsin who has a brilliant idea,” Conrad said.
“The best idea should triumph." [..] The leader will be tasked with putting
together an overall plan, which includes assembling a team of researchers,
engineers, scientists and other specialists."

[http://blog.heart.org/american-heart-association-google-
life...](http://blog.heart.org/american-heart-association-google-life-
sciences-seeking-novel-strategies-to-prevent-heart-disease/)

I don't mean to be negative, I am glad to see new sources of funding for
biomed. But I do not understand how this would work. What would the role of
this teenager in Wisconsin be beyond writing the application? How would they
know who to assemble onto the team, etc? Also, a single page proposal?

~~~
jacquesm
It sounds like a scene from a movie ("the Exam").

~~~
firebones
It sounds more like they're looking for the next Elizabeth Holmes (of
Theranos).

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redthrowaway
>And as you might expect from a Silicon Valley giant that believes in moving
fast and breaking things

They also believe in thinking differently and putting a PC on every desktop.

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kzhahou
Yes, the $$ amount is unrealistic for any true cure. But won't it be great if
they fund non-traditional (i.e., silicon valley) people who maybe get even a
single advancement in cardiac care? Certainly that's money well spent. I hope
they do well.

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asdfologist
Yep, you gotta hand it to HackerNews. A company donates $50M towards a good
cause that can save lives, and everyone takes a shit all over it. How did you
spend your last 50 bucks?

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pilatesfordogs
How does Google plan to succeed when the entire medical establishment has been
trying to do the same thing for years ?

~~~
nonbel
Not sarcastic: At what point do you start considering the medical
establishment is down a dead end path? How much time and money needs to be
spent? Maybe we need to restart from the understanding in 1932 or whenever.

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dbcooper
Is there a actually any information in that press release (or the near
verbatim Wired article) on what research this will fund? I could not see any.

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berntb
Google shows what they know: Advertising. :-)

At least it worked for me, it just became more likely I switch to Android next
time (there are a lot of heart problems among my relatives).

This also have a high chance of literally saving the lives of people whose
money is put down here.

In short: Thanks.

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Alex3917
Given that the AHA is basically a front for the meat and cheese industry, I
don't see why Google is funneling money to them. You might as well pay Coca-
Cola to 'research' diabetes or Exxon to 'research' climate change.

~~~
Vraxx
Could you please provide some sources for this claim? If this is legitimately
true, I would like to know this, but a random statement on the internet leaves
me rather skeptical.

~~~
Alex3917
[https://www.cspinet.org/integrity/nonprofits/american_heart_...](https://www.cspinet.org/integrity/nonprofits/american_heart_association.html)

[http://www.foodpolitics.com/2011/02/american-heart-
associati...](http://www.foodpolitics.com/2011/02/american-heart-association-
says-i-%E2%99%A5-beef/)

They also lobby against government policies that would eliminate meat from
school lunches, even though they would vastly reduce the incidence of heart
disease in the U.S.

~~~
vpribish
very interesting links! but far from damning - they make a couple of percent
of their income from the heart-check logos which were put on several lean cuts
of beef. ConAgra donates some money (they were among the top couple dozen
contributors - most of which were medical companies.) color me not-outraged,
but more informed.

~~~
Alex3917
You really don't see anything unethical about accepting money to promote
ineffective drugs, red meat, and junk food as the cures to heart disease?

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DiabloD3
I don't understand the point of this research. We already cured heart disease:
take grains (including corn and soy), refined sugars, legumes, and seed oils
out of your diet, increase red meat, healthy fat, and vegetable intake, and do
regular exercise.

For those that already have heart disease, increase Omega 3 (triglyceride or
phospholipid bound, not ethyl ester), CoQ10, and PQQ supplementation to help
repair the damage.

When the media talks about "curing heart disease", they really mean "curing it
without eating healthy, which is the only known cure". Why doesn't everyone
just learn to eat healthy instead? It fixes _everything_.

Edit: Down-voting me without actually commenting why you disagree doesn't
really help. Why do you think eating strange diets that have only really been
recently developed since the end of WW2 are healthy or medically necessary?
Especially since the rise of heart disease, diabetes, and chronic obesity have
only become a problem during the same time period, even after accounting for
better detection and diagnosis rates.

~~~
JamesBarney
I didn't downvote you but I think you are being downvoted because you give the
impression that if I asked the leading experts in cardiology how to avoid
heart disease they would give me the definite answer you have. However if you
talked to the top 100 cardiologists they would not all share your views.

For instance everyone agrees vegetables and exercise are great. The
information about COQ10, PQQ, and omega-3s are still very much in their
infancy. Many doctors would disagree with out about red meat. Exactly what is
healthy fat, and how much we should intake could be debated for eons. One of
the top cardiologists in the U.S. just told my friends father to stop eating
all fats and meats to reduce his risk of heart disease.

With regards to legumes, people who live in a "blue zones"(places with very
large number of people 100 years or older+) eat a legume heavy diet.

So I don't think that the problems is as simple and solved as you make it out
to be.

