To what extent is this guided by the self-interest of aging tech darling CEOs (Larry Page must be in his 40s by now)? As a young person I tend to think "some of these health issues ought to be solved problems by the time I'm older." But I don't have the kind of capital to spend on it that companies like Google, or persons like Larry Page, do.
Regardless of motivation, I'm happy to see investment in this domain.
How many diseases have we cured in the past 20 years? The past 40 years? Medical advances are really, really slow. As for the "self-interest" question (that's why you created a throw away account?), I'm sure as you get a little older, and you notice people dying who are close to your age, you might be wish that people took an interest in being self-serving a couple decades earlier.
Steve Jobs, for example, had billions of dollars, had his genome sequenced, and probably tried very hard not to die so young. I bet if he had known 10 years earlier that he was going to die from pancreatic cancer, some of that money would have gone into searching for a cure.
Larry Page might live a perfectly healthy life, die in his sleep at 101, out living most of us. However, if you've got that kind of money and influence, why not buy some real insurance.
For example, polio was cured less than 60 years ago. We know much more about the effects of radiation (sunscreen, anyone?) than we did 40 years ago. Genome sequencing is becoming slightly more affordable (than even 10 years ago) due to tech advances; we can predict hereditary disease in some instances (BRCA mutations, etc).
Steve Jobs is actually a terrible example. To quote wikipedia, "Despite his diagnosis, Jobs resisted his doctors' recommendations for medical intervention for nine months,[170] instead consuming a psuedo-medicine diet in an attempt to thwart the disease." Pseudo is Greek for "false." And if you want cancer solved by the time you get it, you probably have to pony up the money before your diagnosis.
I'm not disagreeing that medical advances are relatively slow, but on the scale of human life, Page has probably at least another 40 years of advances left to see. And that's a lot.
Great, you pulled out one disease in the past 60 years. Really slow progress. In the next 40, we should see a few more advances, but if we really want to move the needle, we need to be more aggressive.
9 months is not much time. If Steve were just an average person, his condition probably wouldn't have been discovered as early as it was. He simply squandered the little extra time that he had. There's no guarantee that he it wouldn't have killed him in the long run even if he had gone under the knife earlier. Pancreatic cancer, in general, is pretty deadly: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/pancreaticcancer/detailedguide/...
Sure, it's great that we can predict with a higher accuracy what diseases we might get. Now it would probably be helpful if we could cure most of them.
> How many diseases have we cured in the past 20 years? The past 40 years? Medical advances are really, really slow.
It would be really interesting if we began noticing a medical analogue to Moore's Law in the next few decades (though I don't know how you'd measure it). Supposing conservatively that medicine is 100x better in 2013 than in 1900, one might expect medical knowledge to double between now and 2030. The size of the advances in computing from 1900-40 and 1940-80 differ by several orders of magnitude.
Of course I don't think we have the data to assign a model right now so this might be BS.
Both Page and Brin turned 40 this year. There's also Brin's heightened risk of Parkinson's. His mother has it, and according to Wikipedia "both he and his mother possess a mutation of the LRRK2 gene (G2019S) that puts the likelihood of his developing Parkinson's in later years between 20 and 80%". He's donated to Parkinson's research in the past, and this investment is certainly along the same lines.
It's self-interest to the extent that needs be to get some traction in quality of life issues.
The capital us youngins have is time and ability if not money. This is a great example of moguls and companies willing to put that resource in given an availability of the talent and ability.
Regardless of motivation, I'm happy to see investment in this domain.