The founder of Facebook will donate three billion dollars for research in medicine
Founder and CEO of Facebook mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced at a press conference in San Francisco that over the next ten years will donate three billion dollars to search for a cure for all diseases.
Wife do charity work not the first year: by 2015, the amount of their donations for various purposes amounted to $ 1.6 billion. After the birth of her daughter in November 2015 they have created a charitable Foundation Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, pledging to invest 99 percent of their funds, which currently exceeds $ 40 billion.
This Fund will be managed by the current donation. According to Zuckerberg, these funds will be spent on the development of fundamental research in medicine and bioengineering. The predominant direction of these works will be the creation of advanced tools for future scientific work, which would ideally play the same role as, for example, a microscope or a sequencer. On the first $ 600 million in San Francisco will create BioHub research center. It is planned that in it medical researchers and engineers from Stanford, universities of California at Berkeley and San Francisco, as well as their hired professionals will work together over the long-term projects.
The stated ultimate goal of the initiative, Zuckerberg and Chan to find a way to “treat, prevent or control all diseases by the end of this century.” The couple noted that they were aware of the magnitude of the task, but I think its feasible. According to Zuckerberg, medical research over the last century have increased average life expectancy by a quarter, but still on the treatment patients spent 50 times more money than on the needs of medical science. He also said that the decision on the establishment of the Fund was preceded by two years of consultations with experts.
As noted by NBC News, the amount of investment looks too humble beside a magnitude of goals. Organizations such as the National institutes of health, US Centers for control and prevention of diseases of the U.S., Office of food and drug USA, Medical Institute of Howard Hughes, the British Fund, Wellcome, bill and Melinda gates Foundation, and pharmaceutical companies are spending on medical research is much more than a hundred billion dollars a year, however, about the prospects of treatment of diseases of the question.
Grant funding of medicine involved many representatives of it business. In addition to the aforementioned bill and Melinda gates Foundation, the money for health sacrificed, for example, the Executive Director of a leading company in cloud computing Salesforce mark Benioff and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
