Facebook founder's $3 billion plan to eradicate all disease

Facebook founder and multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, MD, have undertaken the Herculean task of eliminating all disease in the world by the end of this century.

That’s just 84 years to kick to the curb ailments like influenza, Ebola, liver cancer, diabetes, gonorrhea and millions of others. Is it possible? What’s their plan for getting there?

According to The Atlantic, the $3 billion dollars the couple has pledged through the Zuckerberg Chan Initiative for this purpose will mostly focus on “basic science research.” That’s research that will focus not on a specific question or particular health problem, but research that aims to bring a greater understanding of science in general so that other researchers can apply those broad-spectrum findings to curing specific diseases down the road.

In that way, The Atlantic said, their foundation will function like a “smaller, perhaps more nimble, National Institutes of Health.” (Much smaller—the NIH spends $30 million a year.) The NIH’s commitment to basic research is often questioned in the face of budget demands elsewhere—politicians wonder, “If this scientific tinkering isn’t going to save somebody tomorrow, can we move the money elsewhere?”

But that scientific “monkeying around,” as The Atlantic called it, could end up illuminating an unexpected and important treatment or cure 10 or 100 years later. So it’s good to set aside money for people to poke around in labs now on the (pretty good) chance they’ll stumble across something that turns out to be useful.

Maybe a goal year of 2100 for eradicating all disease is a bit ambitious, but it’s snappy, according to The Atlantic. Check out the magazine to see how Zuckerberg and Chan plan to get their initiative moving in its initial steps.