Zuckerberg to eradicate all diseases?

Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are committing $3 billion over the next 10 years to accelerate basic scientific research

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a goal that’s even more ambitious than connecting the entire world to the internet: He and his wife want to help eradicate all disease by the end of this century.
Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are committing $3 billion over the next 10 years to accelerate basic scientific research, including the creation of research tools they hope will ultimately lead to scientific breakthroughs, the way the microscope and DNA sequencing have in generations past.

In this Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, photo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, left, speaks with his wife, Priscilla Chan, as they rehearse for a speech in San Francisco. Zuckerberg and Chan have a new lofty goal: to cure, manage or eradicate all disease by the end of this century. To this end, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple's philanthropic organization, is committing significant financial resources over the next decade to help accelerate basic science research. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

The goal, which they are unlikely to live to see accomplished, is to ‘cure, prevent or manage all disease’ in the next 80 or so years. They acknowledge that this might sound a crazy, but point to how far medicine and science have come in the last century — with vaccines, statins for heart disease, chemotherapy, and so on — following millennia with little progress.
Through their philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the commitment includes 600 million dollars to fund a new research center in San Francisco where scientific and medical researchers will work alongside engineers on long-term projects spanning years or even decades.

In this Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, photo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, left, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, rehearse for a speech in San Francisco. Zuckerberg and Chan have a new lofty goal: to cure, manage or eradicate all disease by the end of this century. To this end, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple's philanthropic organization, is committing significant financial resources over the next decade to help accelerate basic science research. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

The goal is not to focus narrowly on specific ailments, such as bone cancer or Parkinson’s disease, but rather to do basic research.