Zuckerberg’s gift: an end to all disease?
When Andrew Carnegie set up an endowment in the early 20th century, its target was to “hasten the abolition of international war” – and just in case that proved too easy, he stipulated that any money left over should be used to banish “the next most degrading remaining evil”. A century on, said Tom Whipple in The Times, Mark Zuckerberg – the billionaire founder of Facebook – and his paediatrician wife, Priscilla Chan, have started a foundation with similarly lofty ideals. Taking to the stage in front of a whooping audience in San Francisco last week, the couple said they would be giving $3bn to medical research over the next ten years, to “cure, prevent or manage all diseases” in their children’s lifetime.
All diseases? With $3bn? That’s a lot of money to the average Facebook user, but relative to the sums that pour into medical research each year, $3bn is “negligible”, said Linsey Mcgoey in The Guardian. The UK’S Wellcome Trust will spend $6bn over the next five years; while the US government will spend $300bn over the next ten. The couple’s “hearts might be in the right place”, and perhaps they really believe that with a sprinkling of their Silicon Valley fairy dust, they can effect miracles that others cannot. All the same, there are reasons to be sceptical. For one thing, the money has only been pledged – and highprofile bequests have a history of not materialising; for another, the Zuckerberg Chan Initiative is a limited company – so we may never know what the money has been spent on, no matter how many inspirational Ted Talks Zuckerberg delivers.
For sure, there is a risk of hubris in all this, said the FT, but let’s not be too cynical. We should admire any billionaire who chooses “philanthropy over personal luxury”, and the focus on medical research is a good one: ill-health causes individual suffering, and is a brake on economic development, too. Yes, their plan is “grandiose”. Bill Gates has spent billions over 15 years, and has not yet eradicated polio or malaria. Even so, the long-term research envisaged, involving scientists and engineers, could make real inroads. But rather than tackle all diseases, the couple should focus on a category that is challenging but soluble, said Matt Ridley in The Times – namely, the diseases of the brain. Disorders such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and autism cause untold misery, but we still struggle even to understand their causes: more research could deliver much-needed breakthroughs, leading to better treatments and even cures. In this field, $3bn could make a real difference.