Owner Of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg pledges $3bn to stop 'all disease'

Physinews Reports: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife have pledged
more than $3bn towards an ambitious plan
to rid the world of disease.


The Facebook founder and his wife,
paediatrician Priscilla Chan, said the goal
was to "cure, prevent or manage all disease
within our children's lifetime".

Investment will go towards research into
cancer and infectious disease as well
as heart and neurological disease, the couple
said.

The plans were revealed during an event in
San Francisco for their philanthropic group,
the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, on
Wednesday.

Dr Chan said they had launched the initiative
following the birth of daughter Max last year,
with the goal of dramatically improving the
lives of all other children in her generation.

She recalled experiences of telling parents
their child had an incurable disease or could
not be revived, and said she hoped to spare
parents the pain she had seen while
delivering difficult news in her role as a
pediatrician.

She explained: "In those moments and in
many others we're at the limit of what we
understand about the human body and
disease, the science behind medicine, the
limit of our ability to alleviate suffering. We
want to push back that boundary."

Her role as a doctor, she said, had made her
determined to work with scientists to help
save lives.

Zuckerberg said the funding would bring
scientists and engineers together, build tools
and technology needed to help fight disease
and also grow the movement to fund
science.

The tech billionaire said 50 times more is
spent on treating people who are ill than
finding cures.

"We can do better than that," he said.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative mission
statement states: "We want every child to
grow up in a better world.

"Our hopes for the future centre on two ideas:
advancing human potential and promoting
equality.

"We'll focus first on personalised learning,
curing disease, connecting people and
building strong communities.

"We will make long-term investments over
25, 50 or even 100 years because our
greatest challenges require time to solve."

The couple announced in December
2015 that they planned to give away 99% of
their Facebook shares to fund good causes .