Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan pledge $3 billion to fight, prevent & manage all diseases

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg started as a tech geek, became a running advocate at the start of 2016 and just turned into a disease fighter with wife Prescilla Chan, a medical doctor. The couple announced on Wednesday that are pledging US$3 billion (A$4 billion) to help cure, prevent and manage all diseases within the lifetime of their children.

The amount is part of their promise in 2015 to give 99 percent of their Facebook shares to charitable causes through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, reports Sydney Morning Herald. It is their first initiative in science after investing in charter schools and education startups.

To introduce the health initiative at an event in San Francisco, Chan – the daughter of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants – explains, “We want to dramatically improve every life in Max’s generation and make sure we don’t miss a single soul. Max is the infant daughter of the couple born in early 2016.

The initiative would invest in a bioscience research centre, a chip to diagnose ailments, continuous blood stream monitoring and mapping of cell types in the human body, reports ABC. Zuckerberg acknowledges their plan is a big goal but believes it is possible based on their discussions the past few years with medical and health experts.

He notes scientific breakthroughs were achieved after new tools were invented to help see problems in a new way. Zuckerberg cites specifically the invention of the telescope, microscope and DNA sequencing.

The modern tools which the initiative would fund targets to speed up breakthroughs in four major disease areas. They want to bring scientists and engineers together to build new tools and technologies through the US$600-million (A$785.7-) Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, he says.

The biohub, the first project of the initiative, would bring its scientists and engineers and those from Stanford, the University of California and Berkeley.

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