Zuckerberg, wife pledge $3 bn to cure all diseases

 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan will spend USD 3 billion over the next 10 years on their ambitious goal aimed at helping to eradicate all diseases by the end of this century.

The goal is to “work together to cure, prevent or manage all diseases within our children’s lifetime,” Chan, who is a pediatrician, said during an event in San Francisco for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple’s philanthropic group.

Speaking through tears, Chan recalled parents telling their child had an incurable disease or could not be revived. She said these experiences made her even more determined to work with scientists and engineers to build tools that can save lives by the end of the century.

The investments will include creating research tools from software to hardware to yet-undiscovered techniques they hope will ultimately lead to scientific breakthroughs, the way the microscope and DNA sequencing have in the past.

Zuckerberg, 32, said the initiative was to “make a better future for our children.” 

The couple spoke one after the other at the UCSF Mission Bay campus to unveil the next phase of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, their new LLC created with the sole purpose of giving away billions and billions of dollars over their lifetimes.

“The biggest breakthroughs take many years. This is about the future we all want for our children. If there’s even a chance that we can help cure all diseases in our children’s lifetime ... then we’re going to do our part,” Zuckerberg said.

The couple made a commitment to invest USD 3 billion over the next decade toward disease prevention and research initiatives.