Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pledge $3 billion to end disease

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. On Wednesday, the Facebook founder and his wife announced a $3 billion plan to wipe out disease by the end of the century, Variety reports.

At the lab, called Biohub, engineers and researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, will create tools for researchers. Neurobiologist Cori Bargmann will become the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s new president of science.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, past year said they would give 99 per cent of their Facebook shares to charitable causes.

Chan’s work as a pediatrician seems to be a big driver in the couple’s decision to take up this latest cause.

Google CEO Larry Page once said the world was full of “zero million dollar problems”, meaning problems that only exist because no one is willing to put in a few million in funding to solve them. “We believe that the future we all want for our children is possible”. Meanwhile an Infectious Disease Initiative is created to develop new vaccines and tests.

The $3 billion will come from Zuckerberg’s personal shares in Facebook – a sum worth more than $45 billion. The program includes three parts: bringing the scientists and engineers together, building technology and tools and developing the movement to fund science, according to Mark Zuckerberg.

“The incredible vision of Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg will resonate with the worldwide scientific community and re-energize scientists around the world at a pivotal moment in our understanding of human biology, health and disease”, said UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood, MBBS. “We are grateful for the investment by Mark and Priscilla in both sophisticated tools and an unprecedented Bay Area-wide university collaboration that will enable groundbreaking discovery”. “We can make progress on all of them with the right technology”, Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook immediately following the announcement.

Zuckerberg and Chan often draw comparisons to Bill and Melinda Gates, whose philanthropic work also focuses on health and education.

“With this extraordinary commitment, we are closer than ever to beating disease”, said Lloyd B. Minor, MD, dean of the School of Medicine.