<story><title>Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37435425</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kendallpark</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m glad they&amp;#x27;re putting money into medical research, but I kinda roll my eyes when people make big claims about curing X, especially when X is something incredibly broad like &amp;quot;cancer&amp;quot; or in this case, &amp;quot;all diseases.&amp;quot; AI&amp;#x2F;ML has barely scratched the surface of its potential in medicine, however, I find it naive to think that you can throw AI&amp;#x2F;ML at any random disease and always get a cure. Even after a century. Will we have a cure for trisomy 21? For antisocial personality disorder? For obesity and addiction? These things are far more complicated than just creating the right drug.&lt;p&gt;But as much as I&amp;#x27;m rolling my eyes at their blanket statement, the spirit of &amp;quot;yes we can!&amp;quot; does way more for science and progress than naysay of critics.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>segmondy</author><text>People would have rolled their eyes, if someone said.  I wanted to connect the world.   I want to connect virutally everyone, where you can just reach anyone at anyplace at any time for cheap.&lt;p&gt;30 yrs ago, in a different part of the world.  My father had to catch a bus from a village to the city, then catch a plane to a major city to make international phone call to the US to his business partners.   Today, people in that same village can sign on to HN and reply to this very post.   Or tweet and facebook real time.&lt;p&gt;Maybe they won&amp;#x27;t be the one to solve it, maybe it would take a bit longer, who knows?  Gotta give it a shot.  Maybe we won&amp;#x27;t cure all the disease.  Perhaps we eliminate 85%.  That would be great too.  Stay optimistic my friend.</text></comment>
<story><title>Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37435425</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kendallpark</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m glad they&amp;#x27;re putting money into medical research, but I kinda roll my eyes when people make big claims about curing X, especially when X is something incredibly broad like &amp;quot;cancer&amp;quot; or in this case, &amp;quot;all diseases.&amp;quot; AI&amp;#x2F;ML has barely scratched the surface of its potential in medicine, however, I find it naive to think that you can throw AI&amp;#x2F;ML at any random disease and always get a cure. Even after a century. Will we have a cure for trisomy 21? For antisocial personality disorder? For obesity and addiction? These things are far more complicated than just creating the right drug.&lt;p&gt;But as much as I&amp;#x27;m rolling my eyes at their blanket statement, the spirit of &amp;quot;yes we can!&amp;quot; does way more for science and progress than naysay of critics.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>toufka</author><text>Without disagreeing with your point, there are actually &lt;i&gt;currently&lt;/i&gt; gene therapies to cure trisomy 21 [1] (a clever trick of affixing the signal that is used to silence a (female&amp;#x27;s)&amp;#x2F;the (male&amp;#x27;s) X chromosome to the 3rd of the 21st chromosomes).  I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s all the way through FDA approval, and is still  very much experimental, but is exactly the kind of thing that is curable.  And that is where your point stands: it is hard to know which unknowns are easy unknowns, and which unknowns are nearly impossible unknowns because both are currently of the same quality - unknown.  The grandiose claim is fancy, and much will be accomplished in 80 years, but even ill-defined language of &amp;#x27;disease&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;cure&amp;#x27; belies our ignorance.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.biospace.com&amp;#x2F;News&amp;#x2F;down-syndromes-extra-chromosome-silenced&amp;#x2F;303003&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.biospace.com&amp;#x2F;News&amp;#x2F;down-syndromes-extra-chromosome...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>