http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/technology/mark-zuckerberg-priscilla-chan-3-billion-pledge-fight-disease.html 2016-09-21 23:30:47 Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan Pledge $3 Billion to Fighting Disease The Facebook co-founder and his wife announced an effort to prevent, cure or at least manage all diseases by the end of this century. === SAN FRANCISCO — The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, While the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has already made investments in In a speech to “We want to dramatically improve every life in Max’s generation and make sure we don’t miss a single soul,” Dr. Chan said, referring to her and Mr. Zuckerberg’s infant daughter, Maxima. “We’ll be investing in basic science research with the goal of curing disease.” The event was attended by Mayor Ed Lee of San Francisco; Janet Napolitano, the former secretary of homeland security; and investors including Yuri Milner, who backed Facebook before it went public. About 63,000 people watched the event on Facebook Live and there were about 450 people attending. Several of Mr. Zuckerberg’s Facebook co-founders or early executives have also pledged money to charity or specifically toward health initiatives. Dustin Moskovitz, a Facebook co-founder, is part of Other tech billionaires have also given to public health, including Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder. His Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave $10.2 billion through 2014 to global health initiatives like fighting Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan, who are also part of the Giving Pledge and have looked up to Mr. Gates, announced the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative at the end of last year. At the time, their Facebook holdings were valued at around $45 billion. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s structure as a limited liability company gives it freedom to also spend on for-profit companies and political donations. Some traditional philanthropies, which have spending restrictions and targets they must meet, disapprove of the L.L.C. structure. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s science work will be led by Cori Bargmann, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University in New York. The first project will be the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, an independent research center in San Francisco that will bring together engineers, computer scientists, biologists, chemists and others. Formed in partnership with Stanford, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco, it will receive initial funding of $600 million over 10 years. At the event Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg said that if his organization’s plan to cure or manage all disease worked, it should increase human life expectancy to 100 years. “That doesn’t mean no one will ever get sick,” he said. “But they should be able to treat it and manage it.”