Medical X-Prizes

Technocrat

Medical X-Prizes

zogger

Thu May 15 21:10:20 -0700 2008

Health+and+Medicine

MIT student researchers are working in collaboration with the X-Prize Foundation in working out the details for medical X-prizes. One of the first efforts could go towards developing a cheaper and faster way to both detect tuberculosis infections and treat them.

.."The whole concept of the X-Prizes, which started with the Ansari X-Prize for the first privately funded craft to reach space (won in 2004 by SpaceShipOne), is "changing the way people think about subjects," Diamandis said. "We want to encourage unrestrained, open-platform thinking."

ed.z.: I had an idea along these lines, national medical lotteries. Scratch off cards or just number drawings, 50/50, prizes for the ticket buyers and then money for the research. Let people pick and choose which malady is more important to them.

Medical X-Prizes

VonSkippy

Fri May 16 20:31:54 -0700 2008

Yes, lets forget about researching how to prevent overpopulation, or more efficient food production - lets spend our research resources on keeping more people alive longer - yeah, that's a great idea.

Medical X-Prizes

Richard Gay

Sun May 18 05:16:42 -0700 2008

The overpopulation problem was the first thought I had after reading the first paragraph, which seemed to focus our attention on diseases of the developing or undeveloped world, where population is increasing most rapidly. I'm all for helping the living live better, but I agree that achieving ZPG or even adjusting the population downward to some kind of sustainable level before resuming ZPG is at least as good an idea.

Please forgive me for imagining a Dr. Evil kind of approach, but at the extreme an aerosol to decrease libido? Education doesn't seem to work until the horse is out of the barn.