Even if it’s not as cost-effective as a GiveWell-recommended charity, it can still illustrate the point about guide dogs.
While it can illustrate the point I think there are two main issues:
If someone does get excited about what you’re saying and wants to donate, we don’t have anywhere with good evidence to recommend.
We shouldn’t put much stock in numbers like “$300/surgery” unless there’s been a good evaluation: it’s very common that you end up with much lower benefits than expected per dollar once you start digging in. For example, perhaps existing funders already cover the cases where the surgery would prevent blindness, charities aren’t willing to focus on the people with the worst vision, or the life expectancy of recipients is low because cataracts develop late in life.
it would be worth someone checking that cataract-surgery charities like Sightsavers are passably cost-effective.
Note that GiveWell did actually recommend Sightsavers (before their 2022 criteria changes), but for their deworming program, not their vision work.
They also looked into cataract surgery quite a bit in 2017 but didn’t end up with anything to recommend.
We shouldn’t put much stock in numbers like “$300/surgery” unless there’s been a good evaluation: it’s very common that you end up with much lower benefits than expected per dollar once you start digging in. For example, perhaps existing funders already cover the cases where the surgery would prevent blindness, charities aren’t willing to focus on the people with the worst vision, or the life expectancy of recipients is low because cataracts develop late in life.
While it can illustrate the point I think there are two main issues:
If someone does get excited about what you’re saying and wants to donate, we don’t have anywhere with good evidence to recommend.
We shouldn’t put much stock in numbers like “$300/surgery” unless there’s been a good evaluation: it’s very common that you end up with much lower benefits than expected per dollar once you start digging in. For example, perhaps existing funders already cover the cases where the surgery would prevent blindness, charities aren’t willing to focus on the people with the worst vision, or the life expectancy of recipients is low because cataracts develop late in life.
Note that GiveWell did actually recommend Sightsavers (before their 2022 criteria changes), but for their deworming program, not their vision work.
They also looked into cataract surgery quite a bit in 2017 but didn’t end up with anything to recommend.
Agree.