I would change “kills X people” to “reduces X years of quality life”. If there is a late onset disease that affects people who might not live much longer or much happier then that is different to a disease which kills those with many years of quality life left.
Obviously the proof is in the pudding and you would have to be able to measure all that.
Combined with the effects of diminishing returns this is the reason I don’t think much of cancer research warrants a lot more funds from an EA because each individual extra dollar makes little impact on quality life years across the population.
The cancers I would focus on are ones that affect children, but then again, the cost of research is high and the number of children affected is low.
Sure. But if you change 10^3 into 10^4, we’re still talking the same order of magnitude of cost-effectiveness as GiveDirectly’s cash transfers (depending on how highly consumption should be valued against DALY’s averted, etc.). Even if we assume that a full accounting would show the cost-effectiveness of donations to medical research to be worse than that, what other domestic charities would have a “first-guess cost-effectiveness estimate” even in the same ballpark?
I would change “kills X people” to “reduces X years of quality life”. If there is a late onset disease that affects people who might not live much longer or much happier then that is different to a disease which kills those with many years of quality life left.
Obviously the proof is in the pudding and you would have to be able to measure all that.
Combined with the effects of diminishing returns this is the reason I don’t think much of cancer research warrants a lot more funds from an EA because each individual extra dollar makes little impact on quality life years across the population.
The cancers I would focus on are ones that affect children, but then again, the cost of research is high and the number of children affected is low.
Sure. But if you change 10^3 into 10^4, we’re still talking the same order of magnitude of cost-effectiveness as GiveDirectly’s cash transfers (depending on how highly consumption should be valued against DALY’s averted, etc.). Even if we assume that a full accounting would show the cost-effectiveness of donations to medical research to be worse than that, what other domestic charities would have a “first-guess cost-effectiveness estimate” even in the same ballpark?
Agreed :)