Personally, I’d recommend donating to fund nanotechnology research (especially nanobiotechnology). Almost all diseases fundamentally occur at the nanoscale. I’d assume that our ability to manipulate matter at this scale in targeted ways is close to necessary and sufficient to cure many diseases, and that once we get advanced nanotechnology our medicine will improve leaps and bounds. Unfortunately, people like to feel that their interventions are more direct, so basic research that could lead to better tools to cure many diseases is likely drastically underfunded.
The vast majority of ailments derive from unfortunate happenings at the subcellular level (i.e. the nanoscale). This includes amyloid buildup in alzheimers, DNA mutations in cancer, etc etc. Right now, medicine is—to a large degree—hoping to get lucky by finding chemicals that happen to combat these processes. But a more thorough ability of actually influencing events on this scale could be a boon for medicine. What type of nanotech am I envisioning exactly? That’s pretty broad—though in the short/ medium term it could be carbon nanotubes targeting cancer cells (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304419X10000144), could be DNA origami used to deliver drugs in a targeted way (http://www.nature.com/news/dna-robot-could-kill-cancer-cells-1.10047), or could be something else entirely.
Personally, I’d recommend donating to fund nanotechnology research (especially nanobiotechnology). Almost all diseases fundamentally occur at the nanoscale. I’d assume that our ability to manipulate matter at this scale in targeted ways is close to necessary and sufficient to cure many diseases, and that once we get advanced nanotechnology our medicine will improve leaps and bounds. Unfortunately, people like to feel that their interventions are more direct, so basic research that could lead to better tools to cure many diseases is likely drastically underfunded.
What exactly does that mean? What kind of nanotech are you thinking about?
The vast majority of ailments derive from unfortunate happenings at the subcellular level (i.e. the nanoscale). This includes amyloid buildup in alzheimers, DNA mutations in cancer, etc etc. Right now, medicine is—to a large degree—hoping to get lucky by finding chemicals that happen to combat these processes. But a more thorough ability of actually influencing events on this scale could be a boon for medicine. What type of nanotech am I envisioning exactly? That’s pretty broad—though in the short/ medium term it could be carbon nanotubes targeting cancer cells (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304419X10000144), could be DNA origami used to deliver drugs in a targeted way (http://www.nature.com/news/dna-robot-could-kill-cancer-cells-1.10047), or could be something else entirely.