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Comment by ahelwer | Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking - continually I hear the way to help with a problem is to donate money to a charity. But is there a single social ill that has actually been solved (not ameliorated - permanently solved) through a bunch of individuals donating money to a charity to solve it? Is there any track record of success whatsoever?

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Sure. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation funded research that resulted in a near-cure for CF patients with particular mutations.

https://www.cff.org/node/871

”More than 20 years ago, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation took the pioneering step of providing research funding to Aurora Biosciences (now Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) to identify and develop the first treatments for the underlying cause of CF. Driven by the relentless determination of the CF community, those investments led to the development of multiple transformative therapies to treat CF.”

That particular drug was on the news in Norway this week because it is so incredibly expensive that the state don't want to pay for it. We are talking 20-30k USD per month per patient.

I partially excused that mentally with a "but yeah, research is expensive", but now learning that it was paid for by donations ruins that argument.

The fact that the state don't want to pay for it is of course also debatable..

These CF drugs fundamentally fix one genetic defect that causes CF. Instead of kids dying of lung infections and needing transplants when they are 30, they lead almost normal loves. Seems like the kind of drugs that should cost a lot?

And the CF Foundation has (had) an ownership stake in the IP for the drug and sold it for $3.5B.

And guess what that money is going towards? More research and help for CF patients! They gave $575M to Vertex for next generation CF drugs.

https://endpts.com/royalty-pharma-tops-its-record-setting-3-...

I totally agree that the existence of these drugs make the world a better place. I also totally agree that there should be significant financial upside to developing drugs like these, after all we do want to incentivise making the world a better place. But surely there must be a middle ground? This seems to be priced by a "what are people willing to pay for this?"(a lot, given its life saving/changing nature) vs "what do we need to charge for this, including a healthy profit for everyone involved". (much less, presumably?) I fundamentally dislike, from the perspective of the patient, the thought that precisely /because/ the drug is desperately needed by someone through no fault of their own, it /deserves/ to be expensive.

The foundation getting a cut of the success and reinvesting in new opportunities sounds good though, thanks for pointing that out!

This is a good question, but it's also kind of tricky because many (maybe most) social charities aren't really setup to tackle issues that can be solved without continuing money input. Let's take education in poor countries as an example - unless everyone stops having children or the underlying socioeconomic fabric changes significantly, you're going to have an effectively infinite number of children that need to be educated, and the only way to do that is to continue paying for facilities, teachers, materials, etc.

Other charities, like those that are setup to cure specific illnesses, can accomplish their mission on reasonable timeframes.

> a single social ill that has actually been solved ... through a bunch of individuals donating money to a charity

If not, then one of two things are true:

1) Money can't solve social ills

2) Not enough people who have the means to do so are willing to voluntarily sacrifice to solve a social ill

Either way, that suggests that taxation/wealth redistribution solutions is similarly doomed (unless you're willing to do it by force).

Yes. The March of Dimes fundraising campaign provided the funding to Salk and Sabin to create the polio vaccine.

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