How much money would it take in donations to find cures for AIDS, Cancer, and Heart Disease?

Warren Buffett is giving billions to charity. Haven't researchers been telling us for the longest time that if only they had enough funding, a cure was around the corner? When will we start seeing the fruits of their labors - and the fruits of our donations?

It is true "if only there were enough money" to buy all the help and all the time in the world.

A lot of people don't ever see the inside of a laboratory besides the little clips of petry dishes and test tubes and pipettes on the news. No one but people educated in the field (even a little) can understand the intellect that goes into reseach. The background. The MONEY. The patience. The trial. The error. The evolution of diseases RIGHT before your eyes! The problem with AIDS and Cancer is that the pathogen that causes AIDS is CONSTANTLY evolving in the human body. So the second you find a protein or a sequence of DNA that might be key... it changes. Cancer... there are so many types, causes and variations on cancer. Most people think that breast, lung testicular are all the same. WRONG! They couldn't be more different and individually complex to solve. This is why there is no cure. This is why all the money in the world can't buy quality time and people in the labs. Its only a matter of time.

There're already 'cures'. The important thing is these things are, more often than not, the fruits of the fleshly lusts and perversions.

Personally, I think they already have cures for all of these, but they make more money off of treating it. I don't know if they'll ever release the cures in our lifetimes.

There are cures for all of those diseases. Whether we want to believe it or not. The only reason why these cures have not been given is because the pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars by giving cancer/aids patients concoctions of drugs. Some aids patients take up to 30 pills a day, just to live to see the next day. Could you imagine the amount they would lose, if they were to give one pill that would cure millions of people. They would go broke, and we all know that there plenty of greedy, powerful people in this world.

graciefaith1 and N8ball88, oh please. Of all the conspiracy theories I have heard, that one is the most pathetic. There is no cure, nor is there a secret vault hidden deep within pharmaceutical land that protects the cure for cancer and AIDS.

I really don't think throwing money at the problem will fix it, especially when AIDS is a preventable disease. Prevention is the key. I wouldn't be opposed to donating to prevention programs that target AIDS, cancer, heart disease, etc.

Thanks, jef_h. I was shaking my head at those idiots as well.

As for the question, you can't put a sum of money on unknown quanities like 'curing AIDS and cancer' because nobody knows what is required to accomplish those tasks.

Safe to guess in the billions or trillions of dollars, though...... if they are possible at all.

I disagree with jef_h that it's not a worthwhile investment, however. Even if the Big Payoff of a cure is not found, there will surely be progress made which will result in reducing human misery. Indeed, the biggest and cheapest payoff in AIDS would be for a worldwide organization to buy the patents for AZT, 3TC, ABC and all the other HIV/AIDS medications and put them to use controlling the 70 million AIDS cases in the Third World. Right now, with the majority of them uncontrolled, there is a humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude. HAART antiretroviral therapy is highly effective at controlling the misery of HIV infection.

Well, For one the governmenat developed the AIDS virus so we already that the cure for it but we'll never see it. No.Why Not, because the government is making a ton of money off it and always will.

I am a cynic at times and I think we don't really want to find cures. (by we I mean the government). They are already "complaining" baby boomers live too long and health care costs are way too high, draining the budget.

The planet is overcrowded and personally I don't think very many people care. Which is a darn shame.