Edit 1/29: Funding is back, baby!
Crossposted from my blog.
(This could end up being the most important thing I’ve ever written. Please like and restack it—if you have a big blog, please write about it).
A mother holds her sick baby to her chest. She knows he doesn’t have long to live. She hears him coughing—those body-wracking coughs—that expel mucus and phlegm, leaving him desperately gasping for air. He is just a few months old. And yet that’s how old he will be when he dies.
The aforementioned scene is likely to become increasingly common in the coming years. Fortunately, there is still hope.
Trump recently signed an executive order shutting off almost all foreign aid. Most terrifyingly, this included shutting off the PEPFAR program—the single most successful foreign aid program in my lifetime. PEPFAR provides treatment and prevention of HIV and AIDS—it has saved about 25 million people since its implementation in 2001, despite only taking less than 0.1% of the federal budget. Every single day that it is operative, PEPFAR supports:
> * More than 222,000 people on treatment in the program collecting ARVs to stay healthy;
> * More than 224,000 HIV tests, newly diagnosing 4,374 people with HIV – 10% of whom are pregnant women attending antenatal clinic visits;
> * Services for 17,695 orphans and vulnerable children impacted by HIV;
> * 7,163 cervical cancer screenings, newly diagnosing 363 women with cervical cancer or pre-cancerous lesions, and treating 324 women with positive cervical cancer results;
> * Care and support for 3,618 women experiencing gender-based violence, including 779 women who experienced sexual violence.
The most important thing PEPFAR does is provide life-saving anti-retroviral treatments to millions of victims of HIV. More than 20 million people living with HIV globally depend on daily anti-retrovirals, including over half a million children. These children, facing a deadly illness in desperately poor countries, are now going
From the comments of the post:
I would give him feedback, but frankly I find his proposal too confusing to critique. I've read it twice over three days now. At first, I thought he was referring to social institutions, especially because he used an example about driving. Then he claimed businesses are willing to do late-stage innovation and charities should fill in the gap.
What does he want innovated? Private institutions like charities and businesses, or public institutions?
If he had given any references to this allegedly thriving literature or any concrete examples of how one idea could go from academic to charity to business, that would have been more helpful. If he's just talking about people trying out academic ideas in, say, schools, we already do that, so that's not a very exciting argument for me.
I agree with Robin that this is a criminally neglected cause areas. Especially for people who put strong probability on AGI, Bioweapons, and other technological risks, more research into institutions that can make better decisions and outcompete our current institutions seems to be important.