'Cure All Diseases in 5 Years' Pushed Back: Bottleneck Is Clinical Funding, Not Targets

shae_mcl · x · 2026-08-18

Pushing back on the claim that AI will cure all diseases within 5 years, biotech investor Ryan Bethencourt argues the bottleneck isn't finding targets — university IP offices are full of patents collecting dust. The real problem is funding pre-clinical and clinical research: everyone wants cures, but no one wants to wait a decade and pay over $1B for them. That, not more (admittedly great) targets or molecules, is the challenge. shaemcl adds that we don't even have suitable targets for all diseases sitting on shelves.

Related event: Scholars push back on Dario Amodei's claim AI will cure most diseases in 5-10 years(13 posts)→

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