Billion Reward for Breast Cancer Cure

via foxnews

Billion Reward for Breast Cancer Cure

Mike Dewey has a plan to eliminate breast cancer: He's offering $1 billion to whoever discovers a cure.

Never mind that the 48-year-old Austin consultant has nowhere near that kind of fmoney. Dewey, whose daughters are at increased risk for breast cancer because his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, says he'll come up with it.

"I get pretty fired up about this because I've got girls in danger," said Dewey, who says he's raised about $22 million in pledges so far and about $90,000 in actual donations through his nonprofit foundation.

While he's still quite a bit short of $1 billion and some experts are critical of his idea, the energetic Dewey is unfazed — and certain money will roll in if there's a cure.

"I think that we've cracked the code for a new kind of philanthropy," said Dewey, who says he'd retain the intellectual rights to the cure but put it into the public domain for free. "People always have and people always will respond to economic stimuli."

Arthur Caplan, chair of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said Dewey's plan seems naive.

"I think sometimes there's a belief that if we have the right incentive, anything can be solved, This isn't a problem of incentive. It's having the right luck or breakthrough, the right science to get these problems solved..."