September 6, 2001 | Read Time: 1 minute
Larry Ellison, the founder and chief executive of Oracle, is widely known as the party animal of the software set, but he has a serious side, too, reports Fortune magazine (September 3).
Believing that “life is the only miracle, and understanding how it works is the best intellectual mission one could have,” he founded the Ellison Medical Foundation, which provides vaccines in poor countries and supports research aimed at curing disease.
Mr. Ellison says foundations have a responsibility to tackle medical problems in poor countries. “The whole point of investing in Third World diseases is that the big pharmaceutical companies are not going to do that themselves,” he says. “There’s no chance of ever achieving profitability on these drugs, because the people who suffer from these diseases can’t pay for the medicine.”
And Mr. Ellison sees an opportunity in finding cures for diseases that ravage the elderly. He says such efforts are more humane than caring for the aged as they die. In addition, because it is costly to treat such diseases as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, finding cures is more economical. “Some crackpot articles have said I’m looking for the fountain of youth, but that’s not it at all,” he says. “If we don’t tackle some of these diseases and cure them, we will bankrupt our society.”
Mr. Ellison says he would give all his money away if it would find a cure for cancer. “What do you think is cooler: being the richest guy on earth or helping find the cure for cancer?” he asks. “Let me nail the big C.”
The article is available at http://www.fortune.com.
