Man offers money to first person to find cure for breast cancer.
DALLAS (AP) - Mike Dewey has a plan to eliminate breast cancer: He's offering $1 billion to the person who discovers the cure.
Never mind the fact the 48-year-old Austin consultant has nothing close to that much money. Dewey, whose daughters are at increased risk for the disease because his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, says he'll come up with the cash.
"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 is a belief that if we have the right incentive, anything can be solved," he said. "This isn't a problem of incentive. It's having the right luck, the right breakthrough, the right science to get the problem solved."
Margaret "Peg" Mastrianni, deputy director of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, said in a statement that donors want assurance that their money will go to the "most promising investigations and that progress will be monitored."
Dewey isn't alone in feeling some impatience with the pace of research.
Dr. David Euhus, a surgical oncologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said he's noticed that those making grants are willing to take bolder steps because they're "getting a little frustrated" by the slow pace of traditional research.
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