When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his pediatrician wife, Priscilla Chan, announced last week that they’re spending $3 billion in the next decade in an effort to “cure all diseases in our children’s lifetime,” the temptation — especially for the late-night comics — was to poke fun at the tech titan’s sheer audacity.

But after giving it a little thought — as well as a full read of Zuckerberg’s Facebook post on the subject — I can’t help but join the long list of those applauding his noble intentions.

“Priscilla and I have spent the last few years talking to dozens of top scientists and experts who believe it’s possible to cure, prevent or manage all diseases by the end of this century,” he wrote. “That doesn’t mean no one will ever get sick, but it does mean that we’ll get sick a lot less, and that when we do, we’ll always be able to identify and treat the problem, or at least manage it as a non-harmful condition.”

According to Zuckerberg, some 60 percent of the causes of death in the U.S. are from one of the following four diseases: heart disease, cancer, infectious disease and neurological disease. “This gives us an idea of where to focus to start.”

In the initial stage, the couple plans to partner with several top research facilities — including those at the University of California San Francisco, Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley — to create a $600 million research center in San Francisco called “Biohub.”

“We’re going to focus on bringing scientists and engineers together to build new tools that can empower the whole scientific community to make breakthroughs.”

Among those who are especially enthused about Zuckerberg’s initiative is Dr. Sreedhar Potarazu, an ophthalmologist and founder of WellZone, who believes that by revolutionizing how the healthcare industry uses data will lead to the breakthroughs that Zuckerberg dreams of.

“I’ve spent more than 20 years in health care working with data, and I am astounded daily by how poorly the industry uses data,” he wrote for Fox News.

Noting that Facebook, Google and Amazon have experienced untold success using data as their “cellular nucleus,” Potarazu hopes that Zuckerberg’s multi-billion-dollar pledge “will finally persuade the health care industry to allocate massive dollars to data science and technology.”

Perhaps just as important as Zuckerberg’s largesse is the patience and humility now on display with this, as well as previous, philanthropic endeavors.

In December, after the birth of their daughter Max, Chan and Zuckerberg said they would donate 99 percent of their Facebook wealth during their lifetimes in order to “[advance] human potential and [promote] equality for all children in the next generation.”

The Guardian noted at the time that “tech giving … is often lambasted for demanding immediate results, but the couple make clear that they are in this for the long haul.”

Last week’s announcement — in which Zuckerberg stressed, “Remember, this is a long term effort.” — simply reinforced that message.

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