Is there anything a non-famous non-billionaire person do to meaningfully impact medical research? It seems like the barriers to innovation are insurmountable to everyone with the will to try, and the very few organizations and people who might be able to aren't dedicated to it.
Yes depending on how you define "meaningful". If you can speed up a cure for cancer by 1 day, or increase the chance of us getting a cure next year by 1 in a million then the expected value of this increase in terms of human welfare is huge compared to what most people manage to accomplish in their life.
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.