nice!
This sums up Gridcoin pretty well.
One problem is that finding a cure for cancer is political not that easy. Also for Ebola.. i find i kinda hard that they can research it because the u.s.a holds the patent for it means you can't just make a cure for it without telling them about this project.
I'm not a lawyer or scientist, but I think that while there at agreements in place to give patents some form of international protection, many other countries (among them China and India) don't pay them much heed. Others, like disease ravaged countries in Africa also say they'll pay no attention to patents in their battles against the diseases that ail them
In short, patents might be responsible for huge pharmaceutical prices in the US, but that knowledge can and will be exploited by other counties around the world. So research or knowledge gained from this won't be lost to a black hole of knowledge.