Launch of the GO Fight Against Malaria Project

Have you heard of "grid computing"? It's a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal (Wikipedia). The people behind the World Community Grid have a new project out.

This is what we read in the press release:

Malaria is one of the one of the three deadliest infectious diseases on earth and is caused by parasites that infect both humans and animals. Half of the entire human population is at risk: in 2006, 247 million people became infected with malaria. Of the nearly one million deaths caused by malaria each year, 85% of those are children.

The researchers at The Scripps Research Institute, are running the GO Fight Against Malaria project on World Community Grid to evaluate millions of candidate compounds to advance the search for new drugs that can cure patients who are infected with multi-drug-resistant mutant “superbugs” of malaria.

GO Fight Against Malaria is the nineteenth research project to be launched on World Community Grid and one of ten projects currently running on World Community Grid. The other nine research projects are:

Drug Search for Leishmaniasis (launched August, 2011

Computing for Clean Water (launched August, 2010)

The Clean Energy Project – Phase 2 (launched June, 2010)

Discover Dengue Drugs – Together – Phase 2 (launched February, 2010)

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy – Phase 2 (launched May, 2009)

Help Fight Childhood Cancer (launched March, 2009)

Help Conquer Cancer (launched November, 2007)

Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2 (launched July, 2006)

FightAIDS@Home (launched November, 2005)

However, grid computing is considered as dangerous by some. Even though it sounds like an easy thing to do (just installing software which uses spare CPU cycles), could we be sure that the results will be used by the right people?