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It seems to me you are missing the point of living in a modern economy - one with currency and the free exchange of goods and services ;) Yeah, you could go to medical school and "make a difference". However, I'm going to guess (perhaps wrongly) you're not going to go into it for the shear pleasure of medical research, but rather, because you simply want to "help people". You "want" a lot of things, day to day. Food, shelter, entertainment - the works. But you are not a farmer, nor a construction worker, nor a writer. Instead, you simply do whatever it is that gives you a reasonable tradeoff between marketability and enjoyment. You specialize. You become a programmer and make money (looky there, a lot of it!). Now you can use this money to pay others to full-fill your needs, and the people who receive your money are in turn specialists in their own field, and they can do a FAR better job at providing [food|shelter|entertainment] then you ever will. The desire to "help people" is no different. You have a desire, and you have an ability to make money. Other people have the ability to satisfy your desire, for money. Pay them to make it happen. If you go to medical school, you will spend ~$200,000 on it, and more importantly you will forgo MILLIONS of dollars during the time you are studying instead of doing what you're good at (startups, programming, investing, whatever). A million dollars can provide scholarships for 5 bright and promising students who each have a much higher chance of coming up with something that will "change the world" then you do. It's simply a question of efficiency. Having said that, you do get to be involved at least to some extent. As consumers, we pay others to do the bulk of the work for us, but we still have to make some important decisions: What do we buy? Who do we hire? Who do we delegate responsibility to? Incidentally, these are very much "investment" decisions, so your background in this area will serve you well. "Invest" in a charity program. Set one up from scratch if none of the existing ones are satisfactory. Gather motivated and qualified people. But beyond that, the best thing you can do is keep working on the things you are best at. A "Web 2.0 AJAX social network blah blah blah application" might seem petty and trivial in the greater scheme of things, but it gives you more power to change the world then most people can dream of. Imagine you really were a medical researcher and you find out someone you love has cancer. All-nighters can only do so much. You still need to run tests, hire assistants, get software and equipment. Chances are, you won't be able to cure the disease on your own anyway. You'd feel just as impotent.
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