Gates Foundation Funds "Altruistic Vaccine"

QuantumG writes "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a $100,000 grant to the University of Queensland, Australia to develop a vaccine against dengue fever, a disease spread by mosquitoes. Unlike other vaccines, the 'altruistic vaccine' doesn't specifically protect the individual being bitten, but instead protects the community by stopping the transmission of the pathogen from one susceptible individual to another. The hope is to do this by effectively making their blood poisonous to mosquitoes, either killing them or at least preventing them from feeding on other individuals. Professor Paul Young explained how his work fell outside current scientific traditions and might lead to significant advances in global health — he said he could envision the vaccine being used around the world within 10 years, and it would be designed to be cheap and easy to implement."

Comments

Re:Is that really enough?

[Runaway1956]

In another time and place, egotistical bastards forced slaves to build huge pyramidal structures, for the purpose of immortalizing the egotistacal bastard's name.

In this time and place, egotistical bastards steal billions, then spread around a few thousand here and there, with the purpose of immortalizing the egotistical bastard's name.

We really haven't progressed much, have we? Gates is as worried about some malaria like fever as I am worried about the sun going nova. The money's purpose is NOT to cure dengue fever. The money's purpose IS to make a bunch of gullible chumps say "Oh, isn't Bill WONDERFUL?!?!"

Re:Is that really enough?

[Alex Belits]

Without Bill Gates keeping science and engineering from developing, those people wouldn't be poor in the first place.

There is at least a decade of progress (on average in all human activities) lost thanks to Windows and retarded mode of thinking it imposes on its users -- and progress in some areas won't restart until Microsoft's dominant position is gone.

Nothing Gates can do (or anyone can do with all his money) is sufficient to compensate for that. He will be remembered as a monster, just like all other billionaires who tried to buy a place in history by throwing some of their ill-gotten money at high-profile "causes".