Slashdot Mirror
Gates Foundation Plans To Invest $10B Into Vaccines
Endloser writes "Bill Gates is going to invest $10 billion to provide vaccines to people worldwide. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation believes that vaccines are the way to a better future for the world. So they have decided to make 'the largest pledge ever made by a charitable foundation to a single cause.' This 10-year, 10 billion dollar project is expected to save 8.7 million lives."
The problem is actually worse.... The British found this out in India. Fix the disease and infant death through better medicine and clean water, without birth control and massive outreach and education, and people will continue to have 12 babies.
Before modern medicine only 2 or 3 might survive to adult hood. With good medicine, all 12 survive, and the result is mass starvation and poverty.
So I certainly hope that B & M are well aware of history and know that they will have to educate as well as heal.
Yes, the project is necessary.
Look at the map here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Malaria_geographic_distribution_2003.png
How many tens of billions of your anti-mosquito lasers will it take to cover that range of the Earth?
Vaccines are a technological solution.
Most aren't. But transporting them to the middle of nowhere along with people to properly administer them is.
It's good that a portion of his ill-gotten gains will save some lives, but it's tragic that so many more people are dying because access to medicine is blocked by the TRIPS agreement that Gates and friends pushed through.
This donation mustn't be let overshadow the harm. If it's let, then more such harm will be accepted in the future.
(ACTA is the modern TRIPS. We can still stop it.)
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to use the phrase "Big Pharma" . At least you didn't go off on the whole autism spiel. I'm getting really tired of hearing that one.
They have. It's called a vasectomy. Totally OT - the history of vasectomy section is truly hilarious. The oldest condom ... but I won't ruin the surprise.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
why use that 10b to give all Americans health care?
Health care expenditures in the United States on health care surpassed $2.2 trillion in 2007. $10B would only last 40 hours.
But if they attach wings to all those sharks, won't we have a problem even more severe than malaria spreading mosquitoes? Unless those are friendly sharks I fail to see the logic.
You can't handle the truth.
It's not quite that simple either. People have 12 babies because they assume that the majority of them are going to die before the age of 5. However, if you lower the infant mortality rate and the expectation of infant mortality, you actually reduce the number of children born because you can reasonably assume you'll be able to raise each child to adulthood. At least, that's what they argue in this recent TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jane_chen_a_warm_embrace_that_saves_lives.html
"Why do you think most of the stuff we eat, comes from poor countries?"
What are you on about? The US is by far the biggest produce of foodstuffs in the world. They've been a net exporter for food for a long time. I know it is fashionable in some circles to think everything comes from exploited people elsewhere but that simply isn't the case. Food comes from high tech, efficient, agriculture. The US produces mass amounts.
For that matter, the much predicted starvation catastrophe scenario in the developing countries was averted by an American scientist, Norman Borlaug, by introducing American methods and plant strains from other parts of the world, including America.
You also might want to do a bit more learning about where other resources come from. Africa certainly produces some, but there are many more that isn't the case. For example copper, very important to modern society, is dominated by Chile, followed by the US, Peru, China, and Australia. Then of course there's the current grad daddy, oil, which is dominated by the Middle East, but also Russia, Canada, the Scandinavian countries, and so on.
Your conceptions and reality do not seem to match up.
Microsoft didn't put the patent laws into place, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did. What, you thought those medicines were free? No, they came with the requirement that your country signs a trade treaty with the USA, bringing your patent system into line with theirs. You get the vaccines now, but you've just made it much harder to develop a native information economy, and you've probably just bought another decade or two of poverty for the majority of the population. Yay for altruism.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Why did you bring up Microsoft? The comment that you are replying to has nothing to do with Microsoft. It has to do with the B&MGF's policy of requiring countries that benefit from their 'altruism' to sign IP treaties with the USA that prevent local production of the vaccines in question. Over the course of a decade, their 'donations' reduce the total amount of vaccines that will reach the people in the countries in question. Free vaccine now, but only if you make sure that the local company that could produce it for $1 never starts so when the donated vaccines run out you have to buy it for $200 from a US company. Sounds altruistic...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'd be happy to see Africa turn out like India.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_pro-energy-oil-production
The U.S. is the third largest oil producer, producing more then twice as much as the fourth largest.