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Bill Gates Gives $750M To AIDS Fund
redletterdave writes "Microsoft chairman and philanthropist Bill Gates pledged $750 million to the troubled global AIDS fund on Thursday and urged governments to continue their support to save lives. Since the fund was launched 10 years ago, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given $1.4 billion to the charity, having already contributed $650 million prior to the latest donation. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria accounts for around a quarter of international financing to fight HIV and AIDS, as well as the majority of funds to fight TB and malaria."
Even the general Slashdot feeling towards Microsoft, it is true that his (and Melinda's) work is great. Let's hope he keeps it up!
steve jobs doesn't donate to charity, dies of cancer
For all the M$ bashers out there, ask yourself whether Linux has ever saved a child from malaria.
...this still doesn't make up for IE6.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Unless contracted because of infected blood during a transfusion or other medical procedure, it's very easy to avoid AIDS. I cannot agree in spending so much money to cure something that people could easily avoid.
say what you will about bill gates and microsoft and windows, the truth is that in his post-microsoft life than nearly any other individual, and certainly more than his frenemy Steve Jobs. Talk about an ambitious agenda - cure malaria, cure aids. Big ideas that would literally help a billion people.
Just a giant tax shelter. The real work is being done by the US Government with PEPFAR which has accounted for nearly $20 billion in funding going towards combating HIV and Malaria in Africa.
Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.
I'm sure all the recipients will be forced to use Windows. So that you can get infected while you're already infected ;-)
Mr Gates, I just need $10000. You spend that on car insurance every month. I could do so much with that money. You spend that on massages every month. I could do wonders that that money. You spend that on starbucks every month. It would be easy for you.
I wonder if he's ever frustrated by pharmaceutical companies that find more profit in treating a disease than curing it? I only ask because it's an ethic that feels very Microsoft in nature.
Invest in a cure Bill. That's the best thing you could do.
subject should have read, "in philanthropy, bill gates >> steve jobs."
Tuberculosis is common, deadly, difficult to avoid, and now sometimes even impossible to treat. HIV is a disease that hits the very unlucky and the very stupid. If you're very unlucky, I'm sorry to hear that, but statistically you're a rounding error. Tuberculosis is an **airborne** killer. (read: uber-fucking-scary germs from Hell)
Bill and his foundation and GSK did that whole malaria vaccination thing where they needed to buy the medicine and keep taking it along with the vaccination. Why cure someone when you can dip your hand in the scam that is the WHO?
Leopards do not change their spots and this is not philanthropy, be in no doubt.
Throwing $5bn didn't show much improvement in education, are we going to see the same lack of results here?
While the contribution is large (and a nice gesture) we need to make sure it's properly used rather than just consumed.
These people want their lives, not money that doesn't grow into fruition.
what have they been doing with the funds? Nothing. no results to speak of, only a bunch of corruption allegation.
Even the general Slashdot feeling towards Microsoft, it is true that his (and Melinda's) work is great. Let's hope he keeps it up!
Well, I have an issue with this. From the article:
While that will give an immediate boost, more is needed from governments, which have provided the bulk of the $22.6 billion that has been raised by the Geneva-based organization to date for its work in 150 countries.
The commitment of governments was shaken last year when the fund reported "grave misuse of funds" in four recipient nations, prompting some donors such as Germany and Sweden to freeze their donations.
Why do coutnries pay into this foundation that invests primarily in American funds and stocks? Why do they not setup their own charities that invest in their own stocks or -- better yet -- give it directly to the institutions of medical research?
This perplexes me to no end. This foundation is at the mercy of the stock market and rely on money managers to post returns every year so that it can give those returns to the targeted countries and research -- right up until a crisis causes those funds to greatly shrink.
I have complained about this before and been called "full of bullshit" and I guess this is just one thing that my opinion and concern diverges on from the rest of the readers here. This is charity in the form of keeping the capital inside America's border and shaving off returns. The money stays at work in America and no such stock or company or infrastructure is built up in the countries that could truly use it and truly need it.
When you're talking billions of dollars, you're talking enough money to start internal institutions and programs that could create jobs or better education as well as do medical research. Instead this money stays in the coffers of rich Western companies and even after the returns are "given" to the countries, it is given in the form of purchased medicines often made by American companies. And that strategy of deciding where your donations gets spent doesn't always work out like you would expect.
It's great he donates all that money but that method is never going to change anything. The real winners here are the companies that get huge cash infusions from the foundation in the form of investment (like Monsanto) and Big Pharma who gets the revenue from all the AIDS medicine that is bought and shipped. Exactly why are foreign governments investing in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation instead of finding a better solution?
Bring on the "look a gift horse in the mouth" posts. They may be right but there has to be a better way to use this money to accomplish these goals. It's almost designed to be a perpetual medicine exporting machine.
My work here is dung.
R.I.P Juan Epstein
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
In all fairness, and despite this being wildly off topic, Jobs died of cancer because he refused treatment.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Don't forget about Polio, too. He put up $355M and Roatary International pledged to raise $200M from us mere mortals, and that's on top of the near-eradication of polio that we had going.
It's pretty amazing what you can do when you realize that you're so rich you can't really spend it all on houses, islands, and other worldly toys.
Just saying. Everyone is handing-out condoms and Lysol, but Lyme Disease is worse. It's like having AIDS at random for a month and then it goes away long enough to forget but then returns to hit your harder each time.
AIDS only effects you slowly and gradualy and finally puts you down when you are old anyways, and Tuberculosis is something only people get when they can affort to fly in an Airplane or visit foreign countries. Americanse can't afford to get Tuberculosis, and the sloppy ones get AIDS, but Lyme Disease is forever.
subject should have read, "in philanthropy, bill gates >> steve jobs."
Bill gates bit shift to the right Steve Jobs is what? Mother Theressa?
Bill Gates already said he is for reducing world population via vaccines. Why am I to think this is to help "save" lives? http://www.naturalnews.com/029911_vaccines_Bill_Gates.html
Bill Gates could literally cure cancer, eradicate AIDS and make Malaria piss itself and people would still be giving him grief about Windows, IE6 or ripping off Apple.
Yes, it's great that Gates gave $750M to charity, but this does not legitimize the means by which he made his money.
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One of the key differences between Jobs and Gates is that Gates retired. Granted, he started his philanthropy before he stepped down from Microsoft, but that was because he saw a day coming when he wasn't going to be running Microsoft and turned his attention to something else. Jobs was too driven by his focus on Apple to think about philanthropy. If he had lived to a point where he was ready to move on from Apple, he probably would have turned to "putting a dent in the universe" in some other way, with the same intensity.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Bill Gates worth 55 billion 250 million dollars.
"Big ideas that would literally help a billion people."...survive to consume more resources and create more problems....
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
If, by "refuse treatment" you mean he had multiple surgeries including a transplant, and flying to mysterious locations for exotic treatments, then yeah. That.
I thought the guy (and all Apple people) was a douche, but he did have a pretty crappy deal and fought it as well as most people could. Money-for-liver controversy notwithstanding.
THL phish sticks
...we'd get the cure for AIDs as a trivial side effect of artificial intellgience development. Oh wait, that would have required imagination! What was I thinking?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
If I gonna be a borg, let me be Bill's borg!
Wow. I had no idea polio was still a problem. This reminds me that, IIRC, smallpox wasn't defeated until the 70s. The last person to contract it in the wild was in rural India somewhere. By that time, I think they had already stopped vaccinating people in the US. When I was a kid I could easily see my vaccination scar; but it's totally faded now. A few years younger and I would not have been vaccinated. On the plus side, if they ever go insane and release the virus I might have a slightly better chance of survival. I understand that a booster shot is required for full immunity.
are bill gates and steve jobs unsigned or signed integers? I tried it, but i think the endianness is screwing me up.
THL phish sticks
Given the intellectual level here -- I'm wondering, do sites ever get "slash-dotted" anymore?
Hadn't been here for many years, got here through an old bookmark -- housecleaning is in order. Pity, really.
Whilst I Lord the achievements of Gates Et Al. I do find this level of charity disturbing. It highlights the unprecedented and frankly monstrous levels of inequity in our "Civilized" world. I look forward to the day when no one ever need to give to Charity or want for it.
"What Are They Gonna Do When Were All Using Freenet"
of the warring *BSD is 3ead. To happen. My
I thought some surgeon came out and said that he had a highly treatable form or cancer but decided to do the alternative treatments first instead of the more scientifically based ones and it got worse.
he's being philanthropic with YOUR money - the scumbag!
I think he's refering to when Jobs was first diagnosed. Unfortunately thats the critical period for cancers. If you can cut the fuckers out before they metastatise(sp?) you have a pretty good chance of beating the thing. But once it starts going p2p on your arse, your odds of surviving drop horrifically. Its highly probable that it was his attempt at hippy-curing it in the begining that lost him that vital window for fighting the fucken thing.
Alas, sometimes your genes are just faulty, and no matter what you do, that cancers going to remanifest and slay your ass.
Cancer is pure evil.
Man, with that kind of money you could probably fund almost all experiments currently running in the world.
I mean think about it, with the exception of large scale experiments like Tevatron or LHC, Bill Gates could fund almost the entire physics research currently active in the world.
I wonder why he is so focused on curing AIDS, when he could practically double the world research output in all other fields? It seems to me, that this could have much larger impact on a larger group of people.
I mean Africa is a fucked up place with or without AIDS, Malaria and so on (which are just syptoms of more complex socio-economic problems). You can probably dump billions of dollars in this continent, and all you'd get in return is more powerful warlords, more intensive and brutal ethnic/religous conflicts and a few very rich people, who get a little richer.
More information concerning monetary efforts by Gates can be found here: 2012 Annual Letter from Bill Gates
It's not just AIDS that he's donating to, but crop research, polio, education, and other areas as well.
Admittedly it's not completely clear-cut, but he didn't exactly do as much as he could have. Observe:
Despite his diagnosis, Jobs resisted his doctors' recommendations for mainstream medical intervention for nine months,[103] instead consuming a special alternative medicine diet in an attempt to thwart the disease. According to Harvard researcher Dr. Ramzi Amir, his choice of alternative treatment "led to an unnecessarily early death".[136] According to Jobs's biographer, Walter Isaacson, "for nine months he refused to undergo surgery for his pancreatic cancer – a decision he later regretted as his health declined."[139] "Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, before finally having surgery in July 2004."[140] He eventually underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") in July 2004, that appeared to successfully remove the tumor.[141][142][143] Jobs apparently did not receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy.[137][144] During Jobs's absence, Tim Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations at Apple, ran the company.[137]
So sayeth Wikipedia. The "flying to mysterious locations for exotic treatments" part did not work out so well.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Jobs and Gates were almost the exact same age... both born in 1955.
I expect that Jobs was too driven by his focus on Apple to think about retiring in the first place. And besides, what sort of excuse is being too focussed on his own company to think about helping others? If anything, it only shows a abysmally poor sense of priorities that are absolutely nobody's fault but his own.
Leaving aside the ethical issue that there is nothing stopping anyone, regardless of their age, from doing what they can to help others, your supposition is entirely hypothetical, and unsupported by his character, evidenced by some of his daily practices, an inflated sense of entitlement, and how he treated other people.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
How much of this money actually goes towards research? You'd think with the billions of dollars that have been poured into this disease over the past 2 decades there'd be an actual cure by now.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
Sure, and I could have cured him too, with my sooper magick science.
Such claims are easily made, and best ignored.
to "Microsoft chairman and philanthropist?" Whoda thunk 7 years ago we'd be saying that?
If you think we can solve any of our problems be "reducing the surplus popluation" I have a suggestion: you first.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
. . . but upon closer inspection it turns out to be Maybelline.
When that company entered Africa, they killed 15 hookers in test lab experiments. The story goes that these 15 African hookers gained natural immunity to HIV/AIDS and the lab techs in Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation asked the corrupt African government to COERCE those 15 hookers into medical examination and experimentation facilities. An American company of people demands Bill of Rights but doesn't respect anyone else in the world to the same level of standard: they forced these 15 hookers into experiments that resulted in all the hookers contracting the disease and it killed them all within 9 months.
FWCK YOU BILL & MELLINDA.
If he couldnt write it off on his taxes he wouldnt donate that much money.
Not that his sentiment isnt a noble gesture but really, no rich people would donate money if it wasnt something they could use as a tax write off or benefit them somehow financially.
If, by "refuse treatment" you mean he had multiple surgeries including a transplant,
Shhh, idiots get violent when you insult their messiah.
Jobs was too driven by his focus on Apple to think about philanthropy.
That's stupid. It's like saying "I'm so busy with work that I can't say please and thank you." *Nobody* is so busy with work that they don't have time to do other things each day.
Charity is Charity – If you earn money and give it away you are not taxed on the money given.
Tax Shelters are used to delay or avoid taxes. If somebody had a large bonus this year (ordinary income) one would try to build a tax shelter to convert it to long term capital gains. i.e., don’t pay the tax this year, pay the lower capital gains tax after a couple of years.
Alpaca farms are a great example. It’s a part time gig, and all of a sudden your large SUV and barn (for your riding horses) converts to a work truck and farm.
I don't know about unsigned or not; but both people are irrational.
(but for this, though: bill gets an attaboy; and its well deserved for doing good with all that money he has.)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
As long as he donates it we can ignore how he got it? (illegally)
that is not an opinion, that is an objective appraisal of the ignorant words you write
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
> Why do coutnries pay into this foundation...
The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation doesn't lie about how they're spending money, unlike many charities. They also are managed in an intelligent way--intelligent enough that two of the most successful men in the world have donated the bulk of their wealth to it. Contributing to antimalarial work, for example, makes an incredible difference in the lives of millions of people. In the developed world we tend to think of people as ill or not ill; in developing nations, it is not uncommon for that not to be a binary question, for people to be either sick or sicker. These programs work to change that.
Think about how awesome that is.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Also, Bank of America is generous and kind in all things and bankrolls Santa's Elves.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
This is crazy. I'm not saying it always makes sense, on a personal level, to go along with a doc's rec--I might choose not to have chemo if it involves going through living hell and I'm very likely to die anyway--but when you have cancer, you find the best surgeon in your part of the world (or go elsewhere if there are no good surgeons near you) and get the f'ing thing OUT of your body.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
There's no reason to believe that. In fact all public evidence on Jobs thought process for Charitable giving say otherwise.
Jobs was a vicious, mean bastard, who treated pretty much everyone in his life like crap. He just happened to make great tech products. Btw I happen to own several of these products. Although now that I know as much as I do about him I guess I have to think about what that means.
There was some speculation that before he died he might have been giving anonymously. I call bullshit until proven otherwise. Based on how he treated his fellow human beings throughout his ENTIRE life AND how he treated his own children/family I have every reason to think he didn't give any of his $8Billion to charity.
And if that's the case I hope he's in his own special hell. You don't get to amass that much wealth, not give back and help when you really could have, and then get rewarded on the other side. That just can't be how it works, at least I hope not...
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Ok, but Steve Jobs donated to feed thousands of nearly starving lawyers.
Jobs probably believed he and Apple were already giving enough to the world through their product line...
Bill Gates did not do that, his foundation did. That is not his money, it's money donated by many people.
>
Cancer is pure evil.
Or cancer just really likes Steve Wozniak.
The first time Bill Gates actually did anything useful about a virus infection!
Ba dump bump! Thank you, I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waitress. Try the veal.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
really? Microsoft hate on the charity front? Hey read a little, your god didn't do shit. Fuck you apple clone children...
Let's not forget that the reason developing countries can't cheaply manufacture their own AIDS medication is that the TRIPS agreement, which Gates was a major back of, requires them to respect the patents of the richest countries.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
You (and the dork who modded by comment "troll") seem to be suffering the misconception that I was praising or justifying Jobs. I was just pointing out a difference in Jobs' and Gates' personalities and life choices, and how that led to one becoming a life-saving philanthropist and the other... not. Jobs clearly believed that what he was doing and planning to do with Apple was the best thing he could do to make the world a better place. I wasn't trying to evaluate whether he was right.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I didn't say it justified it. I swear, the superficial level of reading comprehension here....
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
and 99% of the idiots on Slashdot can't even begin to understand the science behind any of this, so just go along with the party line. Truly embarrassing.
Try reading 'The Trouble with Nevirapine' for a start. No wait, don't bother, just carry on repeating whatever the T.V. tells you, then you won't have to THINK...
This headline reminds me of past headlines about Microsoft's charitable contributions to schools: "Microsoft gives umpteen billions dollars worth of software away!" Except that, to Microsoft, the cost of printing some CDs and distributing them was a mere pittance.
So it is when you compare the value of generic drugs with drugs who's prices are artificially inflated by patent protections. Pharmaceutical companies would very much like the same protections in Africa and the rest of the world that they enjoy here. Not everyone believes that progress requires that we concentrate enormous wealth and power in the hands of a very very few people.
So here are a few questions: Does the Gate's foundation purchase and promote the use of generic life saving drugs? Do Bill and Melinda, through the Gates Foundation or any of their other ventures, work to limit the efforts of generic pharmaceutical manufacturers in countries where they now operate completely legally? Do Bill and Melinda, through their investments in pharmaceutical manufacturers, profit by directly or indirectly suppressing the activities of generic drug manufacturers in countries where they currently operate unencumbered by American notions of proprietary intellectual capital? Do they promote the widespread dissemination and use of knowledge about life saving treatments?
The answers to these questions very much impact how we should interpret the value ascribed to their so-called 'charitable' contributions.
thanks for the clarification, up til now I SWORE it was because of his anti-philanthropical attitude!
Bill made software that got me stuck with his crappy product.
Windows (2003) and active directory do not offer nearly enough management knobs/tools/etc to straighten out even the simplest issues with active directory. It doesn't show that sync stopped. (but it does beep on crashes of services, unstarted services, full disks, swap file, etc etc etc and do not forghet the windows updates that cream at ya to reboot again)
This overlooked corner makes windows unfit for the enterprise.
Now that Bill tries to do good, how much must he do to compensate?
(yes, windows, but only for work, not at home)
See what you can do when you pay almost no taxes!
http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2011/04/07/microsoft-boeing-among-nations-top-corporate-tax-dodgers-daily-beast/
http://tntaxguy.blogspot.com/2011/04/double-irish-and-dutch-sandwich-how.html
With crumbling roads and schools, broke Countries, States, and Municipalities, we should show gratitude for the pittance that overlord Gates bestows upon us. All hail corporations!
Possibly not, but your previous post does seem to suggest that it excuses it somehow.
Let's just go over it point by point....
What difference should this make if this were not some sort of attempt at excusing his uncharitable nature?
I bolded the key words in these statements, above. In the context of what you wrote, this heavily reads like you are trying to justify Jobs' less-than-charitable nature... or, as I mentioned above, at the very least excuse it.
And your concluding paragraph pretty much clinches your thesis. This hypothesis has absolutely no basis in reality, and based on how he treated other people anyways, there's plenty of reason to suggest that it is false. To conclude that he was simply just "too busy" to show other people any real kindness is nothing but a load of bullocks, because anyone who is too busy to show charity is already ethically misguided. What basis is there to presume that he would have changed?
Is it *possible* that he could have had a change of heart as he got older, if he should have lived longer? Of course it is... people have changes of heart all the time. But to suggest that this could have been a somehow *likely* turn of events is an entirely different kettle of fish, and it is what everybody who has responded to your post has taken exception to.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Steve didn't die, he has ascended...
MOD PARENT UP