Slashdot Mirror
Melinda Gates Pledges $560 Million For Contraception
theodp writes "Melinda Gates has pledged $560 million as part of a campaign to expand access to contraception for women. From the article: 'The funding commitment was unveiled on Wednesday at the London Summit on Family Planning alongside pledges totaling $4.3 billion from the British government and leaders from African nations wrestling with the health and social problems brought on by high rates of unplanned pregnancy.'"
Kidding aside.
She and her husband continue to show the best side of capitalism. For those that assume that wealth necessarily leads to avarice, it's delightful to me to see the Gates Foundation making that case more difficult to prove.
To hear her explain the contraception issue:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/415947/june-27-2012/melinda-gates
This just shows the Gates family commitment to helping the world. Great job Melinda, slashdot appreciates your efforts!
Gotta hand it to her, that's pretty cool.
[SHOW SOME LENIENCY TOWARDS
You hate her because she supports persons right to decide over his or her own body?
... breaking down the religious monopoly on this discussion? Abstinence has been shown to not work, yet it plays to the religious agenda
Many may well consider such acts of philanthropy completely altruistic. Whether you agree with the cause or not, only the most cynical of people would view it as 'marketing' or 'self promotion', and even if it actually is that; so what? The people who will benefit from it wont care - it doesn't matter what the motivation for doing it is, the end result is what is important.
Personally, I think the motivation is truly altruistic and comes from a genuine desire to do good in the world. The point I would make is; anyone 'richer than God' is going to acquire the same philosophy. Why are mega rich people altruistic? Because they can be. When every conceivable want and desire is met, what is left but to be generous to your fellow man?
I for one would welcome the opportunity to do exactly that myself. If only I had some software I could sell to IBM.
The sad thing is you're probably serious and worse yet there are plenty of nutjobs in the world that support your view. This charitable donation is a big step forward for the affected people and is definitely a step towards clawing their way out of poverty.
an unborn human is a diferent human
Lol... I clicked on the article and the first thing I thought (based on the picture) was Melinda Gates = Chloe from Fight Club.
Narrator: Oh, yeah, Chloe... Chloe looked the way Meryl Streep's skeleton would look if you made it smile and walk around the party being extra nice to everybody.
Chloe: Well, I'm still here. But I don't know for how long. That's as much certainty as anyone can give me. But I've got some good news: I no longer have any fear of death. But... I am in a pretty lonely place. No one will have sex with me. I'm so close to the end, and all I want is to get laid for the last time. I have pornographic movies in my apartment, and lubricants, and amyl nitrite...
[the group leader takes the mic]
You appear to be confusing contraception with abortion. While abortion is an issue still much debated, the ethics of contraception are more-or-less settled now for everyone except the Catholic church and a few other religious groups, and even they don't equate it with murder.
" Abstinence has been shown to not work"
Actually abstinence has been shown to work 100%. There is no instance of a woman not having sex getting pregnant.
How far you should go with that? Are you launching little babies on the toilet paper every time you wank? Are you killing people when you... sorry, some woman chooses not to have sex with you?
Please note the absence of Bill Gates' name from this project.
>Her solution for the problems of the world: kill humans. It's terrible, because there is people asking job and food, and she worry about kill humans before they have rights.
Every sperm is sacred, right mate?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kJHQpvgB8
--
BMO
Melinda Gates donated millons of dollars to Family Planning Association:
http://www.fpa.org.uk/campaignsandadvocacy/london-family-planning-summit
And Family Planning Association support the abortion movement:
http://www.fpa.org.uk/campaignsandadvocacy/reproductiverights
No. it isn't.
Just as an unbuilt building is not a building and an unwritten book is not a book.
Even better than that. How about menstruation? Its one dead egg cell each time it happens. Women should have sex every time to make sure all of them develop into children. The biggest problem is that that makes only 1 of the sperms become a human. All the others are killing humans... Hmm, you know what, fuck it, I am going to kill some unborn humans.
There is a big difference between wanking in the toilet n aborting a baby. No matter your position on the topic, so no that's not what was said or suggested. Unborn women have rights too don't they?
contraception != abortion.
I know, it's very difficult to understand the difference, but trust me, there is one...
With a wank there is not conception. You have an different ADN from the conception.
I didn't read the article.... but obviously contraceptives are good. But quite arguably abortion is not. Certainly not after a certain time... trimesters are a useful way of specifying what stages of development have probably taken place but does not scientifically prove when an unborn child starts having a right to live that overrides the mothers right to choice.
I'm no fan of abortion for controlling overpopulation, so birth control is the lesser of two evils. To their credit, the Gate's are being pro-human with their fortune, and I wonder what I would do in their position. Do I build bridges, dig wells, hand out laptops? Money/food/supplies sent to poor countries never seems to get to the people in need, getting stolen by corrupt local officials somewhere along the distribution line. So, if you were in the Gate's position, how would YOU spend your money for the common good?
Fine, any money is good. But this doesn't "give capitalism a heart" or "human face" as some people seem to suggest. Often these types of donations are done to avoid taxes or act as leverage when investing in other regional markets /commodities.
We are talking about capitalists here, self interest is king.
No, they don't. And the only differences are completely arbitrary.
> There is a big difference between wanking in the toilet n aborting a baby.
But we arent even talking about a "baby" because in the early weeks of pregnancy, there is no baby. There is a big difference between a bunch of cells that have the potential to grow into a baby and an already grown up baby.
I know that it is hard to draw an arbitrary line, but a line has to be drawn _somewhere_, since pretending that a single fertilized egg is the same as a living, breathing, feeling human baby is ridiculous.
If you don't have arms and legs, you continue being a human
I heard the religious right was a really strong force in the US, but really, having to pay $560 million just to get some contraception seems to me to be a bit exaggerated, no?
Anyway, anything which prevents the Gates' genes from spreading further is a good cause. Glad to see they're still keeping up the good work!
I'd like to suggest "The Selfish Gene" as a possible explanation to this altruistic behaviour and to other gates foundation endeavors.
I repeat: If you don't have arms and legs and you are in a coma, you continue being a human
I can type more than that for my comment.
The greatest theologian of the Catholic Church, Hans Kung, is barred from teaching doctrine by the same Ratzinger. In effect, Catholic thought has been hijacked by a relatively small clique of backward authority figures. You could say the same thing about the British Conservative Party and the Church of England. Comment on the USA would be superfluous, as HuffPost does a rather thorough job. Eventually, Popes die.
The point is that Melinda Gates is more typical of Catholics than is the Pope, and Hans Kung articulates the beliefs of educated Catholics far better than Ratzinger's entire hierarchy. It is the Pope that needs to go into unearned retirement.
And, for information, I'm a kind of atheist. I just think that clear thinking about what goes on in religions is much better than simple name calling.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The pill doesn't stop STDs, does it?
Why are the MEN not wearing condoms, then? Why are women sleeping with men who don't care about them enough to even wear a condom?
Why are MOST women attracted to violent, uncaring men?
If MOST women were attracted to caring, kind men, then that's exactly what most men would become, overnight...
I repeat: In that case there is not conception. You have a different ADN from the conception.
And an acorn is not an oak.
The church was morally bankrupt centuries ago. Just the latest incarnation (pun intended) is better highlighted thanks to world news coverage
What has this got to do with abortion or the support of it??? She is donating money for contraception
In that case there is not conception. You have an different ADN from the conception.
Read the full article:
Melinda Gates donated millons of dollars to Family Planning Association:
http://www.fpa.org.uk/campaignsandadvocacy/london-family-planning-summit
And Family Planning Association support the abortion movement:
http://www.fpa.org.uk/campaignsandadvocacy/reproductiverights
That is quite a lose chain.
It is akin to me saying you support baby killing because Slashdot made ad revenue from you visiting this page and some of the people employed for Slashdot have donated to Planned Parenthood.
See there is the proof. You are a baby killer! You are sick, disgusting person for supporting the murder of innocent children!
She is not a good person after all.
Her solution for the problems of the world: kill humans. It's terrible, because there is people asking job and food, and she worry about kill humans before they have rights.
That is not charity and it's not ethical!
Don't worry, they're only *brown* humans so they're not really wanted.
Okay I'm sorry. In my EWD (excessive waffle delirium) I thought it would be a good idea to watch FoxNews for a laugh.
About 21,000 days too late, by my reckoning.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A typical Slashdotter. How pathetic. "a human that does not (yet)".
Obviously you're still a virgin, and have no understanding of what an unborn baby goes through - how big of you! You idiot.
"stop unwanted pregnancies".
And how are those of us who are against abortion supposed to do that? Most abortions are BIRTH CONTROL - i.e. the stupid women get themselves pregnant 'by accident' (yeah right, I believe you), and then kill their own babies in order to get out of it.
WHY are so many women getting pregnant "by accident"? Did you stop to think about that? It's nothing to do with a lack of contraceptives, it's to do with an increase in the dysgenic mass of selfish, worthless SCUM, who are destroying this planet by their very existence. Selfish, stupid women will have sex with violent, selfish men, who can't maintain erections while wearing condoms, and thus the women eventually get pregnant "by accident".
The problem lies with women - they choose to sleep with losers who can't maintain erections with a condom on.
You don't make any sense but I don't know what ADN means. So I looked it up. It didn't help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADN
ADN is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:
Adobe Digital Negative (file format), a raw image format designed by Adobe Systems
Application Delivery Network, a suite of technologies for improved delivery of applications across the Internet
Autodesk Developer Network, a program for developers working with Autodesk software
Aircraft Data Network, a proposed specification for data networking standards for commercial aircraft installations
Advanced Digital Network, a leased 56k digital phone line used commonly with mainframe terminal multiplexers
Auditory Disability with Normal hearing, a term for King-Kopetzky syndrome
Ammonium dinitramide, a rocket propellant
Acción Democrática Nacionalista (Nationalist Democratic Action), a political party of Bolivia
Alleanza Democratica Nazionale (National Democratic Alliance (Italy)), a former political party of Italy
Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst, the state news agency of East Germany
Anchorage Daily News, an Alaskan newspaper
ADN (newspaper), a Spanish free daily newspaper
Associate Degree in Nursing, similar to Associate of Science in Nursing
Assistant Director of Nursing
Abbreviated dialing number
ADN, IATA airport code for Andes Airport in Andes, Antioquia, Colombia
ADN, National Rail code for Ardrossan Town railway station, United Kingdom
"Any Day Now", as abbreviated in text messaging
Ashley, Drew and Northern Railway, a defunct railroad in Arkansas
Making new kinds of rocket fuel every time I have a kid seems fun though.
What if you're brain dead? The arms and legs are still there, and the mechanism can still be kept running provided external help, but there's no I in there- nothing which actually perceives and thinks.
404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
Rubbers looking soft? Pharma on a downer? Announce half a billion of tax-free "donations", attract many billions more in taxpayer "partnerships", and watch those share prices surge and thrust rampantly upwards again.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Here's a secret: there is no God and you have no soul. There is no 'spark of life'. Life doesn't begin at conception. It began billions of years ago and is a continuous process. What makes us value our humanity is our sentience. Fetuses are not sentient. They are a piece of flesh until they gain sentience, at which time our laws consider them to be made of magic meat (sentient matter).
Science will soon allow humans to be created artificially by synthesizing DNA and proteins, cloning processes, etc. There will be no conception, and only a surrogate mother. Effectively, they will be humans made by a machine. But they will gain sentience, and thus they will be human. But until they gain sentience they are just flesh.
This argument is important because people use laws against abortion to oppress women. The rise of women in the workforce and the freedom to live their lives as they feel is due to the accessibility of abortion. Pro-choice is supporting women's rights. Pro-life is considering a woman's breeding capability to be more important than any other aspect of her life.
Hard to say. The optimistic thing to do would set up a trust to use the money I already have to acquire more than the rate of inflation and give away the excess in a wide variety of services in hopes of guaranteeing some good is done for a very long time.
Alternatively I would create businesses in Africa, akin to China and India, except be exceedingly good to the workers. Free education and healthcare for their families, local infrastructure and the like. This would stretch the investment further in hopes of gaining local momentum. If you win the hearts and minds of the populous then the corrupt people and warlords will have less power to spoil the project.
Funny that the best ideas for humanity I can come up with sound so similar to the ideas of people, as a Republican, I am supposed to hate.
Her solution for the problems of the world: kill humans. It's terrible
Actually, it's only scaled badly. A lot of the problems of the world would disappear if we killed about half the population. But that's not a very popular position to take, because nobody wants to be in that half.
But one thing this world does not need is more humans. As you must be one of those religious nutjobs for the position you hold, maybe you can go back and ask your $deity if the "go forth and multiply" sentence was maybe cut short because he can not possibly have intended unlimited growth. Being an all-knowing being and all, I'm sure basic math such as exponential growth didn't elude him (her, it, whatever).
So if we agree that the planet can not sustain an infinite number of human beings - and let's not argue the details such as whether the limit is 7, 8 or maybe 20 or 50 billion, let's just say that, say, 2000 billion certainly is too much, just so we agree that there is a "too much". If we agree on that, then we need a way to limit growth.
Since people do naturally multiply, i.e. there is a constant input, there is exactly ony way to reach an equilibrium: Balance input and output.
Output means death. So unless you propose something else that basically means killing people, I assume you are not willing to modulate the output function.
Which leaves modulating the input function as the only option. Which means either no sex or contraception.
I know many of the religious nutjobs prefer the "no sex" option, but seriously, most of you don't even manage that for yourselves, so how about not asking of others what you can't even do on your own? I'm sure there's probably a smart sentence just like that in your holy book. Throwing the first stone comes to mind.
I know this is /. and this is necessarily short and not well-sourced and could use some rhethorical polishing, but there in a nutshell you have the - to the best of my knowledge - unassailable argument for why you are either pro-contraception or you are a fucking moron who is a danger to world peace, human life and everything else that holds any value whatsoever.
Or an alien whose solution to the output equation is to harvest humans at regular intervals.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I do not normally respond to ACs, but on this occasion I will break my rule. Go away and learn some sociology of religion. There isn't exactly a shortage of publications on the subject. The Catholic Church itself, even, has done research into the area. I haven't got time to enlighten you, but until you get out of the basement and see what actually happens in the real world, you won't begin to appreciate why writing "Wrong." is not an argument.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I repeat: If you don't have arms and legs and you are in a coma, you continue being a human
That's right. You "CONTINUE" being human, if you ever were one.
If you don't have arms nor legs and you're in a coma, but you alse were never born, you're not a human.
Exactly the same as if you have no arms legs no consciousness and are a story character.
Being born is really kind of a big point in the "unBORN" argument, you know?
Africa needs to stop growing in population. They're outstripping our ability to give them food aid, and keep sending their excess population to our countries where we're stuck failing horribly at integrating them.
The sooner Africa gets a stable population, the better.
There are Jews in the world.
There are Buddhists.
There are Hindus and Mormons, and then
There are those that follow Mohammed, but
I've never been one of them.
I'm a Roman Catholic,
And have been since before I was born,
And the one thing they say about Catholics is:
They'll take you as soon as you're warm.
You don't have to be a six-footer.
You don't have to have a great brain.
You don't have to have any clothes on. You're
A Catholic the moment Dad came,
Because
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
> If (as is actually the case) the majority of individual Catholics ignore the Pope on a range of issues
That does not work like that. The Catholic Church is strictly organized as Lord Jesus modeled it on the roman imperial military. Being a catholic is being is communion with the Bishop of Rome, because he is the heir of Simon Peter, whom Jesus Christ granted the keys of Heaven. The Catholic Church teaches that the Pope is infallible when making a solemn ex-cathedra declaration in matters of faith and eternal morals. These statements make it very difficult to claim to be a catholic and neglige the Pope at the same time.
I think Mrs. Melinda Gates may be denied access to the eucharistic wafer if her pro-contraceptives case becomes a scandal. The Father (YHWH) very clearly ordered mankind in the Genesis to multiply and populate all the lands. The church cannot abandon that command and making up a scandal versus the Church's causes is taken very seriously by Catholicism. Even the divorced people cannot partake in the transubstantiated wafer, even though their separation is just a private scandal.
... very clearly ordered mankind in the Genesis to multiply and populate all the lands.
We've done that. He didn't say "multiply and over-populate all the lands". Can we please put the "contraception is evil" one to rest?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
See, it's this sort of thing that makes me wonder if Microsoft was worth it after all.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
kill the earth make more babies, that's the christian sollution....
let's kill other by gassing them to death with 9 billion people and 10 billion cows.. (can Christians please GO THE FUCK BACK TO FUCKING SCHOOL!)
I give tax money to the US government.
The US government kills american citizens without trial by drone strikes.
This doesn't mean I support killing american citizens with drone strikes.
Isn't possible she donated the money with a clause for them to to focus those funds on contraception, not abortion?
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Filter error: You can type more than that for your comment.
While many say that there are great famines in Africa, they still have the fastest growing population among the continents. The biggest problem of Africa is overpopulation.
"... $560 million... to contraception for women..."
That is A LOT of sex going on right there... A LOT!
More than Monica and Clinton could ever imagine...
The Catholic Church is strictly organized as Lord Jesus modeled it on the roman imperial military.
Jesus didn't model it on the Roman imperial military. Neither did Peter. Paul might have, since he's the one who actually created the Catholic Church. But if so, it's not a useful structure in today's world.
The founder of eugenics, Sir Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, formulated the idea that the protection afforded by civil society had prevented the kind of natural selection occurring in Darwin's Origin of Species from happening in humans, thus perpetuating the existence of weak and feeble-minded people who would have been unable to survive in the state of nature.
I wonder if the people that agree with this have ever questioned why we should pay the biological cost for a human that can survive in the wild, when the majority of people will never have to survive in the wild. Those big muscles and aggressive tendencies don't come free.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
There isn't one major problem the world has that will not be helped by a stabilized global population. Kudos to the Gates family!
You appear to be confusing contraception with abortion. While abortion is an issue still much debated, the ethics of contraception are more-or-less settled now for everyone except the Catholic church and a few other religious groups, and even they don't equate it with murder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kJHQpvgB8
Sing with me boys and girls!
Bill: "But, Honey, we already have three kids and we can afford as many more as we'd like."
Melinda: "It's the masses. They're clogging up the roads."
Bill: "But, we have helicopters."
Melinda: "They're breeding like locusts. Soon, there will be nothing left of the planet."
Bill: "Then, we'll have it all to ourselves."
Melinda: "No one will be left to by Microsoft products."
Bill: "Here's 590 Million."
*** Don't be dull.***
Question: How many Georgetown Law School students would this $560M cover?
Answer: At an estimated $3,000/year it would cover about 187,000 Georgetown Law School students.
Ken
There are thousands of people doing everything from volunteering to help at the local soup kitchen to working for change on massive human rights abuses to defending the wrongly accused.
Charity is a field with far more available in the way of hands than in the way of money. Could it use more hands? Sure. But there still isn't enough money to fund all the people that want to do the work, even at the low salaries most people who work in the related fields accept because that's what they want to be doing.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
She and her husband continue to show the best side of capitalism.
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/07/the_gates_foundations_leverage.html
Essentially, the foundation makes donations to organizations both it and the Gates personally own stock in or have other investments with.
If you think that the B&MGF makes donations purely out of the goodness of their hearts, then you a)are naive and b)have no idea what 95% of most celebrity/rich-people foundations are for. Celebrities do it for personal marketing and tax shelters. Sports players do it to employ relatives and tax shelters. Rich people do it for social status and essentially write off the cost of their parties, aka tax shelters.
Tax-writeoffs for charities need to end - you shouldn't get to short the government on infrastructure and stuff that benefits everyone, just to benefit your personal cause. Why should a bunch of rich white asshole golf players get to make a donation to a charity in their hometown where the median income is the highest in the entire state, which goes to benefit waterfowl...and then not pay that money to their state, which paves their roads and pays for the homeless shelters and healthcare services for the poor?
Please help metamoderate.
Bill Gates can give away 99% of his wealth, and he'd still be richer than Mitt Romney. So, yes, he's a good example among the filthy rich. He can afford to be more charitable than ordinary people who'd miss out on simple middle-class essentials like housing or education if they so much as part with half their money.
The Roman Catholic Church (as distinct from the early Church) came into being because of the process of incorporation by which the Roman Empire "adopted" foreign religions when it seemed expedient. In essence, the old Pagan system of the Flamen Dialis and the Vestals and all the rest of it re-emerged as Imperial Christianity, with the Vestals as nuns and the Flamen Dialis as the Pope. Celibacy was a takeover of the priesthood of Cybele. In many places the process was far from complete, as anyone who has ever visited a few Dark Ages sites knows. Although it is a very old book now, it is all darkly alluded to in The Golden Bough, a 19th century work of religious anthropology by James Frazer.
Anyone who remembers Vatican II will remember it as the high water of the Church facing up to its past and trying to identify a role for the future. Unfortunately the *homo erectus wing of the Vatican got control again.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Melinda Gates's goals are unethical by any standards. She wants to enable women to lie to their husbands, pretending to exchange fertility for money, when they are just unproductive parasites. Population control is more a side-effect of her evil plan to empower women through fraud.
At some point along the road, Bill realized that population control is a *Good Idea* and that overpopulation is scary and must be stopped at Any Cost!
Problem is that included in the "Any Cost" category is the willful destruction of our food supply by introducing Monsanto-style GMOs into the environment, by controlling who is able to grow food, and what sort of food that will be, and who gets to live and who doesn't.
Bill Gates is not an idiot. He knows that this is a devastating tactic which will result in mass-starvation and millions of sick and poorly nourished people, (all of which will be under elitist control).
Promoting on one hand GMOs while investing in a seed vault with the other indicates their awareness.
Planned Parenthood, with which he and his wife have long and old ties, began as a deliberate Eugenics program.
Not all beauty is so immediately apparent, and in fact I've come to believe that superficial beauty tends to actively interfere with the more durable kinds (not always, but often). Even on the purely physical level models tend to be more sexually titillating than beautiful.
Plus the criteria for "cohort" and "mother of my children" are both quite a bit more demanding than for "playmate", especially when you're filthy rich and "won't off me in my sleep and run off with my fortune and the pool boy" is a real consideration.
Besides, what sort of insecure third-rate asshole marries a model attracted to his money? Even a second-rate asshole knows you take them as a mistress, after all those looks won't last and trading up is much more expensive when you've married them.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
No, it's just a collection of cells belonging to the body of the woman it is contained within.
Even if I subscribed to your idiotic belief that it has human status before birth, so what? What is your point? Living beings die and kill all of the time since the beginning of life. Tell me, Mr. Morals, do you eat meat, wear leather/fur, swat flies, step on ants, drive a car, purchase products that cause pollution during manufacture? If so, then you're a killer, a hypocrite and you need to shut the fuck up.
You sound just like a little kid.
I support killing humans. Namely worthless, sky daddy worshiping morons like you.
They just want less of us 'useless eaters' around. No philanthropy here, just pure self-serving business-as-usual.
Aid to Africa is only about $10 per person. Aid to Israel is about $400 per person - and that doesn't include the $700 per person for Gaza and the West Bank, which under international law Israel is responsible for as an occupying state. So our taxes pay $400 every year to every Israeli, and $700 to every person in their Occupied Territories. Yay!
Building schools so the worlds poor can learn to spell better than your average Anonymous Coward on slashdot is certainly a good example of charity. Giving food less so, except in exceptional circumstances like immediately after a natural (or man-made) disaster, as it is extremely difficult for local farmers to compete with free, so that type of charity just makes poverty worse in the long term. Distributing contraception is better overall for an impoverished community than distributing food.
Yes, and Planned Parenthood and other such organizations do in fact have to deal with some justifiable hard feelings over some of the early excesses - involuntary, uninformed sterilization and the like. There is a very real problem though - we have the poorest of the poor breeding like rabbits and being unable to provide adequate care for all their children. Sure, we could theoretically send all the world's excess food to them, but that wouldn't actually solve the problem - remove the environmental constraints on an organism and it's population will explode until new constraints are encountered.
The basic fact though is that the problem is pretty easy to get under control - just give women access to and education about the same reproductive choices as their developed-world counterparts, and the the problem solves itself. Believe it or not most people in the world don't want to have more children than they can afford to raise well, but without contraceptives there's not really any other option. And no, abstinence isn't a realistic option - no normal person is going to refrain from sleeping with their spouse for years at a time, and other strategies fail to drive the pregnancy rate below about 50% per year.
And once people have been given reproductive control then everything else starts falling into place - the income which was barely feeding four or five children at near-starvation levels can easily feed two children well, with enough left over to keep their parents healthy and strong, further improving their productivity and wealth-generating potential. And with even a tiny a surplus of wealth they can then begin to invest in further improvements, beginning an upward spiral. And with the next generation things look even rosier, as better nutrition as a child equals less disease and greater intelligence in adulthood, so they will be better-able to help themselves than their parents were.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
sadly, the human race is one disease we'll never wipe out in our lifetime
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
There were people who actually sat in chairs and listened to this person give a speech. Then they all went and wrote stories about this and published them. Then slashdot noticed it. Then I commented on it. Wow what a historical event.
Hope you've never had a wet dream, 'cause that makes you a human-killer, too.
The Catholic Church teaches that the Pope is infallible
The Doctrine of Papal Infallibility was only introduced in the First Vatican Council, a.k.a. Vatican I, just before the start of the 20th Century. Prior to that the pope was only a man, although a very powerful one. Prior to that there frequently were slime like the Borgia popes in charge, and most sane people would resist the notion that they were infallible mouthpieces of god.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
It's not charity, it's a tax-shelter with additional benefits of limiting foreign governments from setting up their own generic medicine factories or establishing a framework for sustainable development free of western poison-pill capitalism.
There isn't a rubber thick or strong enough to make Melinda want to funnel Billy boy's hog! It makes $560M look like a bargain.
The pope has the Dominicans, 'God's Soldiers', who had a very important role in depopulating the Americas (allowing the successful colonization by Europeans). They were originally created to fight the Albigensian Heresy, which wanted to return the Catholic church to its simple roots. When confronted with a town in southern France that was half Catholics and half heretics Saint Dominic was asked how to separate the two groups. His reply was, "Kill them all. God will know his own."
I don't think even Blackwater can compete with that.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The Catholic Church is strictly organized as Lord Jesus modeled it on the roman imperial military.
Jesus didn't model it on the Roman imperial military. Neither did Peter. Paul might have, since he's the one who actually created the Catholic Church. But if so, it's not a useful structure in today's world.
More like Constantine the Great. Before then, individual "bishops" (claiming lineage from the apostles) acted like mini-popes, interpreting religious texts and and exerting control over a town, municipality, or region. It's a very muddy period of Christian history that we don't know a whole lot about, but it wasn't centrally planned and orchestrated like a military.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
I doubt it. I think you all got trolled. But, it's hard to say for sure.
The use of oral contraceptives changes the choices the female makes in a mate. Instead of selecting a mate with a different immune system to pass on to their progeny (two immune systems), the female picks a male whose immune system is similar to hers, just as she would do if she were pregnant, which the pill mimics to her body. If this behavior were the norm, our species would not be able to evolve to counter the pathogens which are evolving to overwhelm our immune system. To counter this, nature makes a small percentage of the progeny of such misbehavior effectively sterile, i.e. homosexual, protecting our species.
PROFIT
As a contraceptive, a picture of Gates above the bed should do the trick.
Africa needs to stop growing in population. They're outstripping our ability to give them food aid, and keep sending their excess population to our countries where we're stuck failing horribly at integrating them.
Why do you call that "our" failure? I don't see it as the West's job to integrate them. You might as well talk about my "failure" to divert the moon from its orbit and send it into outer space. It isn't my job to do that, and what is the point anyway?
It is Africa's failure. Many if not most of those coming to the west are adventurers getting away from some kind of trouble at home, having got a girl pregnant being high on the list, and are looking for new fields.
I pledge $560 Million to stop Melinda Gates.
Look I'm not against rich people helping poor people.
I'm just still waiting to see it happen.
Doesn't everyone in the world agree with it, it's clearly almost certainly true? (I can leverage the True Scotsman falacy on the word "civil" to make it truer.)
I, proud member of the set of everone, certainly have questioned why. I'm not entirely sure there is that great a cost. Division of labour is important for efficiency. The most strenuous work I do each day is pressing whichever keyboard has the toughest spring. I would like to be able to have someone with big muscles fit my kitchen units, and rebuild our outer wall, thank you. The damage from the aggressive tendencies is paper cuts compared to the damage caused by greed (and under that I include things like corruption, etc.) from by-some-measures intelligent businessmen.
(And for those Brits who remember TMWRNJ, yes I realise I'm playing the Richard Herring "who is the real sick man in this so called society?" role somewhat.)
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
So? just about every sane organisation in the world supports the abortion movement where appropriate, including the WHO. regardless this money is targetted at contraception not abortion.
They also support contraception.
If you think contraception is "killing humans", then you must also think abstinence is too. Which raises the question: why were you wasting your time typing that post when you should have been out there trying to get every nubile woman pregnant?
Why is birth control evil? I'm not joking, I honestly don't understand what make it "the lesser of two evils".
I'd prefer she spend the money of getting approval for RISUG in the US and proliferating it in other countries instead of the conventional commercial stuff.
When you have a tail or gills it is quite hard to describe a featous as human. Not to say they are not. They will grow into one. Gills diapear and the tail mostly does too.
I would not like to claim that I know when some cells become a living being but...
Somehow, I sense this has racist overtones.
> Her solution for the problems of the world: kill humans. It's terrible, because there is people asking job and food...
Let's humans = less unemployment and more food. So, by preventing pregnancies, she's solving the exact problems you talk about.
i'll bet she bought stock in rubber companies
http://www.factsformelindagates.com/
1. Even if true (And it was published in the Lancet, so I'm willing to give it some respect), this can be countered by counter-HIV campaigns - and there are a number of promising avenues of research being taken in the field too, so in twenty years HIV may no longer be the danger it is today.
2. They changed their stated policies in a direction you should favor... and so opponents simply declared it had to be a lie?
3. Indeed, Planned Parenthood was founded by a eugenics supporter and racist. But look at the time period: Everyone was a racist! Kelloggs, the breakfast company, was founded by a public health campaigner with a strange obsession with stopping people masturbating, but that doesn't stop the company today plying children with obesity-causing sugary cereals. Companies do tend to change over the course of a century or so, and do not take the views of their founders as immutable holy writ.
4. The WHO standards for carcinogens are so lax, they also consider coffee to be one.
5. Indeed there are. There are also documented health problems caused by not having contraceptives: Specifically, pregnancy. Rather a dangerous health problem in the developing world, and their high birth rate is a major factor contributing to the rampant poverty of the region too.
6. And this is important why? Now you are just taring all your opponents with the same brush: China is oppressive in use of population control, Gates supports contraception access, therefore Gates supports oppressive dictatorships? Besides, if anything, increased access to contraception should eliminate the forced abortion: It's just much easier to prevent pregnancy before the fact.
7. So one of the supporters of the Gates foundation also supported a poorly-administered sterilisation campaign by the Indian government. That is a rather tenuous chain. Besides, if India is that desperate, that just shows how much increased access to contraception is needed.
8. And they are also associated with a lower risk of ovarian and uterine cancer. Not to mention, once again, pregnancy.
9. Wouldn't surprise me, but note the 'services' part. Planned Parenthood is if the view that abortion needs to always remain available as an option, but an option they'd rather people didn't have to choose. Why do you think they promote contraception so heavily?
10. At this stage, still mostly speculative research... and, for the third time, you appear to be neglecting the serious health risks of pregnancy. Espicially in the developing world, where access to healthcare is minimal and women are expected to start breeding almost the moment they reach fertile age.
i always see this. everyone thinks bill gates is a good guy because he donates, well
they seem to forget, everyone else would donate too if they had over 60 billion dollars.
hes buying his way into a imagine for the public, and everyone falls for it
this overcrowded smoked out dump of a world can use all the contraception it can get. too bad it's the ones least likely to adapt that keep breeding the most. Something tells me this is bound for disaster in the long run anyway
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?