Gates Donates $500M+ To Fight Malaria and Other Diseases

jones_supa writes In the 63rd annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in New Orleans, Bill Gates announced that he will donate over $500 million to fight malaria and other infectious diseases in the developing world. Gates described the Ebola epidemic that has killed more than 4,900 people in West Africa since the beginning of the year as a "critical moment in the history of global health", and said it underscores the need for stronger efforts to stay ahead of disease threats such as drug-resistant malaria and dengue fever. The more than $500 million announced Sunday includes over $150 million to the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative to advance development of next-generation malaria vaccines, and $29 million to the Clinton Health Access Initiative to support malaria elimination efforts in Southern Africa and the Greater Mekong Sub-region of Southeast Asia.

Comments

How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[NotDrWho]

How many posts until someone finds a way to still hate on him, despite the fact that he's done more for the poor than all of us put together?

How many Apple fans will make fun of him, in spite of the fact that Steve Jobs never gave a dime to charity?

How many of you will take a potshot at Microsoft, even though Bill hasn't worked there in years?

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[peon_a-z,A-Z,0-9$_ !]

Your comment posted at 4:52PM Eastern Time, followed by such a "hater" comment at 4:53PM Eastern time below.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[Savage-Rabbit]

How many Apple fans will make fun of him, in spite of the fact that Steve Jobs never gave a dime to charity?

Did he? Even if he wasn't as generous as Bill, it seems you are wrong:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Now... how many Apple haters will try to use this to take cheap shots at Apple and to crap on the memory of Steve Jobs?

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[loganljb]

Well, now that you've ruined the entire thread, what's the point in posting? You killed every point a loyal Slashdotter should cover. Nicely done, sir.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment paints all people with your brush...

Many people with a lot less money do much more than Bill Gates to help the poor, every day in communities all
over the earth...people who give their time and materials without a thought of recompense or worrying
about honor and glory, these people do not make announcements, or have publicity teams, they make a real
personal difference in other's lives.

Gates and his ilk may give money, it may even do some good, but it is the day to day work
of the unsung hero that actually makes a difference.

You may do nothing but I know of many who care every day. Instead of worrying about
Bill's reputation, and complaining about his detractors, maybe you should try helping someone else.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[nine-times]

How many posts until someone finds a way to still hate on him, despite the fact that he's done more for the poor than all of us put together?

I don't know the man personally, but I don't see why doing something good should remove anyone's right to have some level of "hate" for the man. Setting aside the particular example of Mr. Gates, does it seem fair to say,"[Person X] has done a good thing. Therefore, nobody can dislike him or object to anything else he does!"

How many Apple fans will make fun of him, in spite of the fact that Steve Jobs never gave a dime to charity?

I'm not sure why the those things should be connected, or how you can be so sure that Jobs "never gave a dime to charity". There's been at least a couple reports that Jobs did give money to charity, but didn't publicize the fact because he was very private.

But again, what does that have to do with anything? I'm sure there fans of Apple who are not huge fans of Jobs personally. I'm sure there are people who admire Jobs who also admire Gates. I'm sure there are Windows users who hate Gates.

How many of you will take a potshot at Microsoft, even though Bill hasn't worked there in years?

Ok, I'll do this. I'm annoyed at Microsoft because they still haven't included support for non-Microsoft file-systems. Microsoft sucks!

Now what? Have I offended you by criticizing the company connected to The Great Gates?

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure that he has done "more to help the poor than all of us put together" - one might argue that our particular choice of global economy (often called "capitalism", but it's certainly not that) is what creates and maintains an under-developed world, and he's a staunch upholder of the current system. In the long term, it is not clear what contributions will be of greatest benefit, so it's really stupid to rank the living or the recently deceased - though men love to.

OTOH, I believe that he is acting with the best of non-selfish intentions, that his work is having a positive effect, and that what he is doing now is no longer causing harm, so I admire him, even though I don't think his approach is anywhere near optimal.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[arbiter1]

wow 10's of millions, from a guy that made billions off over priced devices. Pretty freaking cheap of them to only donate that pocket change.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[MozeeToby]

Setting aside the particular example of Mr. Gates, does it seem fair to say,"[Person X] has done a good thing. Therefore, nobody can dislike him or object to anything else he does!"

No, but if there's a conversation going on about said "good thing" it is a little unreasonable for people to jump in the middle of it to shout "Yeah but he did this bad thing 15 years ago!". Yes, Gates did bad stuff. There are plenty of articles on Slashdot about the bad stuff that he's done (and that his legacy continues to contribute to). This isn't one of those articles. Couldn't we just take a minute to say "Mr Gates is doing something worthwhile with his money".

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[Savage-Rabbit]

wow 10's of millions, from a guy that made billions off over priced devices. Pretty freaking cheap of them to only donate that pocket change.

Just because you guys hate Apple products it doesn't mean that you get to crap all over the some person's memory without being called out for being petty hateful trolls you are. I'll gladly burn karma to do that. He said, and I quote: "Steve Jobs never gave a dime to charity" which is demonstrably wrong no matter how you try to spin it. secondly how lazy do you have to be to not do a simple google search before making a stupid statement like that? ... and then he gets modded +5 insightful to boot... slashdot at it's finest!

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[f3dup]

All he does is pushing corporate interests with the money he "earned" exploiting a monopoly. Hard to find that appealing. Not sure it actually helps the poor either.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[rtb61]

You can not buy contribution to human society. You can not steal the real efforts of others just by temporarily subsidising their life whilst they do the actually real work. The doctors, scientists and other health practitioners who studied and devoted their life to those causes are the ones doing the real work. By temporarily subsidising their life you under no circumstance take any ownership of their efforts and it is really pretty slimy egoistic to attempt to do so.

You have all those pigopolist based copyright laws to protect the works of authors but apparently the credit for all the direct efforts of all those hundreds of millions who directly support human society can be simply bought and claimed by the rich and greedy and this is fully supported by those who totally oppose the sharing of their work, the copy rightists.

Lets limit those donations to the reality of what they are, Bill Gates is just 'temporarily' supporting the lives of the people who will actually do the work of curing those diseases and saving humanity, he is not actually bloody doing it. When the donation dries up and before it started, it was properly government funded over the long term by EVIL TAXES (snark) or it should have been.

It is just plain nucking futs to claim "he's done more for the poor than all of us put together". Check the numbers, just the simple efforts of the Linux and FOSS community has done more by 'SAVING' money so governments could spend software licensing fees on others things, rather than just making a few people rich.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[the gnat]

Reduce the rate of people, and especially children, dying and there will just be a lot more dying a generation down the road when they exceed what they can feed/house/employ/etc. again.

Actually, this has it almost exactly backwards: reducing infant mortality has been a major cause of stabilizing population growth. Increasing prosperity also helps a great deal, and there's a strong argument that malaria is a huge economic drain.

If you are messing with a complex system and do not understand its inner workings, you are on the road to hell. Or maybe he just does not care.

Or maybe he doesn't share your misanthropic view of humanity, and your insistence that "those people" need to stop breeding before they can enjoy the comforts of Western civilization?

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[the gnat]

All he does is pushing corporate interests

What corporate interests are involved in curing malaria? The entire reason that Bill Gates is subsidizing these efforts is that there isn't much financial incentive for Big Pharma to develop drugs for diseases that primarily afflict people in Third World nations.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[hawkfish]

I think there are serious questions about accountability, undue influence and private priorities that can be raised without touching how he made his money:

Research by Devi Sridhar at Oxford University warns that philanthropic interventions are ‘radically skewing public health programmes towards issues of the greatest concern to wealthy donors’. ‘Issues,’ she writes, ‘which are not necessarily top priority for people in the recipient country.’

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[jrumney]

Richard Branson once pledged $3 billion of the profit from his airlines over ten years towards efforts to combat climate change. If his airlines didn't make that much profit, he said he would take it from other parts of his business empire. When someone checked up 8 years in, he'd managed to give $200-300k over those 8 years, and the forecast for the next 2 years was not looking good. Two things to take away from this - 1) that Steve Jobs' 10s of millions is not bad compared to his peers, and 2) that so far Bill Gates has said he will give $500M for this particular cause, but what really matters if you're going to compare this with Steve Jobs' donations is what he actually gives out in the end. (not that I think Gates has as bad a record as Branson).

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[jrumney]

All he does is pushing corporate interests with the money he "earned" exploiting a monopoly.

Before he got into health issues, I'd agree - mostly he invested in pushing developing countries towards using Windows PCs for education. But more recently he's investing a lot into healthcare issues that are important to the developing world, and without his money, unprofitable for the drug cartels to research.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[cavreader]

He "earned" his monopoly because all his potential competitors at the time damn near sold every price of technology and accompanying rights to MS. These were business decisions that benefited both parties. When MS gained it's monopoly it was investigated and penalties, both monetary and operational, were implemented. And who really cares what you think if you can say the Gates Foundation almost 2 Billion dollars worth of world healthcare investments have not helped anyone.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[Truth_Quark]

How many posts until someone finds a way to still hate on him, despite the fact that he's done more for the poor than all of us put together?

Are you counting creating poor as doing something for the poor?

His management of the Gates Foundation is not great for the poor. He is maintaining the unaffordable costs of medicines.

Doctors Without Borders criticizes Gates-backed global vaccine strategy

If his intention is to spend his ill-gotten gains to the benefit of humanity, he should put a humanitarian at the helm. Gates was very good at bullying governments and businesses, and illegal attacks on competition to drain the profits from businesses all over the world, but he's no manager.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[nine-times]

Gates is doing some good things with some of his money. You can take a minute to point that out, and we're free to use that minute however we see fit. I'm not looking to get into an argument about whether Gates is wonderful or terrible, but sorry, no, you don't get to tell all the rest of us that we have to worship the guy. Because ultimately we get to make up our own minds, and the fact that he has given some portion of his enormous money to charity does not make him immune to criticism.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Bill Gates is a robber baron who made his money through despicable behavior and monopolism. Now he's buying his way to respectability and people like you are fooled by it. Just look at how you view the names of cruel tyrants like Rockefeller and Carnegie.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[nine-times]

it is a little unreasonable for people to jump in the middle of it to shout "Yeah but he did this bad thing 15 years ago!"

And I want to comment on this, also, and say that I don't think it's unreasonable. If you're going to praise a man for donating millions of dollars to charitable causes, then it's fair game to criticize him for how he got those millions of dollars.

Now we could argue about whether "that bad thing" he did 15 years ago was actually bad. I don't want to argue about that right now. But if without having done "that bad thing" he wouldn't have the millions of dollars to give to charity, then it's relevant to the conversation.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[N_Piper]

How about pushing price cut Apple II's into schools when nobody consider computers a necessity?

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay. Now ask yourself how he made that money he is now deciding how to redistribute. Did he make it by making the world a slightly better place or a slightly worse place?

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[Undead Waffle]

How many posts until someone finds a way to still hate on him, despite the fact that he's done more for the poor than all of us put together?

How many Apple fans will make fun of him, in spite of the fact that Steve Jobs never gave a dime to charity?

How many of you will take a potshot at Microsoft, even though Bill hasn't worked there in years?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014, taking on a new post as technology advisor to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.

Board member of: Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway

He still works at Microsoft and the rest of your post is absurd. I believe the correct response here is to mark this post "troll".

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[dryeo]

He's giving away 1% of his unimaginable fortune, probably less when tax breaks and other business is taken into account. he could give away 90% and still be unimaginably rich. Compare to the homeless guy splitting his last meal with another.
Percentage wise he has done a lot less then some people I've known, he was just lucky to be born with a golden spoon in his mouth, had amazing luck and timing and took full advantage of that. It's good that since meeting Melinda he has become more generous but considering what he could do he's doing the equivalent of many of us giving a grand or 2 to charity to get a write off.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[davester666]

What could be wrong with Bill donating $500M dollars worth of Windows 8.1 Pro licenses and Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions to fight malaria and other diseases?

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[Dutch Gun]

Gates is now pretty much a full time philanthropist. When he says he's going to give $500 million, I think we can take him at his word.

Anyhow, good for you Mr. Gates. I think this is money well directed, and hopefully will be well spent. For all of our first world problems and complaints about our health care system, we sometimes forget that there are still many millions of people suffering and dying because they don't have the advantages we have.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[tehcyder]

I always thought the parking in disabled areas thing was a more damning indication of his character.

I really don't give a crap about how much/little someone donates to charities, they shouldn't need to exist as alternatives to proper government spending in the first place. (Yeah, blah blah, socialism I know).

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[tehcyder]

Everyone has different gifts: if you're a billionaire, the ability to give away 100s of millions of dollars is your main one.

Money may not solve all problems, but it makes most of them a lot easier.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[tehcyder]

But if without having done "that bad thing" he wouldn't have the millions of dollars to give to charity, then it's relevant to the conversation.

The problem is the disproportionate view taken of the "badness" of Microsoft on sites like slashdot. He produced an inferior Operating System and for a while prevented Linux from taking off.

He didn't massacre babies for fun.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[tehcyder]

Even his "charity" can be bloody and harmful. The guy put $50M for a campaign to promote genital mutilation.

Source?

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[nine-times]

So now you're turning this into an argument about the particulars of the "bad things" he did. I'd like to point out that, in general, the people who are bringing this up are pro-Gates people saying (and I'm going to exaggerate to make a point), "Gee, look at how wonderful and amazing a person Bill Gates is. He's perfect and wonderful and lovely, and is the ideal human being. Not fair criticizing him! No fair saying anything bad or bringing up his past! We shouldn't even talk about what he did int he past because it's irrelevant, and also what he did in the past was not actually bad."

Not that last part at the end there is important. I don't really want to get into an argument about what he did in the past, but my point is that you are opening that door, which is important and meaningful for this other conversation we're having-- whether it's fair to bring up his past.

The thing is, in bringing up his past, you're belying the idea that his past has nothing to do with his present good deeds. You're presenting an implied argument that his present good deeds make him so immune to criticism-- not just to the point where we're supposed to ignore his past bad deeds, but so much so that we're supposed to revise history and pretend his bad deeds were actually totally fine. Any possible sins in his past can be summed up, "He only failed to be perfect, which is hardly a sin, and he's perfect now, so let's overlook that."

Right about now, you think I'm going too far and reading too far into things, but you misunderstand. I'm not saying this is your actual logical position on the argument, but I'm trying to verbalize the emotional/social position that's implied in your pseudo-logical argument. You're saying, "All he did was produce an inferior operating system," when, unless you're completely ignorant to the historical facts, that's not 'all he did'. But from your standpoint, we should all whitewash his past in order to sanctify him now.

And frankly, I think that's what he intends.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[KiloByte]

LMGTFY: "bill gates genital mutilation"

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[red crab]

How many of you will take a potshot at Microsoft, even though Bill hasn't worked there in years?

Let me try. Apple doesn't yet depend on government contracts in developing nations.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[Stuarticus]

Well, "give away" is a very interesting description, maybe you should look into the PATH malaria initiative and their policies on Private Sector collaboration, what will this Malaria vaccine be worth if it is discovered and who will profit from it?

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[General Wesc]

To be clear, by "genital mutilation" he means "male circumcision", which is incomparably less bad than female circumcision, which is what the term is generally reserved for.

Male circumcision = cutting off the foreskin, which is not a procedure I'm a fan of, but is still performed on the majority of Americans boys, and is fairly harmless, in addition to potentially reducing risk of AIDS. Female circumcision = cutting off the clitoris, and has been condemned as a human rights violation by the UN.

It may not be a strictly false statement on his part, but it's obviously a shady, misleading way of saying it. Now if Bill Gates had funded the lopping off of kid's penises, it would be an apt description, and analogous to female circumcision.

Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this?

[KiloByte]

The only shady thing here are claims by the pro-mutilation party that it somehow reduces the risk of transmitting AIDS. The only study that shown this result was Camp Orange, and it: 1. was ran by a group funded by MGM proponents, 2. has multiple claims of scientific misconduct pointed against it, 3. contradicts actually peer-reviewed studies, 4. included the time of recovery from the surgery within study time (a man with a penis in pain isn't exactly going to conduct in sexual contact), 5. gave sexual education to only one of the groups (during the surgery), and 6. destroyed the control group, making any further study on those people impossible.

It's all in the percentages ...

[Anonymous Coward]

First I think it's commendable that he is giving back. Fortune has been kind to him and it is only appropriate that he reciprocate in some small way.

By small I might point out that Forbes lists his net worth as $76B for 2014(1). So that $500M donation is roughly equivalent to 0.7% of his net worth. To put his donation in a more realistic perspective it is equivalent to someone of median net worth(2) donating $310. Hardly worth lionizing the man over IMHO.

1. http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mel45hdjl/1-bill-gates/
2. http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/11/news/economy/middle-class-wealth/

Re:It's all in the percentages ...

[gweihir]

Well, he is trying to buy himself a good public image on the cheap.

Re:It's all in the percentages ...

[mythosaz]

You're right. It is percentages.

Maybe the 40 billion he's given in trust to the B&MGF should be in your totals.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org...

Gates has pretty much decided to give all of his money to the foundation by (and in the 10 years following) his and Melissa's death.

Oh, and the other richest guy in the world is on board with matching contributions in the form of BH stock.

Re:It's all in the percentages ...

[mythosaz]

Cool story bro.

The B&MG foundation has already disbursed over 30BN, the majority of which came from Bill.

Re:It's all in the percentages ...

[mythosaz]

It only runs in the black until Bill and Melissa (and Warren) finish dumping their live savings into it.

You could have easily given your kids 60BN by any number of creative means that didn't include giving 5BN/year away on things like malaria.

Re:It's all in the percentages ...

[drinkypoo]

It only runs in the black until Bill and Melissa (and Warren) finish dumping their live savings into it.

False. The Gates foundation makes investments for profit, and operates on the return. It's a place for Bill to park his money. There's ways to get the money back out again. One way is by heavily investing in Big Pharma, then using your charity to funnel billions to them.

Re:It's all in the percentages ...

[tehcyder]

By small I might point out that Forbes lists his net worth as $76B for 2014(1). So that $500M donation is roughly equivalent to 0.7% of his net worth.

Yes, 0.7% of his total net worth, not 0.7% of his salary/earnings in one year.

Big difference.

Re:It's all in the percentages ...

[tehcyder]

The Gates foundation makes investments for profit, and operates on the return

Because, of course, every other charity in the world is run so that it makes a loss on its investments each year.

It's practically a badge of honour to show in your annual accounts that you squandered the maximum amount of donations each year on poorly conceived, hopeless investments.

Re:It's all in the percentages ...

[drinkypoo]

It's practically a badge of honour to show in your annual accounts that you squandered the maximum amount of donations each year on poorly conceived, hopeless investments.

I'd like to see that the money was spent effectively, in a way not designed primarily to promote profit and control.

Re:He should give it back ...

[mean pun]

... he took so much, he is having trouble spending it all before he dies.

Uhm, isn't this what he's doing?

Re:500 million of Microsoft WIndows licenses

[gweihir]

In fact he has utterly wasted so many hours of so many people that calling him a "mass murderer" becomes reasonable.

The World is Overcrowded

[johnsie]

While I don't doubt the intentions of Bill and others who want to try and people alive, sadly this is natures way of making sure the world doesn't get overcrowded. It's a sad fact but people NEED to die.

Re:The World is Overcrowded

[the gnat]

this is natures way of making sure the world doesn't get overcrowded. It's a sad fact but people NEED to die.

Then how do you explain the fact that some of the countries with the highest life expectancies, and almost no severe endemic diseases, are also the ones with the slowest-growing (or even shrinking) populations?

Re:The World is Overcrowded

[stealth_finger]

this is natures way of making sure the world doesn't get overcrowded. It's a sad fact but people NEED to die.

Then how do you explain the fact that some of the countries with the highest life expectancies, and almost no severe endemic diseases, are also the ones with the slowest-growing (or even shrinking) populations?

Because they don't spit out 5-10 kids each?

Re:The World is Overcrowded

[BetterThanCaesar]

this is natures way of making sure the world doesn't get overcrowded. It's a sad fact but people NEED to die.

Then how do you explain the fact that some of the countries with the highest life expectancies, and almost no severe endemic diseases, are also the ones with the slowest-growing (or even shrinking) populations?

Because they don't spit out 5-10 kids each?

Because their 1.9 children will survive long enough to support them after retirement, and since life is not just a struggle to survive, they are productive enough that they can afford to support their parents.

Re:The World is Overcrowded

[jittles]

While I don't doubt the intentions of Bill and others who want to try and people alive, sadly this is natures way of making sure the world doesn't get overcrowded. It's a sad fact but people NEED to die.

Are you volunteering to be the first to die for your cause? Or did you just mean that other people sh

Re:He should give it back ...

[CaptainDork]

According to TFS.

Re:The Real Agenda of The Gates Foundation ..

[AmigaUser8]

Let us look at two numbers:

Add up all the money donated by Gates Add up all of the money individually donated by all Linux supportes and contributors.

Enough said!

Thank you Mister Gates for working to improve the lives of millions of people. Thank you Linux "community" for more pointless debates on DMARC vs. DKIM and the merits of systemd.

To improve the lives of most Linux users, Gates should donate to basement air quality improvement efforts!

How is this news?

[N_Piper]

It's the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation, it's been around since 2000, He and or his Wife regularly pump money into it.
This is less news than Tim Cook being gay.
I'm starting to think those news stories about smart phones and Google running everyone's long term memories may not be such BS after all...

Re:500 million of Microsoft WIndows licenses

[tehcyder]

In fact he has utterly wasted so many hours of so many people that calling him a "mass murderer" becomes reasonable.

Talk about a fucking First World Problem.

Ooh, I had to reboot my computer to complete the installation of a piece of software. Literally Hitler.

Techrights Critique Section

[jbrax]

Thanks! That was an interesting article to read! Techrights has also collected some Gates Foundation Critique.

Re:Thanks Windows :D

[red crab]

Yes of course. And the developing nations need to oblige by buying Microsoft products.