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

Posted by samzenpus on from the end-the-suffering dept.

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.

18 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by NotDrWho · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    1. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by peon_a-z,A-Z,0-9$_+! · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    2. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by Savage-Rabbit · · Score: 3, Informative

      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?

      --
      Only to idiots, are orders laws.
      -- Henning von Tresckow
    3. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by loganljb · · Score: 2

      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.

    4. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by nine-times · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?

    5. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      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.

    6. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by arbiter1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    7. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by MozeeToby · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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".

    8. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by Savage-Rabbit · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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!

      --
      Only to idiots, are orders laws.
      -- Henning von Tresckow
    9. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by the+gnat · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    10. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by hawkfish · · Score: 2

      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.’

      --
      You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
    11. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    12. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by tehcyder · · Score: 2
      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.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    13. Re:How long will it take slashdot to spin this? by nine-times · · Score: 2

      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.

  2. The World is Overcrowded by johnsie · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:The World is Overcrowded by the+gnat · · Score: 2

      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?

  3. Re:It's all in the percentages ... by mythosaz · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  4. How is this news? by N_Piper · · Score: 2

    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...