I was kind of surprised about your comment that Karl Rove didn't mastermind George W's election and re-election campaigns...
I apologize for being unclear. I was pointing out that if you're going to have some trouble proving even the things that everybody agrees on, you probably shouldn't go ahead with claims about more obscure and unprovable things, unless you have good reason.
I was hoping that you would present some really convincing evidence, like
"On Date X, in an interview with Reporter Y, for publication Z, Karl Rove expressed a fondness for certain kinds of political tricks. Here is a link to the transcript of that interview."
or
"According to this book by Author A, Karl Rove used political trick Q repeatedly in campaigns B, C, and D. You can find the relevant (and revealing) passages on pages X, Y, and Z of the European paperback edition of the book."
But I guess I can settle for "...based on reading mainstream media and reading books."
The people who allege the Holocaust bring evidence. Mountains of evidence. Photographs. Court records. Eyewitness accounts.
We trust them not because of some ideological bias, but because they act in a trustworthy way: presenting evidence that what they claim is true.
If any one of the people who claim that Karl Rove prefers some dirty trick or other have proof of it, then show it. And if there is no proof, how did you come to believe it?
You're overlooking the fact that the military has its own space-militarization programs, and these have never resulted in fission-powered spacecraft.
The real reason isn't because of military noninvolvement (since the military has always been involved), but because of treaties signed in middle of the previous century that categorically prohibited nuclear weapons and even fission testing in space.
Several designs had been worked out on paper, and some were even slated for prototyping, but the projects were canceled after the treaties were signed.
Lucky for you, I don't need you to prove the Holocaust to me.
Not that it would be hard to do, really. There's plenty of evidence: The sites of the concentration camps. The testimony of guards and inmates. The extensive and thorough documentation of the Third Reich, including medical reports, administrative paperwork, military strategies, economic studies, etc. all having to do with the extermination of undesireables.
You don't have to prove the Holocaust to me, any more than you have to prove the Apollo Program to me. Both events have already been thoroughly proven. At this point, the burden of proof rests with the deniers, who must now both "debunk" all the mountains of evidence in favor of these events, and also produce similar mountains of evidence supporting their own counter-claims.
As to the allegation that Karl Rove favors certain political "tricks", not even a molehill of evidence has been presented to support such a claim.
Besides, if you can't prove something, and are not sure of the evidence given as proof by others wouldn't it be prudent to not make any allegations?
It sounds like you're saying that because you can't personally prove the Holocaust (have you ever really tried, though?), there's nothing wrong with alleging other things you can't prove either.
But the people who allege the Holocaust bring lots of proof to the table. That's what justifies their allegation: the proof they bring.
This particular allegation isn't justified by anything at all.
So tell me, what do you think is more likely: The Holocaust, or Rove's alleged taste in political shenanigans?
Claiming that "everybody" does it isn't proof that one person is doing it.
It isn't even proof that "everybody" is doing it.
You can't prove the first claim simply by making the second claim.
Now, if you could prove that even one important member of the "far-right wing crowd" were doing this, I might be willing to seriously consider your claim that all members of the "far-right wing crowd" were doing this.
Right now, though, it seems much more likely that you're a conspiracy theorist who forgot to put on your tinfoil hat this morning.
This is becoming quite common, it's a favourite trick of Karl Rove.
Prove it.
Hell, just prove that Karl Rove did something it is actually claimed he did: mastermind Bush's reelection strategy.
No, seriously. Tell us all how you know so much about Karl Rove that you not only know what "tricks" he's performed, but even which "tricks" he favors.
I agree completely, the thing I did was not going in to the movie expecting everything to be exactly the same.
It has nothing to do with expecting the movie to be exactly the same as the book.
It has everything to do with expecting the movie to not simultaneously leave out all the awsome from the book while failing to replace it with other awsome of equal or greater value.
Watching some kawaii CGI robot prance around on a big screen is not really all that awsome, even if you and your friends have never seen a pre-movie THX promo before.
The Patent system itself is the measure of caring: the more you care, the more likely you are to do the hard work, do it right, and do it first, thus securing to yourself all the privileges of being the patent holder on whatever it was you cared about.
Why don't the humanitarians ever care enough about helping people to be the first to market with lifesaving new medications?
I'm not talking about already-developed medicines.
I'm talking about new medicines. The patent system, rather than forcing the developers of new medicines to donate their work to the needy for free, instead grants the developer total control over who gets to benefit from the work, and on what terms.
It seems to me that the patent system would absolutely allow the developer of a new medicine complete authority to help as many people as possible, charging them as little as possible, if that's what they wanted to do.
So how come only the greedheads seem to be developing new medicine? It seems like the best way to keep future cures out of the hands of the greedheads would be to develop those cures first and enjoy all the privileges that the patent system would grant them for being first to market--including the privilege of giving their cure away for free instead of selling it for profit.
And the same reasoning applies to already-developed medicine. The situation with already-developed medicine clearly demonstrates that the humanitarians have never cared about being first to market with life-saving new medicines, just as the current situation clearly demonstrates that they still don't care as much about saving lives as the greedheads care about money. These past and present scenarios suggest a trend where the humanitarians will continue to not care in the future, and will continue to see all of humanity's greatest medical advances achieved by people who care about money.
Your comparison to the Patriot Act is mistaken. Patent Law grants the patent-holder total authority over the application of their patent, including licensing fees and terms of use. There are plenty of rich people who claim to care about poor people. Why don't they use their patents to help poor people then? Because they don't hold any patents. And why is that? Because they don't care enough to develop new medicines and patent them before the greedheads do.
All patent law says is, the person who cares the most gets the prize, and once they have the prize they can do whatever they want with it.
Nothing in patent law prohibits the prize-holder from donating that prize to the poor. It only says that you can't force a free person to donate his patent prize if he doesn't want to.
Again, why don't the people who want to donate prizes to the poor ever want to try to win any of those prizes?
I freely and unreservedly grant that the patent system is a bad thing, for the purpose of this discussion.
However, the patent system allows people to do pretty much anything they want with patents they hold. It allows greedy people to license their patents for a profit. It allows altrustic, caring people to license their patents for free. Since the patent grants the same privileges to people who care about money and to people who care about helping other people, I conclude that the problem in this scenario isn't the problem of the patent system, but rather it is the problem of the people who care about helping other people not caring enough.
That is, we could fix the patent system, but that probably wouldn't have much effect on the motivation of people who could do the work for humanitarian reasons, but won't. The Open Source Software community uses copyright law to enforce their no-copyright ideals (e.g., the GPL, Copyleft, etc.). Why doesn't the Open Source Humanitarian Biochemist community leverage the entitlements of the patent system in the same way? After all, there are many people who have waived their patent privileges, or licensed their technologies for little or nothing, out of a spirit of generosity and charity. But these are all people who started by doing the hard work, doing it well, and doing it first. Why? Because they cared about getting the work done.
I'm greatly encouraged to learn that IOWC seems to be on the right track in this matter.
And because those corrupt and ineffective dictators and quasi-dictators (who supported those guys, anyway?!) made poor choices, their people deserve to suffer
This argument only makes sense if you're also prepared to argue that decades of efforts by humanitarian aid agencies failed to communicate good information to hundreds of thousands of people across the continent.
Also, warlords don't get into power by being lone gunmen. They get into power by forming and leading gangs of people who do support them. The violence prevalent in Africa isn't the violence of two pistoleros dueling it out at high noon, it's the violence of whole tribes of people shooting and chopping each other in large groups on a regular basis. Idi Amin and Charles Taylor came to power backed by cadres of thugs, and were allowed to come to power by people who did not think that freedom from armed thuggery was worth fighting and dying for.
The way to help these people isn't to give them advanced technology for free.
However, my point is that the reasons that sight, smell, hearing, and taste are the five senses is that the sensing organs are big and obvious.
Sight, smell, hearing, and taste add up to four senses. The fifth one, touch, is not centered on a big organ in the middle of the face, which must be why you keep forgetting about it.
Also, these conclusions aren't jumped to, they're put forth by people who have spent lifetimes on this research.
Ironically, theologians have also spent lifetimes on their work, yet rarely are they given credit for being thoughtful, reasonable people reaching thoughtful, reasonable conclusions.
And don't tell me it's because science contradicts theology. Most of the core theological propositions are metaphysical in nature, putting them beyond the limit of things science is equipped to study. Not only that, but science contradicts itself all the time, too. New research is constantly supplanting old research. Perfectly plausible theories are disproven regularly. Painstaking attempts to reproduce experimental results often fail.
As far as I can tell, science is no more the proper judge of theology than theology is the proper judge of science. Especially when you account for the inevitable human error that must permeate science just as much as it permeates everything else we do.
I, for one, hope that no Russian cosmonauts were sent to die on suicide moon missions, and that rumors to the contrary are nothing more than macabre urban legends.
Haw! Clearly, UNICEF was the wrong acronym to pull out of my ass in this context.
Maybe you could tell me more about humanitarian aid agencies that do use the patent system to gain control of life-saving, better tomorrow-building new medicines, for the good of all mankind.
There is no such thing as "gouging". There is only how much you want to benefit from my hard work, and how badly I want to benefit from my hard work.
That said, if there's government money invested in a project, then sure, the government and the people it represents should see a return on that investment. Proportional to the amount of the total cost of the project covered by that investment, of course.
Once upon a time, the AIDS/HIV prevalence rate in these countries was 0%.
It didn't climb to its present levels because the people and governments of these countries took the problem seriously, and did everything in their power to avoid it.
Now the bitter irony is that the nations most able to develop a cure are the countries that least need it, while the countries that most need the cure are least able to develop one.
I applaud your desire to help people who got into the mess they're in through superstition and ignorance, against the excellent advice of the world's leading health and aid agencies, but I don't fault the reseachers at BYU if they don't happen to share that desire.
That doesn't change the fact that somebody else cared more about completing the work and securing the patent than you did.
Sure, the patent system now gives them an unholy lock on the technology--the same unholy lock you yourself could've gotten, if you'd cared more--if you cared as much as you wish they cared.
Which reminds me: how many patents on novel new medicines does UNICEF hold? In fact, when was the last time a committed humanitarian individual or agency actually cared enough about helping people to beat the greedheads to the punch?
"Sciene" is an abstract concept for a particular field of human endeavor. It has no inherent purpose. Whatever goals we associate with science, they are the goals of the individual humans who embark on scientific endeavors.
It's generally done to advance knowledge and better humanity, not make money.
There are all sorts of reasons a person might do science: curiosity, parental insistence, humanitarian ideals, greed, etc. Whatever the motivations of the BYU researchers, my point is that they should be free to do science for whatever reason they like, and they should also be free to enjoy the results of their work in whatever way they like. If they like big mansions and fancy cars, they should be free to work for those things and enjoy those things. If they like helping the poor and sick of the world, they should be free to work for that, and enjoy that. I don't think you can take away the one freedom without taking away the other as well.
If the people on slashdot could cure AIDS, I'm sure many of them would do it for free.
And I'm sure just as many of them would do it for profit, or not at all. Not only that, but I'm sure that many of the participants in this thread have the capability to do a lot more for this cause, from volunteering their time in Peace Corps projects in developing countries, to volunteering their technical skills in support of the research lab computing infrastructures that greatly enhance AIDS research. So when they argue that the BYU researchers have an obligation to be altruistic in their motives, I argue that it's hypocritical to demand sacrifices from others that you would not make yourself.
Certainly research must be sustainable, but that doesn't mean it needs to be profit-driven and heartless.
Certainly, your own life must be sustainable, but that doesn't mean it needs to be profit-driven and heartless. So tell me, how long have you been working part time for minimum wage, and donating all your excess wealth and free time to the local orphanage?
All of what you say has merit, but even if it were good and true in every way, it wouldn't change the fact that you and the parent poster are both demanding altruism from someone else that you are unwilling to provide yourself.
I mean, certainly you have the capability to help poor, sick people in Africa. But I'll bet that every day you use that capability to enrich yourself instead. Screw the Randians? Sure, but screw you too, my hypocritical friend.
My point was that we all have the capability for self-sacrifice in the service of the needy.
To expect or demand self-sacrifice from others, without demanding the same from yourself, is not altruism. It's the same stupid greed that motivates the profiteer: the desire to serve yourself and let others serve the needy.
I should expect that the parent poster is giving up a measure of himself equal in proportion to the sacrifice he demands of these researchers, if he is going to make such demands. If he is not working long hours, stretching and stressing his mind and body to the limit, solving problem after problem conducting test after tedious test, all in the service of the poor people of Africa, then he has no call to demand such a sacrifice from anybody else.
So where's your altruism? Are you posting from a Peace Corps base camp in sub-Saharan Africa? Or are you, like the parent poster, simply doing your day job, paying your taxes, making the occasional charitable contribution, and greedily demanding that some scientist in Utah put in enough hours on altruistic good works to ease your conscience?
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I was kind of surprised about your comment that Karl Rove didn't mastermind George W's election and re-election campaigns...
I apologize for being unclear. I was pointing out that if you're going to have some trouble proving even the things that everybody agrees on, you probably shouldn't go ahead with claims about more obscure and unprovable things, unless you have good reason.
I was hoping that you would present some really convincing evidence, like
"On Date X, in an interview with Reporter Y, for publication Z, Karl Rove expressed a fondness for certain kinds of political tricks. Here is a link to the transcript of that interview."
or
"According to this book by Author A, Karl Rove used political trick Q repeatedly in campaigns B, C, and D. You can find the relevant (and revealing) passages on pages X, Y, and Z of the European paperback edition of the book."
But I guess I can settle for "...based on reading mainstream media and reading books."
Now, what did you want to say about WMDs?
How about this?
First you explain to me how you came to believe certain things about Karl Rove.
Then you can change the subject.
The people who allege the Holocaust bring evidence. Mountains of evidence. Photographs. Court records. Eyewitness accounts.
We trust them not because of some ideological bias, but because they act in a trustworthy way: presenting evidence that what they claim is true.
If any one of the people who claim that Karl Rove prefers some dirty trick or other have proof of it, then show it. And if there is no proof, how did you come to believe it?
You're overlooking the fact that the military has its own space-militarization programs, and these have never resulted in fission-powered spacecraft. The real reason isn't because of military noninvolvement (since the military has always been involved), but because of treaties signed in middle of the previous century that categorically prohibited nuclear weapons and even fission testing in space. Several designs had been worked out on paper, and some were even slated for prototyping, but the projects were canceled after the treaties were signed.
Lucky for you, I don't need you to prove the Holocaust to me.
Not that it would be hard to do, really. There's plenty of evidence: The sites of the concentration camps. The testimony of guards and inmates. The extensive and thorough documentation of the Third Reich, including medical reports, administrative paperwork, military strategies, economic studies, etc. all having to do with the extermination of undesireables.
You don't have to prove the Holocaust to me, any more than you have to prove the Apollo Program to me. Both events have already been thoroughly proven. At this point, the burden of proof rests with the deniers, who must now both "debunk" all the mountains of evidence in favor of these events, and also produce similar mountains of evidence supporting their own counter-claims.
As to the allegation that Karl Rove favors certain political "tricks", not even a molehill of evidence has been presented to support such a claim.
Besides, if you can't prove something, and are not sure of the evidence given as proof by others wouldn't it be prudent to not make any allegations?
It sounds like you're saying that because you can't personally prove the Holocaust (have you ever really tried, though?), there's nothing wrong with alleging other things you can't prove either.
But the people who allege the Holocaust bring lots of proof to the table. That's what justifies their allegation: the proof they bring.
This particular allegation isn't justified by anything at all.
So tell me, what do you think is more likely: The Holocaust, or Rove's alleged taste in political shenanigans?
Now you're just flailing.
Claiming that "everybody" does it isn't proof that one person is doing it.
It isn't even proof that "everybody" is doing it.
You can't prove the first claim simply by making the second claim.
Now, if you could prove that even one important member of the "far-right wing crowd" were doing this, I might be willing to seriously consider your claim that all members of the "far-right wing crowd" were doing this.
Right now, though, it seems much more likely that you're a conspiracy theorist who forgot to put on your tinfoil hat this morning.
This is becoming quite common, it's a favourite trick of Karl Rove.
Prove it.
Hell, just prove that Karl Rove did something it is actually claimed he did: mastermind Bush's reelection strategy.
No, seriously. Tell us all how you know so much about Karl Rove that you not only know what "tricks" he's performed, but even which "tricks" he favors.
Holy shit I'm an idiot.
My shame is now complete.
I agree completely, the thing I did was not going in to the movie expecting everything to be exactly the same.
It has nothing to do with expecting the movie to be exactly the same as the book.
It has everything to do with expecting the movie to not simultaneously leave out all the awsome from the book while failing to replace it with other awsome of equal or greater value.
Watching some kawaii CGI robot prance around on a big screen is not really all that awsome, even if you and your friends have never seen a pre-movie THX promo before.
The Patent system itself is the measure of caring: the more you care, the more likely you are to do the hard work, do it right, and do it first, thus securing to yourself all the privileges of being the patent holder on whatever it was you cared about.
Why don't the humanitarians ever care enough about helping people to be the first to market with lifesaving new medications?
I'm not talking about already-developed medicines.
I'm talking about new medicines. The patent system, rather than forcing the developers of new medicines to donate their work to the needy for free, instead grants the developer total control over who gets to benefit from the work, and on what terms.
It seems to me that the patent system would absolutely allow the developer of a new medicine complete authority to help as many people as possible, charging them as little as possible, if that's what they wanted to do.
So how come only the greedheads seem to be developing new medicine? It seems like the best way to keep future cures out of the hands of the greedheads would be to develop those cures first and enjoy all the privileges that the patent system would grant them for being first to market--including the privilege of giving their cure away for free instead of selling it for profit.
And the same reasoning applies to already-developed medicine. The situation with already-developed medicine clearly demonstrates that the humanitarians have never cared about being first to market with life-saving new medicines, just as the current situation clearly demonstrates that they still don't care as much about saving lives as the greedheads care about money. These past and present scenarios suggest a trend where the humanitarians will continue to not care in the future, and will continue to see all of humanity's greatest medical advances achieved by people who care about money.
Your comparison to the Patriot Act is mistaken. Patent Law grants the patent-holder total authority over the application of their patent, including licensing fees and terms of use. There are plenty of rich people who claim to care about poor people. Why don't they use their patents to help poor people then? Because they don't hold any patents. And why is that? Because they don't care enough to develop new medicines and patent them before the greedheads do.
All patent law says is, the person who cares the most gets the prize, and once they have the prize they can do whatever they want with it.
Nothing in patent law prohibits the prize-holder from donating that prize to the poor. It only says that you can't force a free person to donate his patent prize if he doesn't want to.
Again, why don't the people who want to donate prizes to the poor ever want to try to win any of those prizes?
I freely and unreservedly grant that the patent system is a bad thing, for the purpose of this discussion.
However, the patent system allows people to do pretty much anything they want with patents they hold. It allows greedy people to license their patents for a profit. It allows altrustic, caring people to license their patents for free. Since the patent grants the same privileges to people who care about money and to people who care about helping other people, I conclude that the problem in this scenario isn't the problem of the patent system, but rather it is the problem of the people who care about helping other people not caring enough.
That is, we could fix the patent system, but that probably wouldn't have much effect on the motivation of people who could do the work for humanitarian reasons, but won't. The Open Source Software community uses copyright law to enforce their no-copyright ideals (e.g., the GPL, Copyleft, etc.). Why doesn't the Open Source Humanitarian Biochemist community leverage the entitlements of the patent system in the same way? After all, there are many people who have waived their patent privileges, or licensed their technologies for little or nothing, out of a spirit of generosity and charity. But these are all people who started by doing the hard work, doing it well, and doing it first. Why? Because they cared about getting the work done.
I'm greatly encouraged to learn that IOWC seems to be on the right track in this matter.
And because those corrupt and ineffective dictators and quasi-dictators (who supported those guys, anyway?!) made poor choices, their people deserve to suffer
This argument only makes sense if you're also prepared to argue that decades of efforts by humanitarian aid agencies failed to communicate good information to hundreds of thousands of people across the continent.
Also, warlords don't get into power by being lone gunmen. They get into power by forming and leading gangs of people who do support them. The violence prevalent in Africa isn't the violence of two pistoleros dueling it out at high noon, it's the violence of whole tribes of people shooting and chopping each other in large groups on a regular basis. Idi Amin and Charles Taylor came to power backed by cadres of thugs, and were allowed to come to power by people who did not think that freedom from armed thuggery was worth fighting and dying for.
The way to help these people isn't to give them advanced technology for free.
However, my point is that the reasons that sight, smell, hearing, and taste are the five senses is that the sensing organs are big and obvious.
Sight, smell, hearing, and taste add up to four senses. The fifth one, touch, is not centered on a big organ in the middle of the face, which must be why you keep forgetting about it.
Also, these conclusions aren't jumped to, they're put forth by people who have spent lifetimes on this research.
Ironically, theologians have also spent lifetimes on their work, yet rarely are they given credit for being thoughtful, reasonable people reaching thoughtful, reasonable conclusions.
And don't tell me it's because science contradicts theology. Most of the core theological propositions are metaphysical in nature, putting them beyond the limit of things science is equipped to study. Not only that, but science contradicts itself all the time, too. New research is constantly supplanting old research. Perfectly plausible theories are disproven regularly. Painstaking attempts to reproduce experimental results often fail.
As far as I can tell, science is no more the proper judge of theology than theology is the proper judge of science. Especially when you account for the inevitable human error that must permeate science just as much as it permeates everything else we do.
Why would you hope for something like this?
I, for one, hope that no Russian cosmonauts were sent to die on suicide moon missions, and that rumors to the contrary are nothing more than macabre urban legends.
Soviet landing sites do exist on the moon, you know. They were established during the same period as the American landing sites.
Haw! Clearly, UNICEF was the wrong acronym to pull out of my ass in this context.
Maybe you could tell me more about humanitarian aid agencies that do use the patent system to gain control of life-saving, better tomorrow-building new medicines, for the good of all mankind.
Assuming there are any, of course.
There is no such thing as "gouging". There is only how much you want to benefit from my hard work, and how badly I want to benefit from my hard work.
That said, if there's government money invested in a project, then sure, the government and the people it represents should see a return on that investment. Proportional to the amount of the total cost of the project covered by that investment, of course.
Once upon a time, the AIDS/HIV prevalence rate in these countries was 0%.
It didn't climb to its present levels because the people and governments of these countries took the problem seriously, and did everything in their power to avoid it.
Now the bitter irony is that the nations most able to develop a cure are the countries that least need it, while the countries that most need the cure are least able to develop one.
I applaud your desire to help people who got into the mess they're in through superstition and ignorance, against the excellent advice of the world's leading health and aid agencies, but I don't fault the reseachers at BYU if they don't happen to share that desire.
Cures are the humanitarian industry's MOST CHERISHED DREAM.
Which is why the humanitarian individuals and agencies are constantly researching, developing, patenting, and freely licensing lifesaving new cures...
Oh, wait.
I guess nobody cares about cures. So why single out big pharma?
I admit, IP law is grotesque.
That doesn't change the fact that somebody else cared more about completing the work and securing the patent than you did.
Sure, the patent system now gives them an unholy lock on the technology--the same unholy lock you yourself could've gotten, if you'd cared more--if you cared as much as you wish they cared.
Which reminds me: how many patents on novel new medicines does UNICEF hold? In fact, when was the last time a committed humanitarian individual or agency actually cared enough about helping people to beat the greedheads to the punch?
I think you misunderstand the goal of science.
"Sciene" is an abstract concept for a particular field of human endeavor. It has no inherent purpose. Whatever goals we associate with science, they are the goals of the individual humans who embark on scientific endeavors.
It's generally done to advance knowledge and better humanity, not make money.
There are all sorts of reasons a person might do science: curiosity, parental insistence, humanitarian ideals, greed, etc. Whatever the motivations of the BYU researchers, my point is that they should be free to do science for whatever reason they like, and they should also be free to enjoy the results of their work in whatever way they like. If they like big mansions and fancy cars, they should be free to work for those things and enjoy those things. If they like helping the poor and sick of the world, they should be free to work for that, and enjoy that. I don't think you can take away the one freedom without taking away the other as well.
If the people on slashdot could cure AIDS, I'm sure many of them would do it for free.
And I'm sure just as many of them would do it for profit, or not at all. Not only that, but I'm sure that many of the participants in this thread have the capability to do a lot more for this cause, from volunteering their time in Peace Corps projects in developing countries, to volunteering their technical skills in support of the research lab computing infrastructures that greatly enhance AIDS research. So when they argue that the BYU researchers have an obligation to be altruistic in their motives, I argue that it's hypocritical to demand sacrifices from others that you would not make yourself.
Certainly research must be sustainable, but that doesn't mean it needs to be profit-driven and heartless.
Certainly, your own life must be sustainable, but that doesn't mean it needs to be profit-driven and heartless. So tell me, how long have you been working part time for minimum wage, and donating all your excess wealth and free time to the local orphanage?
All of what you say has merit, but even if it were good and true in every way, it wouldn't change the fact that you and the parent poster are both demanding altruism from someone else that you are unwilling to provide yourself.
I mean, certainly you have the capability to help poor, sick people in Africa. But I'll bet that every day you use that capability to enrich yourself instead. Screw the Randians? Sure, but screw you too, my hypocritical friend.
My point was that we all have the capability for self-sacrifice in the service of the needy.
To expect or demand self-sacrifice from others, without demanding the same from yourself, is not altruism. It's the same stupid greed that motivates the profiteer: the desire to serve yourself and let others serve the needy.
I should expect that the parent poster is giving up a measure of himself equal in proportion to the sacrifice he demands of these researchers, if he is going to make such demands. If he is not working long hours, stretching and stressing his mind and body to the limit, solving problem after problem conducting test after tedious test, all in the service of the poor people of Africa, then he has no call to demand such a sacrifice from anybody else.
So where's your altruism? Are you posting from a Peace Corps base camp in sub-Saharan Africa? Or are you, like the parent poster, simply doing your day job, paying your taxes, making the occasional charitable contribution, and greedily demanding that some scientist in Utah put in enough hours on altruistic good works to ease your conscience?