LAST WEEK we wrote about the Head of Global Health for the Gates Foundation having somewhat of a criminal past. Gates Keepers has more to say on the subject.
It certainly looks like a lucky coincidence that this flufftalk interview of Tachi came out just as the heat is being turned up on investigating his threatening behaviour in his previous job. The Senate Finance Committee "says he made phone calls to officials at the University of North Carolina and the University of Pennsylvania to shut down studies of possible negative side effects of Avandia" made by Tachi's company.
Tachi says he likes to give direct negative feedback so he will like Gates Keepers speaking straight: Gates Keepers thinks you acted unethically by threatening academic researchers. Restitution and amends are in order.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is fascinating. So is the just-released 19-page annual letter that describes the work of his charitable foundation--the world's largest. But for someone so smart who can afford to hire a bevy of experts on any subject under the sun, some of Gates' foundation's strategies for problem-solving are baffling.
Consider its two-pronged approach to malaria. It focuses on bed nets--an ultra-low-tech, only modestly effective intervention--and the development of a vaccine, a high-tech solution that has eluded the intensive efforts of scientists for decades. Yet it dismisses the chemical DDT, an old, cheap and safe tool to control the vector--the Anopheles mosquito--that spreads the disease.
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Consider its two-pronged approach to malaria. It focuses on bed nets--an ultra-low-tech, only modestly effective intervention--and the development of a vaccine, a high-tech solution that has eluded the intensive efforts of scientists for decades. Yet it dismisses the chemical DDT, an old, cheap and safe tool to control the vector--the Anopheles mosquito--that spreads the disease.
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But policies based on science and data enjoy a short half-life at the UN. Last year, with a notable absence of fanfare, WHO reverted to endorsing less effective methods for preventing malaria. In a May 6 statement the WHO and the UN Environment Program announced that their goal was "to achieve a 30% cut in the application of DDT worldwide by 2014 and its total phase-out by the early 2020s, if not sooner." In the absence of effective vaccines or new anti-malarial drugs--and the funding and infrastructure to deliver them--this decision is tantamount to mass murder, a triumph of radical enviro-politics over public health.
Well those Southeast Asian lawmakers who earn billions a year from producing tobacco products are unlikely to just roll over and increase taxes to reduce consumption without a people's movement to push them. SEATCA will receive seven million dollars but doesn't look like a citizen participation organization to Gates Keepers.
Comments
dyfet
2010-03-06 12:46:33