Joining the patents investment/experiment

Summary: Some of the more embarrassing news about the Gates Foundation, based on the past week's reports alone

THE previous post showed -- using evidence from the past week alone -- how Gates uses 'studies' to promote his own agenda. The following new 'study' is funded by the Gates Foundation and it receives coverage from the Seattle Times, which is Microsoft's fan press (more so than other publications in Seattle).

For every dollar in health aid received, governments in the developing world on average shifted between 43 cents and $1.14 from their own health budgets into other priorities, says an analysis published Friday in the medical journal The Lancet and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Given that it is funded by Gates, questions ought to be asked, so we shall look deeper into it. The Washington Post, where Melinda Gates has some special control as board member [1, 2] and as story planter, is another source that covered it (published by Associated Press):

Most countries in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East doubled their health budgets. But many in Africa - including those with the worst AIDS outbreaks - trimmed their health spending instead. In the Lancet study, for every dollar received from donors, poor countries transferred up to $1.14 originally slated for their health budgets elsewhere. The research was paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

We managed to find a few more articles [1, 2], but some articles like this one don't even disclose the financial role of Gates.

The study which Gates has just purchased opens the door to more intervention in Africa, such as his Monsanto ventures that help privatise the continent for ego and for profit [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. Gates has hired a lot of staff to set the tone on these issues. A few days ago there was this:

The role of strategic philanthropy in agricultural research and development will be addressed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln April 9 by a representative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

According to the African press, Gates continues to pay locals to cover his ventures in a congratulatory and flattering way, despite the great opposition (among locals) to what they perceive as imperialism.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) to launch radio programmes to ensure access to timely and relevant information for farmers.

We saw that before and we have given many examples where Gates pays people to write books and articles which glorify his work. He is funding a lot of media to tell just one side of the story. Here is a new example from the United States:

Six Washington journalists have been awarded a $219,347 grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to publicize and spread awareness of family homelessness through various media outlets in Seattle and the greater Washington area.

We wrote about this last year.

"Colbert wants Gates Foundation funds," says GatesKeeper, but the video seems like it's "US-only" (limiting its reach/viewers).

Colbert wants Gates Foundation funds to insert social messages into reality TV reruns.

GatesKeeper also points out that a Gates Foundation grantee (George Institute) is publicly praising the Gates Foundation.

This institution, funded by the Gates Foundation, reports that the Gates Foundation has made a splash in funding for neglected diseases. And there is a great quote by Gates Foundation employee Rabinovich to underline the importance of the Gates Foundation: "In these tough economic times, every contribution to neglected disease R&D is absolutely critical".

Also about the George Institute:

Gates Keepers have heard a rumour that the major Gates Foundation project on global investment in drugs for neglected diseases (G-Finder) is about to be hijacked by a disgruntled ex-employee of the not-for-profit group (George Institute) that has been running the project. Is an unduly cosy relationship between the ex-employee and key people within the Foundation about to result in the multimillion dollar project moving to the ex-employee's private company? If this is true it's not good for Gates Foundation or the battle against neglected diseases.

As someone points out in the comments:

This is an old scam but a good one.

First get malleable/naive NGO to make your bid for a big grant.

Second make yourself seem indispensible.

Third start your own company and force NGO to subcontract to you (with big margin).

Fourth appoint a few poorly paid flunkies to do the work.

Fifth pocket the profits.

And its all for the greater good of mankind … perfect!

All the above examples ought to show how Gates uses his money to receive accolades. From a jobs site we gather the following available position of VP Health at MicroEnsure.

MicroEnsure was established in 2002 to help the poor weather life’s storms via micro insurance products. It serves 3.5 million people around the world and through the support of the Gates Foundation and other generous funding, it is in the process of rapidly scaling up to reach more of the 3.3 billion who live on less than $2 a day.

It sounds very beneficial on the surface, doesn't it?

Looking at this new article from Indonesia, GatesKeeper point out the following:

If Bill Gates and his spouse believe that better lives lead to smaller families why are they making this grant?

Population growth has already plummeted, though patchily, in Indonesia, due to the highly effective family planning programme they have already implemented. The demographic transition should do the rest.

It is similar in Africa. Gates advocates contraception for lower population growth ("family planning" is the popular euphemism).

Vaccination Fatalities

Here is what an expert in his field (with a Ph.D.) has to say about Tachi Yamada, the President of the Global Health Program at the Gates Foundation, who also carries a criminal baggage. He threatened people who challenged him (i.e. resorted to gagging).

When Dr. Tachi Yamada, President of the Global Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, wrote a commentary for CNN last fall following his visit to empty wards in Zanzibar, he wrote one striking sentence: ‘Zanzibar -- a relatively small but striking example -- has virtually eliminated the disease over the past five years.’

It is the word virtually that is key here. ‘Virtually’ is all the difference between elimination, the complete and sustainable disappearance of the disease, and temporary success. Like that witnessed in the 1960s. Einstein’s words ‘If you do what you did, you get what you got’ apply to Zanzibar’s malaria. Pour large sums of money in the battle against parasites and mosquitoes and you’ll knock it over the head. But you won’t eliminate it.

Zanzibar’s malaria situation in 2010 resembles that of 1968.

Watch this new report from the Philippines where Gates is also involved in a canine rabies project.

Looking at India, there are protests against a Gates-funded vaccinations project that went awry and allegedly killed people (4 deaths are being denied by some sources).

A 'demonstration project' conducted by PATH International in cooperation with ICMR and the Indian state governments Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was called to an abrupt halt amidst allegations of unethical conduct this week.

58 various health advocacy groups took it upon themselves to conduct an independent fact finding mission when reports of 4 unexplained deaths and 120 girls suffering from debilitating new illnesses after being vaccinated against the HPV virus.

The controversial programme is halted, so there is likely to be a correlation.

Gates et al were accused of "fatally flawed" vaccination projects in Canada last month [1, 2]. Here are all the news reports that we could find regarding the HPV vaccine experiment in India (where liability is less expensive):

1. Centre halts HPV vaccine project

2. Vaccine programme in A.P. only after Centre's clearance

3. Groups write to Azad on HPV vaccine trial

4. HPV vaccine programme: Brinda seeks impartial enquiry

The trials are being described as a “demonstration project” by PATH-International, a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation, which is conducting the project for American pharmaceutical company Merck since July 2009.

The girls, aged between 10 and 14 and belonging to the most vulnerable sections of society, were enrolled in the study approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the respective State governments, and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

So Merck is behind this too.

Merck is collaborating with Microsoft, it is engaging in corrupt activities, and we wrote about its relationship with Bill Gates in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. The Gates Foundation's newly-appointed CFO has just come from Merck.

But here is where it gets more interesting.

Are you ready for it?

World's Largest Patent Troll

The world's largest patent troll, who is funded by Bill Gates, is also involved in this whole pharmaceutical venture. Yes, Intellectual Ventures is also looking to make money from this cartel, according to a new article from NewsWeek

The company has been around since 2000 and is run by Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at Microsoft. The malaria research hasn't yet resulted in a marketable product; much of the company's business involves buying up patents and using them to generate licensing fees. It's a practice that has made Myhrvold a hated man in some tech circles, where he's been derided as a "patent troll." (It's a description he disputes, saying that he merely helps inventors bring their creations to market.) But Intellectual Ventures is also in business to invent new ideas of its own, most notably in medical devices and nuclear power. A project called TerraPower is trying to develop a new kind of nuclear reactor.

In 2007 Bill Gates, who is a friend of Myhrvold's and an investor in Intellectual Ventures, challenged the company to come up with ideas for eradicating malaria. That's a problem Gates was tackling through his philanthropic organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "Come up with some good ideas," he told Myhrvold, "and I'll come up with some money to pursue them." Myhrvold brought himself up to speed by attending conferences and poring through thousands of research papers on malaria. He came to believe that epidemiologists needed a computer model that could simulate malaria outbreaks and predict how effective various remedies (bed nets, insecticides, medicines) would be in any given location at any given time.

Intellectual Ventures is not a charity, it is a racketeering operation. There is a lot of money in malaria (usually extracted from taxpayers after lobbying the governments). According to the New York Times, "The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping out the world health agency’s policy-making function.

"In a memorandum, the malaria chief, Dr. Arata Kochi, complained to his boss, Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the W.H.O., that the foundation’s money, while crucial, could have “far-reaching, largely unintended consequences.”

"Many of the world’s leading malaria scientists are now “locked up in a ‘cartel’ with their own research funding being linked to those of others within the group,” Dr. Kochi wrote. Because “each has a vested interest to safeguard the work of the others,” he wrote, getting independent reviews of research proposals “is becoming increasingly difficult.”

"Also, he argued, the foundation’s determination to have its favored research used to guide the health organization’s recommendations “could have implicitly dangerous consequences on the policy-making process in world health.”"

To put it simply in terms that anyone can understand, Gates et al are monopolising research on disease and they are also investors in the companies which benefit from it (through patents that are killing rather than helping). ⬆

“Gates has created a huge blood-buying operation that only cares about money, not about people.”

--AIDS organisation manager, December 2009 (New York Times)