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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Colbert wants Gates Foundation funds to insert social messages into reality TV reruns.
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".
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
--AIDS organisation manager, December 2009 (New York Times)
Comments
Myfraudsoft
2010-04-19 17:13:56