--AIDS organisation manager, December 2009 (New York Times)
THE NEW empire of Bill Gates seeks to monopolise more areas of life, not just software. Some of the tricks are familiar, including the attack on dissent and marginalisation of competition.
Last week, Laura Freschi and Alanna Shaikh published a piece in Alliance magazine that raised some interesting and thought-provoking question about the role of the Gates Foundation in setting the global health agenda. They conclude that Gates is becoming a “public health dictator” because of his financial resources and the power and influence that come as a result. They are, of course, not the first to complain about Gates’s focus on technological solutions to global health challenges. Some of the most recent grumblings were in response to the Foundation’s “reinvent the toilet” campaign this year, but similar concerns have been voiced for years. The Foundation places too much emphasis on technological innovation and “quick fixes”; their undue influence diverts funding from other priorities; their goals are not realistic. These are all valid concerns which deserve to be voiced (heck, we have already written about it here), particularly in a field where nearly everyone has a different opinion on how problems should be solved.
Mundel succeeds Tachi Yamada, who came from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to run the Gates Foundation global health program.
The Gates Foundation, belonging to Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, could poach Novartis's head of global development, a Swiss newspaper reported on Sunday, citing two sources.
Comments
Agent_Smith
2011-12-27 11:51:38
Sent chills down my spine.
Best regards