01.10.11
Gates Foundation Pays the Lancet Journal — Now Distorts Academic Literature Too
Summary: The literature which covers health issues criticises Gates and then gets paid by him, whereupon the tone may suddenly change
THE Gates Foundation loves to conduct ‘studies’ by commissioning others to do so. It tells them what they’re instructed to achieve and then the results arrive, helping the lobbying of the Gates Foundation. Needless to say, that’s not research. When it’s intended for a business purpose and the conclusion is fitted to the requirement rather than hypothesis then it ceases to be an exploration and becomes more akin to marketing. A few months ago we showed The Lancet slamming Bill Gates, but not to worry. Mr. Gates can address the issue like he always does — by paying his critics.
Let us begin with some news about Gates’ business in medicine, which to a large degree involves patents also of the world’s biggest patent troll (and Gates’ close mate), Nathan of Intellectual Ventures. We gave examples of that last year, so we’ll leave that aside for today and deal with news instead.
First of all, here is the impact of biased media (or cowardice owing to the PR, which makes criticism of Gates frowned upon): “Open letter opinion piece on vaccines and the media”
The mainstream media have opportunities to call their editorials and opinion pieces “open letters”. Will we only read good news stories about immunisation in the future?
The above leaves out the fact that “news stories” are to a great degree funded by Gates. He specifically targets circles whose readership/audience his ventures are targeting. This includes the area of vaccination and we gave examples before. Tom Paulson provides what Gates Keepers calls “coverage of the mass media bribes by the Gates Foundation.” Read his “[t]houghts on the Gates Foundation paying media to cover global health and development”:
I had to laugh at the article’s title (based on the title of a talk given by Suarez in Seattle a while ago). Fortner’s answer is Suarez and PBS Newshour got the bug after they received $3.6 million from Gates to cover global health issues.
Fortner, who wrote about the Gates Foundation for Crosscut, said he quit in 2009 because of his unease with publisher David Brewster accepting funds from the Gates Foundation. Brewster told me he had not been aware that this was the reason Fortner left.
The latest Gates media partnership was what the New York Times called “an unusual financial agreement” between ABC News and the world’s biggest philanthropy aimed at promoting greater coverage of global health issues.
This mentions PBS, which we’ll cover in the next post. This also mentions Crosscut, which the previous post covers. And who is the New York Times to comment or complain given its own deeds as of late [1, 2]? The corporate press is disgracing itself, but blogs too are being distorted by Gates’ money. So where can a person turn to for real medical/vaccine coverage encompassing facts and not spin? Remember that we speak of particular areas that Gates is targeting. It’s likely that news coverage and blog posts about climate, for example, will be mostly targeted by oil giants which strive to ensure uncertainty. The Huff & Puff (Huffington Post), for example, amplifies signal from Fox ‘News’ (where anchors are instructed to deny global warming), but then again, Huffington is a rich oil family. Gates invests in Exxon Mobil by the way [1, 2]. To wit, no apple falls far from the tree. “A Lancet issue is funded by the Malaria Elimination Group which is almost completely funded by the Gates Foundation and Exxon Mobil” says Gates Keepers in a November post:
The Lancet has a new themed issue on malaria elimination, a modest goal compared to the global eradication goal that Bill and Melinda unexpectedly sprung on the world three years ago. The Lancet issue is funded by the Malaria Elimination Group which is almost completely funded by the Gates Foundation and Exxon Mobil —
It appears that the Lancet received no direct Gates Foundation funding for the series. There is a bit of a disclosure statement in the leader of the series by Pamela Das and Richard Horton:
“Writing in 2009, Richard Feachem and Allison Phillips concluded that “we have many reasons to be optimistic”. Together with others in the Malaria Elimination Group (MEG), which is partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Series in this week’s issue of The Lancet now puts malaria elimination under the microscope.”
This is followed in the Executive Summary by:
“This Series in The Lancet, supported by the Malaria Elimination Group (MEG) and convened by the Global Health Group at the University of California, San Francisco, …”
The Malaria Elimination Group is almost completely funded by the Gates Foundation and Exxon Mobil.
Gates Keepers can find no other reference to Gates Foundation or Exxon Mobil financing of the Lancet themed issue. They hope nothing is being hidden. The Lancet uncovers many financial scandals.
The Gates Foundation buys journalists in the mass media but one hopes that content in the Lancet cannot be bought.
Watch what Paulson says about World AIDS Day:
It may be difficult for many to appreciate just how much of a difference these advances in prevention promise to make in the years ahead, Bertozzi said. An effective HIV vaccine is years away still, he acknowledged, but not that long ago many were despairing if it was even possible.
“A Deadly Misdiagnosis” is an article from New Yorker which also covers this area but does so independently*. “No Gates Foundation money needed to write this excellent article” remarks Gates Keepers:
The New Yorker and the author received no funding from the Gates Foundation to publish this article. It is possible to write about public health, and even the activities of the Gates Foundation, without taking money from the gorilla in the room.
The New Yorker was later being criticised and Gates Keepers tried to figure out if the critic was connected to Gates. █
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* The results in a search engine will be littered with Gates-funded press, which is constantly posting puff pieces that reduce signal and elevate PR.
“Gates has created a huge blood-buying operation that only cares about money, not about people.”
–AIDS organisation manager, December 2009
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