Gates Foundation Vs. Openness In Research

An anonymous reader writes "There have been complaints within the World Health Organization of some oddly familiar-sounding tactics and attitudes by the Gates Foundation. Scientists who were once open with their research are now 'locked up in a cartel' and are financially motivated to support other scientists backed by the Foundation. Diversity of views is 'stifled,' dominance is bought, and Foundation views are pushed with 'intense and aggressive opposition.'" The article tries hard for balance. It notes that the WHO official who raised the alarm on the Gates Foundation's unintended consequences on world health research is "an openly undiplomatic official who won admiration for reorganizing the world fight against tuberculosis but was ousted from that job partly because he offended donors like the Rockefeller Foundation."

Re:Coming soon...

[r55man]

You jest, but I don't think you're really all that far off. From the article:

Experts said IPTi involved giving babies doses of an older anti-malaria drug, Fansidar ... In early studies, it was shown to decrease malaria cases about 25 percent. But each dose provided protection for only a month.

Since it is not safe or practical to give Fansidar constantly to babies ... World Health Organization scientists had doubts about it.

The health agency's objections were met with "intense and aggressive opposition" from Gates-backed scientists and the foundation

What do you want to bet this is exactly the kind of "cure" that the Gates Foundation is looking for: The kind that you need to keep buying every month for the rest of your life.

Re:Business as usual

[MrCopilot]

I don't buy the "openly undiplomatic official" bit at all, not from someone who works for the United Nations.

Two Words John Bolton [wikipedia.org]

Re:private or public science?

[shadowKFC]

This is, to put it bluntly, an extremely ignorant view.

It is now, and I'm working in science, A LOT better then it was 15 years ago. Back then you physically had to go to a library, get the articles on paper, photocopy them one by one, and then you just had a huge mess of horribly photocopied junk, with no color and hard to read illustrations and figures.

Not to talk about finding the stuff first, Pubmed and co are invaluable here and this is only possible due to the fact that scientific articles are all digitized.
I cannot justify the ridiculous prices that are being charged for single articles, (20 $ and up), however in reality nearly no one pays those. Everyone working in a somewhat scientific position will have access to most journals through the institution where they work. This means you can just download everything from your desk in perfect pdf quality, store it on your computer, full-text search it, print it etc..

When ever I come across a "Please give me 500 $ for this article" page it is usually because our intuition does not have a subscription to this journal. However usually this is no problem, because collogues from other universities will probably have access and vice versa.

Now what to do when you are not a member of a scientific institution and do not have access?
Simple, just go to the library and go sit at their computers. Or join a library and get access to their VPN/intranet

Re:RTFA further:

[ozmanjusri]

Rule one is don't bite the hand that feeds you. This guy's rabid.

This is fundamentally wrong.

Dr. Kochi has been far more successful and saved more lives than any other malaria fighter. He is succeeding becuase he is replacing the stagnant, broken sytem of consultants and drug companies with pragmatic effective solutions. Because he is challenging orthodoxy, including those the Gates Foundation supports, he is meeting resistance, such as the usual FUD disseminated by large companies.

This article [nytimes.com] is much more informative about Kochi's activities and reasons.

Re:Gates Foundation and SCO

[frith01]

Groklaw has all relevant info related to SCO lawsuit. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080214125705140 [groklaw.net]

Mod parent down -1, Quackery

[McDutchie]

The video linked to by parent is complete quackery. The autism-vaccine link has been thoroughly disproven [alertnet.org] many times now. In countries where vaccinations are not combined or where vaccines do not contain thimerosal (e.g. Denmark [nih.gov], Japan [findarticles.com]), autism rates rise as much as anywhere else; the obvious and correct explanation is better diagnosis and a significant loosening of diagnostic criteria. Contrary to what the "doctor" in the video claims, most autistics do not have anything like the gastroenteritis symptoms that are supposedly indicative of "vaccine poisioning". His claim that 100% of autistics have such symptoms is am intentional lie. Here is some more real information [autism-watch.org] on these issues from the good folks at Quackwatch.