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."

Surprised?

[jaxtherat]

Why is anyone surprised. These foundations are nothing but cash cows, money sinks and tax write-offs.

Very, very few rich people are genuine philanthropists.

I called this.

[ruinevil]

When I bash Gates, people always tell me that Bill Gates has donated more money to medical research than anyone else in history. Which is true. But I always say that he donates heavily to organizations he controls. And finally he has shown his true colors.

Re:Immortality

[Anonymous Coward]

He is not a good person, he has never been a good person. Few people are. But, particularly in America, people confuse "Rich" and "Successful" and "Good". Short memories I guess. Gates doing this now toward the end of his life is no different to the magnanimous gestures of the Robber Barons. He _might_ actually do some good, but I doubt it, and even if he does, does it really balance the massive amount of harm he did to the computing? We'll never know now, but if he hadn't been there *holding back* computing by ~20 years (the spin is of course totally different, nowadays people seem to think Gates personally invented modern computing, but I'm old enough to remember the 70s and 80s and lived through the damage), maybe we'd have just computed a designer drug cure for malaria by now.

private or public science?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's happening everywhere, a gradual chilling debasement of science and open collaboration. On one hand the internet has brought great
opportunity, and some great things like Gutenberg, the Internet archive, Hyperphysics, and of course Wikis that are gaining credibility more and more, but these are not real scientific repositories, real science is being buried. Some online journals have their archives open to download free pdfs, but they are the exception, in general things are getting much worse than better. 15 years ago I had to go to a library to get papers, but at least they were there and I could photocopy for free. Now all the records have gone electronic its a nightmare. Do a Google search on any serious topic and the first two pages will be istore, free patents online, and all those for-pay peddlers of knowledge. These guardians of information charge $30 or more for an electronic reprint, on 80 year old papers, IP that doesn't even belong to them! I expect many great scientists are spinning in their graves. I sometimes laugh when I hear the phrase scientific community. There isn't one anymore! Everyone is out to obscure and bury. How can peer review be conducted anymore? Everyone is too afraid to publish in case patent trolls sieze their work, and only the few in large institutions can afford to. I have to share papers on the sly with other researchers and certain old textbooks are becoming treasured items. This knowledge belongs to us all. The vast majority from the last few hundred years is public domain, payed for by your tax dollars to fund research on national levels.

I certainly don't expect Microsoft to help in any way, their track record is to squeeze money out of every chance they get. What have they ever contributed to real science? We must reverse this slide into private and secret science or eventually university students will be signing NDA agreements before being allowed to study and progress will only be the preserve of the wealthy.

Google scholar is a step forward, but if you use it a lot you will see more than half of what it links to isn't actually available, it just leads to pay-for sites. They should block those so that only info that is actually available to read is presented.

Re:Immortality

[eln]

Most mega-billionaires give away their money in hopes of achieving immortality. Why is this a bad thing? Many fine research and educational institutions would not exist without this desire to be remembered for something positive. I think if we look down on the idea of doing great things for society in order to achieve lasting immortality, we will lose all of the great things that can result from it.

The only "true" philanthropy is anonymous. That doesn't mean we should condemn the idea of "pseudo" philanthropy just because we find the idea of buying immortality distasteful. After all, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute would probably be just as good without Howard Hughes' name on it, but it certainly wouldn't be as good (or even exist) without his money in it.

Re:The idea behind Gates Foundation

[TheSeer2]

Your first paragraph appears to attack the foundation and second appears to support it. What is your point exactly? Avoiding taxes? They're a freakin' charity. THEY ARE TAX EXEMPT. This is the worst attempt at a troll I've ever... ever seen. The reason they have to donate 5% a year is because that is a requirement of Warren Buffet's donation and if they don't donate that amount, Warren Buffet's contributions will cease.

Re:Surprised?

[CSMatt]

True, but try telling that to Joe Average.

Me: Bill Gates is a convicted monopolist who practices unethical business behavior.
Some person: OMG NOES HE ISNT HE STRTD A FUNDATON TO HLP TEH P00R!!!11!

Re:Surprised?

[palegray.net]

How many rich people do you count as close personal associates? Blanket statements like yours are irritating at best, and idiotic at worst. Let's talk about how much money you donate to charities. No? Fine... then consider this: whether it's a tax write-off or not, charitable foundations depend on the generosity of wealthy patrons to continue their work. That's just how the system is structured. Don't like it? Okay, work to get the tax benefits of charitable contributions eliminated. While you're at it, please explain to those who benefit from the monies donated to medical research, food programs, etc why they don't deserve the help.

I'm no Bill Gates fanboy (kinda hard to be when I refuse to use Microsoft products at home), but your position is ridiculous.

Misguided Gates references

[dreemernj]

The Gates foundation provides funding so long as there is adequate proof of where the funding is going and so long as it aligns with the broad vision the Gates foundation has. It sounds like this guy has problems with some of the scientists receiving Gates funding and he has problems with the fact that the Gates foundation has its own internal, closed decision making process that is only accountable to itself. But, that's to be expected. The Gates foundation introduced a level of accountability not seen before on a large scale. They did for international philanthropy what organizations like Pew did for philanthropy within the US.

The Gates foundation had to fight to bring any real accountability into these fields. If the WHO feels threatened its probably because they were pushing funds into opportunistic pockets up until the Gates foundation forced real accountability to happen.

Given the state of affairs up until now, if the Gates foundation did just create their own WHO-like organization, there's a good chance more people would be helped per dollar invested than are being helped by the WHO now.

The gates foundation is far from perfect. But they are inevitably going to take heat from threatening the lifeblood of the people at all levels of international philanthropy that have been skimming off the top of a very broken system.

Re:Surprised?

[canterbury rod]

-----------"Very, very few rich people are genuine philanthropists."

Why so cynical? There are many genuine philanthropists in this world and they certainly don't set up their foundations solely for the purpose of tax write-offs and providing as you say "cash cows." As Zig Ziglar put it, "I've been rich, and I've been poor. And frankly, it's better to be rich." Why, because you can help folks when you're rich. Me thinks, you think the rich are not genuine in their philanthropic endeavors. I beg to differ.

Re:Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid that you and many others have a complete misunderstanding of "tax write-offs." You don't magically make money by donating to charity. The money that you donate to charity is simply not taxable. All of the money that you keep is still taxable. By donating to charity, you will lose money no matter how much you save in tax writeoffs (and you will lose quite a bit more).

Very, very few rich people are genuine philanthropists.

I agree with you here, but Gates is indeed one of the few.

Monopoly Philanthropy

[sakusha]

Yep, I've been saying this for ages, and nobody believes me. It's like the old joke by Craig Kilborn:

"Bill Gates announced his initiative to eradicate the AIDS virus. He plans to buy all competing viruses and use his power of monopoly to drive the AIDS virus to extinction."

But this is no joke. Gates has established a monopoly on philanthropy and the addition of money from Warren Buffet has given even more power to the Gates Foundation. They don't fund charities, they assimilate them. It is impossible to fund any alternative charities when the overwhelming majority of monies are going to the Officially Approved Gates Foundation Charities. Those charities have become a monoculture, as this document asserts. And those charities are designed to get third-world companies hooked on first-world Big Pharmaceuticals. Guess what? Bill Gates is a major shareholder in Big Pharma, from Merck to Schering-Plough to a dozen others. Gates can't help but apply his business mindset to everything he does, he seeks to rebuild the world in his own image, even if this means working his will through phony philanthropy.
But what galls me the most is that the billions of dollars he's "donating" came out of the pockets of Microsoft customers: governments, corporations, and individuals. What diverse charities might WE have funded, if Bill Gates hadn't stolen those dollars from OUR wallets?

False dichotomy.

[TapeCutter]

This 'Joe Average' says he can be both.

Bill's new business card

[martin-boundary]

--------------------
William H Gates, III
--------------------
CATHERDER
[e-mail]
--------------------

Re:Business as usual

[Daniel Phillips]

It is of course quite possible that the person responsible for malaria efforts at the Gates foundation is a certified bitch - that alone does not justify the retarded "some oddly familiar-sounding tactics and attitudes" bullshit in the submission.

That alone? From the article:
Since it is not safe or practical to give Fansidar constantly to babies because it is a sulfa drug that can cause rare but deadly reactions and because Fansidar-resistant malaria is growing, World Health Organization scientists had doubts about it. Nonetheless, Kochi wrote, although it was "less and less straightforward" that the health agency should recommend it, the agency's objections were met with "intense and aggressive opposition" from Gates-backed scientists and the foundation.

So this is either truth or lies. If truth, it is alarming.

well, um..

[adam]

So what would be the average of both noble philanthropist and devious scammer?

I'd say: Human Being.

There is a great book by a primatologist named Franz De Waal ("Our Inner Ape" [amazon.com]), and the book largely deals with this subject, by speaking at lengths to the behaviors of various primates. The conclusion is, of course, that humans are not innately good or evil-- we have the capacity for both compassion and uncaring selfishness.

Re:Surprised?

[palegray.net]

Of course the donor and recipient would be better served in a direct exchange of currency. Now how do you get them in touch with each other to facilitate the transfer? How do you know they actually need the money, compared to someone else? That's where charitable fund raising foundations come into play, which cannot be effectively run on any large scale at zero cost. Like any other class of organization, there are good ones, bad ones, and some in between. In any event, the primary focus of the Gates Foundation is dispersing funds that are directly earned and controlled by, well, the Gates. Different animal entirely.

If you don't believe you accomplished anything in five years of working for a charity, why in God's name did you do it for that long? Surely you could have better spent your efforts elsewhere.

Re:Surprised?

[Bert64]

By donating to charity you will buy good PR, which is otherwise quite expensive.
You can also donate goods to charity, and claim a tax break relative to what they would have been sold at... This is designed for goods where there is a tangible cost to produce them and a small margin, and the tax break means that the company can afford to donate more goods for the same cost. But when it comes to software, which is virtually 100% profit, such a company actually directly profits from "giving" it to charity.

Also, for all the money the gates foundation (and other similar organizations) spends on medical research, how much of this research goes into the public domain, and how much goes to pharmaceutical companies owned by the very same people who own the foundations?
Similarly, how many of their donations come with strings attached, like "heres $1 million for drugs, but you have to buy all you're drugs from a specific company"... So the entire $1mil goes back to said drugs company, as does other money that came from other sources - a net win for the owners of the foundations. Similarly gates has been known to make "donations" on condition that various schools etc use microsoft software exclusively.

Genuine philanthropists would hand over money without any strings attached, and often do so anonymously, some big charities like oxfam receive large anonymous donations at times.

Re:Immortality

[gosand]

Most mega-billionaires give away their money in hopes of achieving immortality.

Exactly. The argument of "But they're giving away millions upon millions of dollars! How much do you donate?" doesn't hold water. If you look at the percentages, I give away more to charities each year than Bill Gates. Giving away 10% of billions isn't putting him in the poor house. I once calculated it, and if I gave away $2 it was the equivalent percentage of Bill Gates giving away a million. Will his million do more good than my 2? Sure. But he could give away 90% of what he's worth and still be very very wealthy. If I gave away 10% of my net worth, I would be struggling.

You can't deny the good that the amounts of money he's donated will do. But the term "generous" is not correct. He's buying a positive legacy, hence the name of his foundation. How can giving away millions of dollars not generous? When you have thousands of times that amount and giving it away has zero impact on your ability to live. I am not knocking him for starting the foundation, because he certainly didn't have to do it... but let's look at what it is in a realistic light.

Re:Surprised?

[Dekortage]

I worked in "charity" for five years. In all that time, I cannot name one thing other than "not having to fire anyone" that we accomplished.

If that's true, then you need to report it to the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance [give.org], as well as to Charity Navigator [charitynavigator.org] -- groups which track the return-on-investment aspects of charitable organizations.

If you truly and literally spent five years not helping anyone, your charity is a scam. This hardly means that all charities are scams; most are not.

As for connecting donors to recipients: sure, that's a nice idea, except for:

• Economies of scale. You get ten thousand donors together to buy food, supplies, etc., then you can get a lot more solution for your money.
• Addressing root problems. Sure, a thirsty family in Africa might be able to buy safe drinking water for a month on the $20 you send them. But it would be better if a bunch of people could collectively send over $2500 and build a new, clean-water well. Or if somebody organized the money together and built dozens of clean wells all over the region. There are tons of problems like this.
• The problem isn't always money. Sometimes the problem is education. Or identifying problems in service delivery. Or advocating for change in government policies. How would you solve these problems by sending your money to the needy people?

Sometimes direct support works well. Kiva [kiva.org] has a really interesting approach that seems to be successful, for example. But it's hardly the answer to every problem that nonprofits try to solve.