Oct 31 2005
Bill Gates’ Very Visible Hand
New Yorker article Oct 24 2005 “What Money Can Buy”
Related news: “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $258.3 million to fight malaria.”
General impression/summary:
Bill Gates is a passionate, caring person. He is sincerely devoted to the cause.
Some highlights:
B&M Gates foundation’s endowment is $29 Billion, more than the GDP of Tanzania
Currently, it is bit less than half of of his networth.
The malaria story:
After WWII, malaria-control compaigns were initiated in many countries, with the effective help of DDT.
Malaria was eradicated from US in 1951—”completely unknown to childrenand largely forgotten by adults”
In 3rd world countries: S. Africa, Sri Lanka, and Mozambique, after extensive spraying, malaria almost vanished. So were the cases in SE Asia.
Soon DDT was seen as devastating to wildlife and mosquitoes had begun to grow resistant to it.
Six years after Sri Lanka stopped using it, the number of case rose from 17 to half of a million.
Some facts:
IN Ghana, child mortality increased by 7% for every 100 meter that children were away from nets
—How did they measure that?
In 2003, fewer that 5% of children living in sub-Saharan Africa slept under nets.
Gates foundation is run by ex-MS executive Patty Stonesifer (—any relation to the dirty o’man in Boeing?) who is married to Michael Kinsley (—an enlarged version of Martin Short). They lived across Lake Washington and the Gates visited them by power boat.
When discussion how to spend their money, Bill Gates first option was population control and thought “that improving the world’s health might even run counter to the goal”. It was his wife who first suggested concentrating on global health.
On the eve of Bill Gates’ wedding, his mother wrote a letter to Melinda in which she stressed the great opportunities the two would have as a couple to improve the world—and the unique responsibilities that came with immense wealth. “It was really quite beautiful”, Melinda recalled.
Bill Gates approached a former CDC director, Bill Foege, for advise. “The guy came to me and said he wanted to learn about public health and he watned to help… Rich people say that all the time. I gave him a list of 82 books. I saw him a couple of month later and I asked, ‘How are you doing on those books?’ And he said, ‘Well, I have been so damn busy I have read only 19 of them.’ ” When Foege realized Gates was serious, he signed up as an adviser.
One of Gates’ favorite reading from the list was a World Bank report, 329 pages long and full of details. It focussed on the concept of the “disability-adjusted life year” (DALY).
How Bill Gates attracted the attention of other scientists: “If you had more money, what would you do?”
“We gave a small grant at first, like $30million dollars, and everybody said, ‘Wow! That is the greatest increase in nongovernment spending in the history of malaria research!’ And I thought, Oh, you are kidding.”
—Bill Gates