The recent headline Bill Dates Donates $750 Million to help fight AIDS, TB, Malaria, got me thinking. Does anyone else think that better could be done with this kind of money? Maybe it’s not PC to say, but while saving lives NOW is great and all, it’s not necessarily a long-term solution. What ideas do you folks have for better, longer-term projects that Bill Gates could theoretically be funding? I’m thinking things like education, cancer research… I mean, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has $33 Billion dollars. That could be used to double the US cancer research funding for ~5 years. I mean, its the kind of money that could fund an Apollo-like program, that’s how much money it is. Anyways, just wondering if anyone has any cool ideas.
Uh, on what planet is cancer research geared toward a long-term solution but HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria research is not? In all cases, the idea is to eradicate them not just for now but for all time, if there is any possible way on this Earth to do so.
ETA: OK so I didn’t read the article where it mentioned the shift from his usual approach of a vaccination search to treating current cases, but I’m pretty sure they are still putting a lot of money towards the long-term research in these areas as well.
It’s not the money Bill Gates spends, it’s that his foundations are geared toward managing the success of the projects funded. And Bill Gates invests heavily in biotech research so maybe you don’t see all the money he’s spending toward the goals you seek.
How much more money really needs to go towards cancer research? A shitload a year already does. Is the solution to curing cancer more money?
All I know is that the lifetime risk of dying from cancer is something like 22%, and it is incredibly costly. It seems kind of important, and it applies to everyone of our species, regardless of demographic. For example, even if the malaria problem is solved, or third world countries become first world, those people are still going to eventually die of something like cancer.
Probably. What else would?
And anyways, I’m curious if you have other ideas. It’s a lot of money. Lot’s of cool stuff could be done with it.
yes. It would be a cliche to say we’ve come a long way which we have but obviously we aren’t there yet. Like any research endeavor, the process usually spins off something that advances science in another area.
So a thousand times yes.
They already spend a lot of money on education in the US.
Cancer tends to affect older persons, while malaria often strikes the young and is therefore more important to fight.
I once thought fighting malaria might not be important: after all, Africa tends to overpopulation anyway. However, this is wrong thinking. Having one’s children diseased or dying dramatically reduces quality of life. And when child mortality declines, so do birth rates.
At risk of thread-hijack accusation, I will say that one very important service a rich philanthropist could perform would be to help educate the deluded American voter. (Of course it could be argued that the Koch brothers are already attempting to perform such a service. :dubious: :mad: :smack: )
As Jeff Sachs has pointed out, poor health in Africa is almost certainly one of the most crucial factors, if not “the” factor, underpinning why so much of the continent is an economic basket case. Even if you don’t care about the suffering of the people involved, all the lost productivity and all the aid resources that are consumed there have a global impact. Healthier economies in Africa would boost the world economy significantly.
It’s true that AIDS, malaria and TB are not the only health issues involved: there are lots of parasitic diseases, malnutrition, etc. But those three diseases are so prevalent and drain away so much economic potential that it makes perfect sense to focus on them first.
I’m all for cancer research and any other kind of research or activity that makes the world a better place. But one great thing about the Gates Foundation is that they have taken on diseases that were badly underfunded compared to their public health impact. Cancer research is uncontroversial and a “safe” target for donations, so it has always done relatively well when competing against other ailments for money. I don’t have the figures and I’m not going to do the research, but I’m pretty sure that cancer research was getting a LOT more attention than malaria research before Gates came along. He’s correcting an imbalance at the very least.
Not sure if you’re aware, but the three primary categories that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation support are global health, global poverty, and US education. And the money they dedicate to these is the single largest philanthropic undertaking in the history of the planet. Criticizing the B&MGF for not doing enough is like criticizing Elizabeth I for being a whore.
As far as I can tell, the foundation has spent in total less than 1% of one year’s worth of US education spending. That’s hardly an Apollo program (in fairness, US education spending is already ridiculously high). I’m curious if anyone has any ideas, rather than merely criticizing my half-hearted attempt to kick off the discussion with the generic examples of education or cancer research.
I also had the impression that the foundation was going after some “low-hanging fruit”. I.e., an additional $100 million in malaria prevention programs will almost certainly save more lives than an additional $100 million in cancer research funding.
They are two (incredibly weathly but still) people. I’m confused, it’s a well run foundation where most of the money donated goes directly to care or research with very little wasted on overhead and administration. They donate to health and education causes and they both deal with the present issues while working to prevent future ones.
Could you possibly have picked a harder target to complain about?
I think the malaria effort is very well chosen.
If you were to actually read my OP with any care, you would understand I am not really complaining. I don’t know much about how efficiently the Foundation spends its money. My assumption is that they are doing good. Just wondering if anyone thinks they have any better ideas. I don’t personally have any ideas I am in any way confident are better.
I think that their focus, ‘global health, global poverty, and US education,’ is a pretty excellent use of charitable giving.
There are other areas that could benefit the world - reducing corruption and abundant energy come to mind. However, I don’t think those are as amenable to charity based solutions. Corruption is a tough nut, and energy has enough value that the free-market is addressing it.
I guess my only quibble would be the focus on US education. As a member of team Red, White and Blue I appreciate it and see much room for improvement. I think there are two objectives of educational giving - increasing the general education of the populace at large to improve society as a whole, and to provide opportunities for the next Einstein, Salk, Shakespeare, etc. to impact the world rather than wasting their talents due to illiteracy. I think there’s more potential for both these effects outside the US due to lower costs and larger populations in need.
What guarantee do we have that spending $5 billion on cancer research will produce a cure in the next five years? No guarantee whatsoever. All we reasonably speculate (not even guarantee) is that doubling the money of cancer research over the next five years would lead to a cure for cancer five years sooner…whenever that may be. Meanwhile, not doubling the money still produces appreciable results.
On the other hand, if you take away funding for malaria, HIV/AIDS, TB, etc in Africa, you’ve stopped funding for malaria, HIV/AIDS, TB, etc in Africa. Which means more death in the short term and more death in the long term.
How is that better?
I think another thing to keep in mind is that increasing funding on already well funded initiatives is going to have less impact than you might think. As an immediate example, if it takes a cook 10 minutes to boil an egg, how long would it take 10 cooks to boil an egg? I agree with the notion that some amount of money donated to cancer research will probably result in less lives saved, both short and long term, and less improvement in quality of life than other diseases.
Yes, it’s nice to focus on long term goals, but we can’t focus JUST on long term either. It’s one thing to worry about people that might suffer at some point in the future, but it’s another to realize that people are suffering now. Yes, we can focus on improving education in the US, or clean energy and all of that, and those are good causes, but they will have less overall impact on lives. I think if we really want to make the most impact, we need to raise the minimum standards of living, and taking on these problems in Africa is going to not only have a larger long term impact for them, but probably do as much or more for the whole world in the long run because they can contribute to the world rather than being a resource hole.
As for other uses, I’d still think focusing on third world living conditions is the best use. To have an immediate and long term impact, perhaps investing in certain important aspects of infrastructure and education in those areas would ultimately make a little more efficient use of the money, it’s difficult to say.
Well, to continue to play the devil’s advocate: it depends. It would, for example, be a shame if 100 years down the line no long-term progress had been made, and we were still dumping the same money into the reduction of malaria for each subsequent generation. That’s not bad if it is saving lives, but given the lack of a long-term solution it may be a tremendous waste of money over the long-term. But as someone pointed out, reducing malaria (and AIDs etc) in the short-term may be one of the foundational things necessary for long-term economic growth. I like that argument, although I’m not sure in practice whether it will be what pushes Africa over the edge into a better long-term situation. I don’t know. I haven’t thought too deeply about it because I’m not at all an advocate of any particular direction (cancer research or otherwise); I am merely curious what kinds of “less safe” ideas people have that could potentially make a long-term impact with something like $33 billion dollars.
One of the last episodes of The West Wing showed C.J. Cregg being offered the job of running a (fictional, of course) foundation much like the Gates Foundation. She was asked what she would do with $10 billion and her response was to improve the roads in Africa, which would allow food aid to get more easily to those who need it. I don’t know if that’s what’s needed in the real world, but it was an interesting idea. The fact is that there is enough food in the world today, but corruption and inefficiency means that a lot of it rots before it ever gets to anyone who needs it.