Gates Fights Balkanization of AIDS Research
via Wall Street Journal:
Frustrated that over two decades of research have failed to produce an AIDS vaccine, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates is tying his foundation’s latest, biggest AIDS-vaccine grants to a radical concept: Those who get the money must first agree to share the results of their work in short order.
Even as AIDS researchers around the world strive toward a common goal, they do so largely independent of one another due to a mix of commercial interests, bureaucratic jostling and personal rivalries. Like most biomedical research, results of AIDS-related studies are often carried out in secrecy, with successes and failures closely held until they are published in scientific journals months later.
So far, attempts to come up with a vaccine that produces protective antibodies to block infection by the wily and shape-shifting AIDS virus have been a “miserable failure,” says Nick Hellmann, interim director of HIV projects at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Now, Mr. Gates’s family foundation is putting $287 million new, five-year grants behind the notion that pooling results can surmount the massive technical hurdles that have hindered individual, sometimes-competing efforts.
Bill Gates gets more out of Africa than he gives. THe companies that he invests in pollute the African land causing more health problems than he is correcting with his donations.See http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Comment by RandallJones — July 7, 2007 @ 5:46 pm