Christoph Reuss wrote:
I am right now watching a program on PBS about current world medical
crises and solutions, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
World medical crises sponsored by Gates? Like Gilead-Rummy's flu? ;-}
The program also showed the example of a Johns Hopkins opthalmalogist
who, in the process of trying to alleviate night blindness among children in
poor countries, not only found a very cheap cure (vitamin A), but also
found that giving the vitamin A would not just stop the night blindness but
also save hundreds of thousands from dying of other diseases. The doctor
encountered rejection from the medical establishment because his
discovery was "too good to be true". Finally he did more tests and
the resistence apparently has faded, but now the problem is how to get the
poor children to the cheap vitamin A, in these countries.
Obviously, all this ties in with the -- so it seems, very laudable --
efforts of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve the health
of the world's poor.
The problem with Gates' "philantropy" is that it is a hypocritical pretext
to fund the pharma and genetic tinkering industry, which in turn buys his
software. I wouldn't be surprised if the vitamin A story above was
carefully picked to push "Golden Rice", a PR operation of the GM industry.
(genetically vit.A-"enriched" rice which would be a much more expensive and
impractical way to supply poor people with enough vit.A than simple vitamin
pills)
I'll let others with more facts argue against what you have said here,
but I think your cynicism here goes beyond what cynicism is
warranted (and I do think a lot of cynicism about
Mr. Microsoft is warranted).
Gates, in his *foundation*, from all I've read, however,
seems to be doing good things: leveraging low-tech /
low per-capita cost
methods to accomplish a lot of public health benefit in
the poorest countries.
On the other hand, I would *also* like to see Bill Gates experiment with
improving work life for middle class persons in the first world by
transforming Microsoft into an industrial democracy, where the fact that
the co-product of all labor is the conditions of labor of the laborer would
be self-reflectively thematized into the conditions of the workers' labor.
Actually, Gates' 3rd-world operations are quite consistent with his
software business practices...
Perhaps he provides free on-site flu shots to all his employees?
However, the point I was aiming at is that, after persons' bellies are
full but not distended, when their needs at the base of Maslow's
pyramid have been securely met, they will look for meaning in
their lives, and I think that here, *too*, Bill Gates has the resources
to be doing
something creative.
\brad mccormick
Chris
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Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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