Gates Foundation launches $12M Grand Challenge for universal flu vaccine | Hacker News Reader

Gates Foundation launches $12M Grand Challenge for universal flu vaccine

geekwire.com

63 pointsdoener61 comments

To put $12 million in perspective, its estimated that much is wasted on crappy medical research every 35-40 minutes:

http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2016/01/14/paul-glasziou-and-iain-c...

It's interesting to think about -- we're nowhere near this level of sophistication currently, but will evolved viruses and bacteria eventually cease to be a threat once we thoroughly understand the proteome, and can simulate biological systems well enough to come up with vaccines in faster-than-evolutionary timeframes?

I'd expect such a world to include a dramatically increased thread of bioterrorism, however.

I don't foresee that happening for a while, if ever - even if we could make a plug-and-play vaccine framework, all it would take would be one benign-or-otherwise infectious organism coming up with a mechanism to effectively minimize vaccine response going forward without too much selection pressure against it, and then those infected would need some treatment beyond simply informing the adaptive parts of the immune system where to nuke. (And that's ignoring the faster-than-realtime simulation requirements at a truly staggering scale to keep up with the microorganisms involved.)

The thing I find most promising, these days, are results that show fundamentally different types of treatment (like phage therapy, or some of the stranger results with internal parasites) can be used in combination to weaken antibiotic resistance of resistant strains, and then you can wash out the remnants with those same antibiotics. [1] [2]

[1] - https://news.yale.edu/2018/03/08/bacteria-hunting-virus-fish...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy

I really hope Gates gets nominated for a Nobel Prize. He deserves it.

He robbed value from society by monopolizing the operating systems market with extremely nasty business practices. We are still suffering. Now he gets oodles of credit for throwing the change back at humanitarian projects which sometimes bear fruit. I'll change my mind about him when he donates 10 billion to open source software to offset the damage his company has done. It would be ideal if he gave the rest of his loot to democratic systems that allow local people to decide where to put the money. We don't need kings or emperors.

> Now he gets oodles of credit for throwing the change back at humanitarian projects which sometimes bear fruit.

They're thought to have saved 6 Million lives...

And a monopolized OS market has probably cost zero lives.

I'd let corporations get away with way worse if the profits were always used like this.

It's a counterfactual- I suspect we'd have more advanced technology in other sectors and more global economic opportunity across the board if Microsoft hadn't abused their monopoly power and slowed progress in computing advancements, which could also have saved lives indirectly... but we'll never know.

> slowed progress in computing advancements

What? How does your operating system limit the kind of computing that you can do?

Furthermore, how can you say that Microsoft's monopoly position didn't actually allow them to accelerate the progress of computing even further than their competitors might have otherwise?

Look up what "counterfactual" means. Sure, it's possible the world is a better place because of the Microsoft monopoly, just as the Microsoft apologists claim.

I’d argue the business practices of Microsoft in the 1990s and 2000s have set the technology industry back at least a decade. The side effect of this is lives of toil instead of productivity. May have saved six million lives but cost a billion people a future they could have had.

Could you elaborate? Setting us back by a decade seems like a pretty bold claim. And I say this as someone that, on balance, despises the Microsoft of the past (for monopolistic behaviour) and present (for spyware and normalizing hardware lockdown).

It's definitely a bold claim and one people don't want to discuss. Bar the points you mentioned, mainly that they seriously stunted the rise of the Internet and world wide web. When it did take off, due to market share and mindset, they actively locked people into their vision of it. People are still, right now in 2018, trying to escape some of their grasp. There's still ActiveX out there. Plus the damage they did to Java for example.

> I'd let corporations get away with way worse if the profits were always used like this.

You must be kidding right? Its like saying stealing is OK as long as its used well.

Stealing from the (relatively speaking) super rich can be, in some circumstances, according to a sufficiently utilitarian moral framework. One could argue that's what progressive taxes are all about.

I admit it's hard for me to quantify the damage Microsoft's business practices have caused (any helpful links/sources?), but it's extremely difficult to imagine it being worse than not saving millions of lives.

Gates could be, with little imagination, be a modern-day Robin Hood. Stealing from those rich enough to be able to worry about computers and bit sequences, and then giving back the money to the truly needy in the world.

I have zero knowledge of ethics and philosophy, but in the grand scheme of things, when you consider humanity as a whole and ignore Silicon Valley, it's all good. Even admirable.

Nah, I lived through the entire period. Human nature is the reason we had a Microsoft monopoly. Apple didn’t care enough. The Linux people wanted lots of distributions, and couldn’t build a consumer business model with a gun to their heads.

Open Office was, and is, a piece of garbage.

I wasted a lot of time explaining to people that if we all bought our cars from GM, they would suck. That’s what Microsoft was.

Just let it go.

Although, it sure would have been nice if the Amiga carved out 10% market share.

> Human nature is the reason we had a Microsoft monopoly.

They straight up bribed the regulators. If Office stored data in an easy-to-parse open format, society may well have already created a universal flu vaccine.

> If Office stored data in an easy-to-parse open format, society may well have already created a universal flu vaccine.

Help me connect those dots please.

That’s a really narrow view of the world by someone that’s probably never sold to business. MS products worked exactly the way people who were paid for them care they worked.

To put things in perspective, people felt something similar towards Alfred Nobel before his death and the establishment of the Nobel Foundation. He was nicknamed "The Merchant of Death".

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/m...

Andrew Carnegie wasn't exactly a saint either when he was in business.

His foundation is doing a lot of good but merely giving money away should not be grounds for a Nobel.

That should be for people who actually dedicate their lives to doing good. Gates is facilitating other people doing good. He’s like Alfred Nobel himself, not like the recipients.

He should fund the Gates prize (a-la Nobel prize) with a few Billion dollars then.

> nominated for a Nobel Prize.

After forcing OEMs to install Windows for decades, yeah he does deserve a kind of prize but I am not thinking about the same one. Your present does not redeem your past actions.

Perhaps, but I'm not sure we should punish good behavior like this. He is doing it, his peers are not.

Larry Page's family foundation is participating in this grant program.

Is not getting a Nobel a 'punishment'?

What can redeem your past actions then?

I'd guess the proposition here is "you can wipe away your past good with evil, but you can't wipe away your past evil with good."

Sounds a bit too "never forgive, and never forget" for me.

A proper apology would be meaningful. I don't have strong feelings about whether what he's doing 'offsets' what he's done, but going on the record and apologizing would go a long way to get me off that particular fence.

A time machine, I would imagine.

Well, he certainly goes out of his way to make sure his name is attached to everything, which is one prerequisite to being positioned well for a Nobel.

In which category?

this is obscene. he deserves a prize.... for what? microsoft? ruthlessly monopolizing the market in the 90s? having a fortune?

It's so disturbing to see people bow down to the billionaire class and think that they earned their wealth through normal, good guy means.

I think this is a fair criticism.

Gates is exceptionally rich in the purest sense of exceptional. He's been the richest person on earth almost every year for over a decade.

When you're at that level you have to wonder what is really left to do but cultivate your legacy? Gates had developed a persona in the business world that did not bode well for a positive obituary. The Gates Foundation doesn't strike me so much as admirable as logical.

Dude, he's been the richest person for over _two decades_ almost every year starting from year 1995.

There were years where he wasn't #1 I just was covering my bases by not trying to oversell it and get hit with some gotcha.

> he deserves a prize.... for what?

For the Gates Foundation?

Nobel Peace Prize? Yeah he should. We all know the kind of relevance Peace Prize nowadays have. Gate's foundations activities in India has come under the scanner for medicine testing and other such practices.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/bio...

FFS, for what?

He is not even good at giving money away. He just made sure the WHO is under his control and gives all contracts to companies he has a stake in.

> I really hope Gates gets nominated for a Nobel Prize. He deserves it.

For creating a monopoly and setting back computer science and computing by decades? For sheltering his billions from taxes in a family controlled charity?

It's amazing what tens of millions in PR spending/campaign can do for a billionaire's reputation. There are people who actually believe bill gates is a good guy.

In 30 years, zuckerburg will retire, shelter his money in a family controlled "charity" and hire a top notch PR firm and the naive people will demand he be proclaimed a saint.

> For sheltering his billions from taxes in a family controlled charity?

Yes, this is the part I'm happy about the most. Money is better spent by him than by the government.

I don't get it. How is putting all of your money in an active and effective charity worse than the default option (stashing it overseas somewhere)?

Also, is the argument that the federal government would make better use of the money than what it's being used for now (effective medical research)?

What has he done to deserve it?

Between a potential universal flu vaccines and Norovirus vaccines[0], a lot of currently common illnesses could be slashed in the future. Exciting time to be alive and hopefully not be getting sick. The Norovirus one could also be interesting for another reason, it might be the first vaccine you swallow instead of is injected.

[0] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180302005118/en/Vax...

There's plenty of oral vaccines on the market.

A big one is polio.

I’d pay any amount to get rid of Norovirus.

That seems like a small prize relative to the cost of vaccine development.

And compared to the profits certain to be reaped if you were successful in developing it.

It's not a prize, it's a grant program.

Organizations working along the lines of the challenge can apply for an initial grant of up to $2 million and then some more if things are going well. The idea is to identify underfunded ideas and reduce that particular problem.

Aren't you basically printing money once you have a universal vaccine for the flue? I imagine 12m will be peanuts in comparison.

But then why would $12M be an incentive?

It's not. It's something you throw at the people who did it without your help to attach your name to their accomplishments.

Sauna with a cold is a recipe for spreading it to others, I think. I tend to avoid it out of consideration for others.

But isn't the virus inside of you at a higher temperature than that? You can't change your body temperature without problems so how do you plan on killing viruses by heat once you're already infected?

> Edit: People has started to downvote without any logical explanation.

They are talking about more serious virus which are more dangerous than common cold virus.

I think about pink spotted aardvarks when I feel I’m about to come down with a cold. The cold usually doesn’t come. This is a lot quicker and less sweaty than the sauna trick.

Headline is:

> Gates Foundation launches $12M Grand Challenge for universal flu vaccine

Story 16 years ago on The Register (an agency undeniably prone to hyperbole & sarcasm, but also fiercely committed to truth in reporting):

> Gates gives $100 million to fight HIV, $421 million to fight Linux [1]

Right now the Gates Foundation is sitting on around 38,000 million (USD)

The foundation has some non-trivial criticisms [2]

Whenever anything about Bill's activities comes up in the modern era there's several demographics that appear - people wary of lionising people whose wealth was obtained at best unethically (at worst, illegally) - through to ends-justifies-the-means types.

Some commonly understood context around why different groups have vastly different takes on these announcements would be good for everyone involved.

[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/13/gates_gives_100m_to...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...

EDIT: For any astroturfers keen to discourage comparative analysis, I'm happy to engage in an actual discussion around this. I appreciate it's a complex subject full of subtle nuances.

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