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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

Almost all studies of this kind are extremely confounded because food survey data is close to universally bad. It is especially bad on this topic in the US and UK, because many people's idea of a serving of meat is actually closer to fried breaded bread, with condiment levels of meat on top. It would be crazy to lump those people in with the "steak and eggs for dinner 3 times a week" crowd, but they always are.

Results are different, often opposite, in countries that have a better relationship to meat, like the big Austrian food survey study from 2014: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917888/

> Moreover, our results showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with poorer health (higher incidences of cancer, allergies, and mental health disorders), a higher need for health care, and poorer quality of life.

Other survey data across several countries often replicate the meatless = lower mental health claims, eg: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2020.1...

(This should come as no surprise to people who have read about B12 and mental health, which is a relationship so extraordinary that I'm surprised its not more front-and-center.)

But again, food survey data is generally bad. Some are okay, when they are very focused, like the Swedish studies on dairy product consumption. But most of them are bad, and the more general, the worse they are.

View on HN

Food surveys and food diaries are hilariously bad[1]. I'm surprised any studies based on them are still getting published.

There was literally a reality TV show in England based around how terribly inaccurate food diaries are. It's on YouTube[2].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4527547/figure/...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=secret+eaters

Studies like this are published for political reasons, not scientific reasons. I wouldn't be surprised if the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is behind this study.

The study’s funding is included in the study:

Funding

This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust, Our Planet Our Health (Livestock, Environment and People - LEAP) [grant number 205212/Z/16/Z]; Cancer Research UK [grant numbers C8211/A19170 and C8211/A29017]; and the UK Medical Research Council [grant number MR/M012190/1]. AP-C is supported by a Cancer Research UK Population Research Fellowship [grant number C60192/A28516] and by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF UK), as part of the WCRF International grant programme [grant number 2019/1953].

In fairness, he's not far off. The Wellcome Trust was established by a pharmaceutical magnate and is the fourth-richest charitable organization in the world, with an endowment of ~$40bn.

I think the point was that Bill Gates is believed to be in favor of hyperprocessed meat alternatives & has invested in some. (I don't know the details here - I'm guessing many of his detractors don't know them either.)

I'm not sure whether Wellcome has a similar real or perceived conflict of interest. I did think it was interesting that they showed a lower instance of Afib and varicose veins across the meat eaters...

Right so if you look at LEAP[0] they talk about how "global average consumption of meat and dairy is rising, driven by increasing incomes and population growth ... livestock production can have major environmental impacts ... Livestock production is also a major source of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, increases water scarcity in some regions and can exacerbate soil erosion ... LEAP programme aims to understand the health, environmental, social and economic effects of meat and dairy production and consumption to provide evidence and tools for decision makers to promote healthy and sustainable diets"

They also have a brief explainer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGpjeyypKMU&feature=emb_logo

I'm not going to call this a nefarious conspiracy, but in the same way you might wonder about a study funded by Coca Cola, LEAP doesn't sound like they'd want to fund a study concluding "eating beef is much healthier than soy protein"

If you combine that with the original criticism about the poor study design, you can come to your own conclusions about whether to reduce your meat consumption.

[0] https://www.leap.ox.ac.uk/about

Actually, looks like the Gateses have in the past funded the Wellcome Trust.

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Gran...

So the Gates want to prevent Malaria and Pneumonia. What's the issue?

He wants to tell you what you can and can’t eat. He’s on a fake meat kick rn.

The Wellcome Trust is a huge organisation that receives funding from many sources and funds a huge number of projects with it. And they are just one of several funders of this project.

If Bill Gates was that desperate to control what you eat, I'd suggest he could find more effective ways than funding completed unrelated work specifically at the Wellcome Trust starting a decade ago, in the hope that one day he could use his connections to pressure them to give a modest amount of their own money to a study that will likely not have any major impact politically.

This looks to me like a desperate attempt to find an agenda where there isn't one, verging on constituency theory terrain.

Even if that were true, what kind of issue would that be if Bill Gates wanted people to get fewer easily preventable illnesses?

There’s zero hard evidence that red meat consumption leads to bad health outcomes. It’s all epidemiological fud.

Why are people so comfortable with billionaires telling them how to live?

>Why are people so comfortable with billionaires telling them how to live?

Has it occurred to you that billionaires can be using their resource for good? In your cynical world nothing can ever get done because ordinary people don't have the resources to do good, and the people who are resourced and want to do good are shooed away because people like you

That show is incredible. Thanks for sharing. There’s a corollary with Covid in there somewhere: “we’re taking this so seriously” (but then hanging out with friends etc, like that SNL skit).

To further concur, when I was engineering my own body composition improvement plan I quickly learned to completely ignore any study that wasn’t performed in a controlled metabolic ward. Which is, essentially, a voluntary prison. Needless to say participant compensation is considerably more costly than the totally unscientific alternatives so such studies are rare.

Can you share some links to studies done in a metabolic ward that contradict survey-based studies?

I don't have any links handy, this was years ago and I didn't save them. Scholar search or something similar should find you plenty of hits though for metabolic ward. My interest was primarily in nutrient partitioning and thermic effects of food. I want to clarify that I don't claim that survey-based studies necessarily or even predominantly make incorrect claims, just that I am not satisfied with their basis for making such claims.

Daily meat consumption is probably something people can gauge with a high degree of accuracy. People in developed countries are probably all-or-nothing unless they are actively trying to reduce their meat consumption while not being vegetarian.

To be honest, the abstract says:

> and most of the positive associations observed for meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjustment for body mass index (BMI)

> higher BMI accounted for a substantial proportion of these increased risks suggesting that residual confounding or mediation by adiposity might account for some of these remaining associations

The numbers in the abstract should control for BMI (but not adiposity, i.e. bodyfat percentage). They're probably also too high.

To clarify: I'm 100% in agreement with you. I think meat gets a bad rap for bad reasons (one of them being bad science). I just wanted to point out this study did some effort (even if they could have done more) and that does deserve to be said.

One problem some studies suffer is over-control of confounding variables, which excludes secondary causal relationships. For example, if you control for health of arteries, you will find that (insert bad food here) known culprits for heart disease stop causing heart disease -- which would seem absurd. That's because artery health and heart disease are correlated (in this case causally related), so when you control condition one on the other, any causes vanish (completely or partially).

In this case in particular they control for BMI. If eating less meat is helpful in lowering BMI, this effect isn't captured by this result. So you have to watch out for this when taking conclusions from a study or making decisions (if you already have a low BMI then you can trust the conclusions better).

I think this overstates what this single study can say about the effects of a vegetarian diet. The NHS did create a page about that study due to the media attention it got, and they conclude:

> Despite the media headlines, the results from this Austrian cross sectional survey provide no proof that vegetarians are in poorer health than meat eaters.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200427104728/https://www.nhs.u...

B12-deficient crowd here—not just mental health. The potential impact a lack of B12 can have on you physically is catastrophic.

I have to be mindful that I make myself eat a steak once in a while. On a regular day my skin lacks a lot of colour these days. If I forget to eat the right things I start to fog up, emotions waver, mood falters, and can even get clumsy. (Couple this with some latent pancreatic problems and it's worse)

The unfortunate thing about it, is it tends to progress even if you're making an effort unless you're making enough of an effort and it can be so creeping and insidious as to leave you unaware until you've done irreparable harm to yourself, either by diet or a physical defect.

Horrible stuff, this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559316/ (read: your body will more or less start falling apart)

If you eat meat from industry chances are that your b12 vitamin comes from supplements. B12 supplement is very very cheap and everyone should supplement.

While I agree that taking some B12 supplement is probably a good idea for a lot of people, I don't think statements like that can be made so readily.

For one, nutritional studies tend to point to whole foods being the way to go to gain the nutrients required by your body because of the vastly complex interplay of absorption and the related catalysts. And in many cases, it's easy to overdo it on specific vitamins, especially when they're isolated and concentrated. (https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h..., https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/WYNTK-Consumer/)

Secondly, I'm not sure what your first statement is intended to mean. When I eat meat, it's from usually chickens, turkeys, some fish, crustaceans, and occasionally western pig and cow (and even more occasionally, game animals).

As always, it's something each person should go over with their doctor—especially vegans or vegetarians who don't want to begin (or return to) eating meat.

What the parent probably meant:

B12 is synthesized by bacteria, algae and yeasts, not directly by the animals we eat. There's a theory that due to the conditions that most animals are farmed in nowadays - the environment and standardized and monotonous feed - they would be B12-deficient themselves if not for supplementation.

So most of the B12 you find in factory-farmed animals might be from supplements in animal feed. Just like how farmed salmon and eggs have a nice color because of supplementation. Check this out: https://nutrition.basf.com/global/en/animal-nutrition/use-ar...

Here's another chemical company that recommends supplementation of B12 for cows:

https://www.dsm.com/anh/en_US/products/vitamins/vitamin-nutr...

That may be, but the mechanism through which B12 is absorbed in humans is the same whether or not the animal received a supplement or not. It's the process of uptake through the diet that is the part that is concerning to humans.

More simply, the mechanisms involved in uptake by eating beef that received a B12 supplement is still very different from directly supplementing so the comparison should never be drawn.

As an aside: I would be skeptical of any chemical company's recommendations to the agricultural industry at large...

Thanks for the info.

It is apparent to me from living life that meat is a big part of a healthy diet. But it can be frustrating seeing studies such as this one come out and not knowing what to believe.

I recently started dating a vegetarian and am really realizing how much harder it is to eat a healthy vegetarian diet. Since no one actually wants to eat nothing but greens / veggies all day, many of her meals are carb heavy to fill up, with little protein. I'm not saying you can't be a healthy vegetarian - but it's harder. There are no good meal analogues for something like grilled chicken with a sweet potato/veggies on the side.

Vegetarianism has been a (mandatory!) prestige marker in India for at least several hundred years; a traditional diet of that type will be adequately healthy[1]. What's hard is cutting meat out of a meat-based diet. You can't expect to just intuit how to fill the holes it leaves.

[1] As with all traditional practices, partial adoption may result in loss of any amount of the benefit, including amounts greater than 100%.

Also applying diets from one genetic cluster in a different one from another climate is asking for trouble. I can process lactose fine, but many can't. Chickpeas and lentils I do not absorb well.

It is a risk, but it's still true that the Indian vegetarian diet will cover all major dietary needs. And while that's not the most ringing endorsement, it's more than you can say for cutting meat out of a diet that features a lot of meat.

How much dairy protein is in such a diet? A lot of the curries I enjoy have yogurt and I love the cheese and cream in palak and saag paneer. But those may not be normal dishes?

I don't know, though my first guess would have been that the major source of protein would be lentils or other pulses. Yogurt is certainly plausible as well.

In England eating beef has been a prestige marker for at least several hundred years[1]. A traditional diet of that type will be more than adequately healthy. What’s hard is getting over ancient superstitions about animals being reincarnated people and then rationalizing that it’s actually healthy for an omnivorous species to abandon eating meat.

Or maybe there’s no reason to believe that a diet that’s healthy for Indians is necessarily healthy for Europeans or vice versa.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6043908-beef-and-liberty

There are plenty of good substitutes for chicken that are rich in protein, some even complete proteins. Flavor them however you like. Tofu, tempeh, seitan, chickpeas, portabella mushroom, quinoa, lentils, just to name a few. And then there's the actual chicken analogues like Morningstar and Beyond Chicken, which are pretty good and realistic. I am completely satisfied with any of these and some veggies on the side, even without added carbs, although I do love me some carbs too. (Background: have been vegetarian for 15 years.)

Just look to biology for the answers, its there if you pay attention.

The leader of a wolf pack gets first pickins at a kill, and it always eats the liver first.

Large carnivores elsewhere eat organs first as well.

There's a growing body of research for something that's being called the "carnivore" diet, and there's a sub-movement called "eating nose-to-tail" that seems to be, as best as I can tell, led by a physician named Dr. Paul Saladino, M.D., although the usual suspects are always on his podcast, or he's on theirs and/or associated with him: Dr. Dominic D'Agostino, Dr. Shawn Baker, M.D., etc.

Its basically exactly what you would expect... eating a lot of heart, liver, kidneys, along with skeletal muscle, etc.. I tried to do it, but I love things like french fries, roasted potatoes, roasted Brussel sprouts, etc. way too much. The biomarkers on this diet look amazing, but its always the same "problem". The people who are evangelical about eating this way are also huge into fitness, oftentimes spending an hour or more a day exercising.

I'd like to see 100 total lazy fatasses on a nose-to-tail carnivore diet and 100 total lazy fatasses on a vegetarian diet for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years, and do weekly workups on them... blood pressure, fasting glucose, post-prandial glucose, and so on.

If you would like organ meats but don't like the texture there are meat pills that contain an equal portion of each organ type that are desiccated. These [1] are the ones I use.

[1] - https://shop.ancestralsupplements.com/collections/frontpage/...

Fantastic. Thank you very much. Any idea how many you should take daily? I didn't really see anything on that page, although judging by the amount of capsules per bottle, I would assume 6 per day? 180 caps / 30 days = 6?

I think that should be based on your dietary requirements and what amino acid and vitamin gaps you are trying to fill. There are breakdowns of the vitamin content somewhere on their site and I think I also found it in the Amazon questions section. I use 6 when I only have protein shakes but I use less when I eat a complete meal. That is just my personal preference.

Another leader in the diet realm is Sean baker, a surgeon, who runs meatrx.com. That website contains a large repository of video testimony from people who have done the carnivore diet. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, each one making eyebrow raising claims. They include remission of asthma, arthritis, MS, anxiety, depression, chronic skin rash, brain fog and many many more things. That repository will convert literally anyone to a carnivore believer. There is even one guy who measured his CAC before and after, and his CAC was significantly lower after. This not only goes against the prediction of mainstream medicine, it is something that is thought to be impossible under any circumstances whatsoever. Carnivore is insanely OP. People get ripped, shredded without ever going to the gym. They become slim and metabolically healthy. Men’s testosterone go up. Couples that have been trying to get pregnant for years are able to get pregnant. I’ve watched hundreds of those videos and it’s case closed in my mind. It’s the healthiest diet we know of.

That being said, it sucks. I tried it and I couldn’t do it. Not eating any of the foods you like fucking sucks. And the adjustment period is brutal, with nausea and watery stools. Electrolytes are a constant problem. Once you get past the one month mark it’s supposed to level out, but I’ve never been tough enough to last a month.

> That being said, it sucks. I tried it and I couldn’t do it. Not eating any of the foods you like fucking sucks. And the adjustment period is brutal, with nausea and watery stools. Electrolytes are a constant problem. Once you get past the one month mark it’s supposed to level out, but I’ve never been tough enough to last a month.

Yeap, everything you just said here was exactly my experience too.

The bit about a vegetarian diet being associated with a higher incidence of cancer is kind of jarring to me. As I've always heard that leaning more towards whole/raw foods and more vegetables were better for avoiding cancer.

Now that may be because of your top point, most of the meat consumed in the US is processed in some way. I think the biggest culprit of meat-related cancer (?) is preserved meats.

I don't know. I just wanted to admit to being a little shocked at the whole vegetarian/cancer link. You often hear the opposite of that.

The reality is that there is a difference between vegan/vegetarian and whole food plant based diets. I am sure if you eat beyond burgers (processed meatless patties) everyday, you aren't doing your health any favors.

I mean potato chips are vegan. French fries are vegan, etc.

The key is whole foods. Unprocessed foods.

Fun fact: Oreos are vegan, still magically not good for you.

Most of the vegetarians/vegans I know have a pretty shitty diet - lots of highly processed grains (bread, pasta, and other fillers), sweets, desserts, sugary drinks (and other "regular" products with added sugars), and otherwise not too diverse of a diet.

Don't know if that's a representative sample of vegetarian/vegan population, but it's not unlikely the case. Hence, the link between the veg* diet and cancer is not hard to imagine.

The main issue with (a lot of) these research papers, other than having bad data to begin with, is the lack of control for other parameters: what exactly do those surveyed meat-eaters and vegetarians eat, and what their lifestyle choices are (e.g., vegetarians are generally more health-conscious, so they often exercise, don't smoke/drink as much, etc.).

> Don't know if that's a representative sample of vegetarian/vegan population, but it's not unlikely the case.

There are a lot of vegetarians in India on traditional diets that don't include highly processed foods with added sugar. I think it's safe to say that most Indians eat vegetarian food most of the time. Meat is just something most people in India can't afford everyday.

> Most of the vegetarians/vegans I know have a pretty shitty diet

In my observations (I'm in the US) this statement is true of the majority of the population, including omnivores. 2/3 of the US didn't become overweight (1/3 obese) by being mindful of their diets.

I think it's worth understanding why someone is a 'veggie'.

For me it was for standard 'moral' reasons and so eating junk food is still acceptable.

Eventually I picked up the health reasons angle (and discarded all the junk food) and moving to mostly a plant based diet (mostly vegan).

Try reading a book about carnivore diet. It's the complete opposite of the bone-breaking with no muscle-mass vegan diet, maybe it has some type of truth in it ;).

It’s really not surprising. You’re almost sure to be eating pesticides or weird chemicals even if you go fully organic. You can’t get it off by rinsing or washing. Plus, as has just become clear recently, carbohydrates are highly inflammatory, and inflammation plays a key role in cancer, heart disease, psychiatric disease and almost every other modern malady. It turns out that when you go from eating few carbs to zero carbs, tons of health problems, all centered around inflammation, go away. Carnivore is a miracle for allergies and skin problems. It’s really one of the biggest medical/diet revolutions that’s currently in the pipes. Certainly so when it comes to bang for buck.

I expect the correlation of cancer and vegetarian diets is the "sick quitters" bias [0]. People try to improve their diet once they experience a health problem.

[0] https://www.cancercouncil.com.au/blog/the-sick-quitter-effec...

I'll start by saying that I am vegan, but not ignorant. Thank you for the links to studies. I've never before read about B12 and mental health. I do make sure I supplement but I'm going to read these nonetheless.

A huge number of diehard carnivores are decades long vegans. Because vegans are the most health conscious people on the planet. This includes Paul saladino, The Godfather of carnivore.

As with most studies there is some criticism about this and how it "changed" overtime:

https://jacknorrisrd.com/austrian-vegetarian-study-making-wa...

In a similar way, if you reduce your meat consumption by 80%, you're 80% of the way to the environmental benefits of a wholly vegan diet. Isn't it easier to convince someone to reduce their meat intake than to eliminate it completely?

Probably not.

My favorite trivia here is a study which documented that, of people who self-describe as "vegetarian", one third will admit to having eaten meat in the past one (1) week.

That's a broad stroke you're painting!

Maybe a lot of people want to try and be a 'vegetarian' (I dunno to sound cool?), try it for 3 months and fail constantly. These aren't vegetarians, just pretentious.

I've been a 'veggie' for 25 years and I haven't eaten meat, nor anyone else who I know who are.

I eat mostly vegan and I have a bite of meat from my partner's plate about once a week. I want to share in her culinary experiences.

A week has 21 meals. If you eat 3 types of food per meal, you will make 63 food choices per week. A person can choose meat for one of those 63 choices (1.6%) and still be a vegetarian. Many folks choose meat for 30% or more of their diet.

I don't know where you get your definition of a vegetarian.

Eating meat 1.6% means your NOT a vegetarian, it just means your 'mostly' vegetarian.

I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with people eating meat, but most vegetarians I know (myself included), who are in it for moral reasons would take offense at that definition.

80% of "sometimes" or "not every day" is still "sometimes" and "not every day".

People have no clue about how frequently they eat meat. Since vegan and vegetarian diet are gaining traction, everyone is pretending they're being careful and eating less meat than before, yet the global meat consumption is still increasing.

Global population and wealth are increasing. Meat is expensive. And price - we subsidise farming - is a direct way of influencing how often people eat something.

Multiplying taxes by 50 would indeed be a very convincing way of making people eat less meat.

Its just not about the diet but also lifestyle matters(exercise ,teetotaler,profession) . I am surprised why these studies do not involve that as an index ?

This one does:

> In Model 1, we estimated hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) adjusted for race, Townsend deprivation index [20], education, employment, smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical activity, and in women, we additionally adjusted for menopausal status, hormone replacement therapy, oral contraceptive pill use, and parity. In Model 2, we further adjusted for total fruit and vegetable intake, cereal fibre intake score (calculated by multiplying the frequency of consumption of bread and breakfast cereal by the fibre content of these foods [21]), oily fish intake, and non-oily fish intake. For Model 3, we added adjustment for body mass index (BMI).

From the Austrian food survey study:

> Our results revealed that a vegetarian diet is related to a lower BMI and less frequent alcohol consumption

Wouldn't you say lower BMI is healthier?

I would say that the vegetarian diet says more about the person than the diet itself.

The study was in Austria, not Australia.

Oh hey, look who funds Wellcome: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Gran...

Is there an insight we are supposed to gain from this connection?

"Epidemiological study supports assertions of those funding the study"

Does that not seem problematic to you?

It might be if the Gates Foundation had funded the study.

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...

Wellcome Trust receives significant funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Problematic” being the catch all term to throw out rather than make an actual claim. Was the study faulty? Was the funding clandestine or did they attempt to conceal it? Does the Gates foundation support meat reduction for ideological reasons, rather than evidence based ones? Is The Gates foundation an industry that has a vested interest in continuing that industry (like an oil company funding oil benefit studies), and if so, what “industry” is that? What would they stand to lose, or gain, from the outcome of this study? What would they stand to lose or gain from any study, when their goal seems to pretty clearly be based on using the best available evidence to inform their charity programs? Is there anything at all beyond a charity that focuses on evidence based programs funding research to help inform their programs?

Conspiracy theorists have a real thing about Bill Gates.

You can't deny that Bill has completely lost it trying to become public batman by force and shove whatever the fuck he wants into our throats by using his money "for our good".

I deny it. I just disproved your assertion.

Bill Gates spends lots of his money trying to develop technologies such as clean burning stoves for developing countries, inexpensive toilets for the same, funding advanced nuclear technology. How is this shoving it down our throats?

Your single sentence is brimming with emotion: belittling him with the batman moniker, shoving it down our throats, whatever the fuck, scare quotes. HN has higher standards than this.

He is doing it by force. Paying ads, paying politicians, paying experts, paying democratic party, insisting on vaccines, insisting on removing meat (have you seen healthy athletic vegans ? extremely rare).

You have to look at things that he wants to be applied by force, not things that he "generously creates and you can optionally use it".

If I want to eat meat and Bill wants to raise taxes on meat by force (using his billions so I pay higher taxes on meat) then I don't see this being a good thing for me.

If he makes cheap soy-lent so people can drink it and rest in peace, then it's ok by me. But he is forcing soy-lent to me too.

No-one is forcing you to stop eating meat, and yes in fact I have a powerlifter vegan friend.

You're clearly brimming with emotion, and you seem to have drawn your own conclusion that bill gates is forcing you to stop eating meat. I'll be honest, that's a new conspiracy theory that I've not heard.

Why don't you think about it logically. What would Bill gates, a man who statistically only has 13 more years to live, gain from stopping you from eating meat?

Bill Gates thinks he's saving the world - presumably his ego and idea of a personal legacy are wrapped up in this.

> No-one is forcing you to stop eating meat

You will slowly see the influence. Bill Gates is going in that direction. It is just too much man, he is going too strong at it, motherfucker appearing in every news about the virus.

> You're clearly brimming with emotion, and you seem to have drawn your own conclusion that bill gates is forcing you to stop eating meat.

It's "let's hear what Ja Rule has to say about this" up to level 9000!

> and yes in fact I have a powerlifter vegan friend.

Yes I have a black friend.

> Why don't you think about it logically. What would Bill gates, a man who statistically only has 13 more years to live, gain from stopping you from eating meat?

The issue is that people think differently. A simple exercise to you: Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorde... and read a little about it. Now, think logically, thinking & behaving like that doesn't make sense. Yet, there is a % of the population that does.

Give somebody with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disor... billions of $, at the end of their life, and they are at your throat.

He is the Microsoft scenario, he isn't good. He just profits, his ego, he gets excited doing this, his NPD, whatever, but he isn't good. He can't be. Can't save the world by force a be a good guy at the same time even if it was true.

>He is doing it by force. Paying ads, paying politicians, paying experts, [...]

Those don't sound very forceful to me. When you said "by force" I was expecting him to have Men With Guns raiding the houses of meat eaters.

Not even close. Most of the foundation's work is in third world countries, and doesn't even touch half the stuff that conspiracy theorists are insistent he's got ultimate control over

... he does both ? At least Batman only stayed in 1 city.

Like I said: Conspiracy theorists have a real thing about Bill Gates.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but the Wellcome Trust is a large organization with an endowment worth tens of billions of dollars and a variety of funding sources. Your link shows a number of moderately sized grants for mostly infectious disease projects.

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