I'm deeply disappointed that Gates made no mention of a major contributor to his fight against polio, Rotary International. Besides the humongous amount of money they donated, often times it was Rotarians who traveled to these countries to administer the vaccine to children. In addition, they usually traveled on their own dime and, in the case of some countries, at their own risk.

Anyway, I founded a community service organization a few years ago, and through one of our projects we made a very paltry donation to the polio eradication cause. One of the major challenges we ran into while fundraising was getting young people to care. Older folks were very generous, since a lot of them remembered polio from their own childhood, and even had friends overseas who were victims. But people in their 20s and early 30s simply did not know. It was greatly disturbing. As a society we make a great effort to keep reminding people of the horrors of World War II, and yet we are on the verge of largely forgetting about this ancient disease.