The media loves the Gates Foundation. These experts are more skeptical | Hacker News Reader

The media loves the Gates Foundation. These experts are more skeptical

vox.com

3 pointssmanuel7 comments

TL;DR: the foundation is apparently fairly closed. The reason for skepticism is that they spend a lot of money without a public decision making process. They spend more money than many countries on healthcare and if they decide to pull the plug on certain projects, those projects are going to have a very tough time.

I personally don't really see a need to worry or be skeptical. They've been doing this for over a decade and so far it's going great. I'd be grateful rather than skeptical about them spending so much money on projects that otherwise could not exist the way they do.

Yep. And to some extent the democratic process is the thing that make it hard for public organizations to execute well. So there are some advantages to not playing that game - so long as your intentions are good.

But why does the gates's foundation has any say in intellectual-property for health care ? those countries should decide that by themselves.

> if they decide to pull the plug on certain projects, those projects are going to have a very tough time.

That looks like a problem to me.

Also, I'm not sure how the whole system works, but let's say I'm a medical researcher. I may be tempted to focus on researches that get money easier (e.g. what gets funded easier by the Gates foundation), instead of focusing on something else (e.g. cancer research). Suddenly the Gates foundation dictates the trends.

That's really some simple thinking here but seems like a valid point to me. Still, I could be totally wrong. I'm not a medical researcher.

They have certainly made mistakes in the past (health clinics move people 50 miles to receive treatment for AIDS and send them back to die for diarrhea because their focus is too narrow).

The question I'm interested in is if they have improved and learned.

The problem is that there is not enough information for outsiders to analyze them and scrutinize the result. Gates may spend his money inefficiently because he can't get the data he needs. They should use open data and be open to criticism to improve.

The irony of this being published in the media is, as usual, lost on the writer.

Well, the writer acknowledges what the foundation has done and how much it's helping with certain diseases and problems, but still the concerns it's trying to raise seem valid IMO.

I'm not saying the criticism is invalid; I'm saying that when you're part of the media, saying "the media refuses to deal with this issue" is wrong.

(And I'm sure I could find a bunch of articles from other mainstream media outlets saying the same.)

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