The Times article on Buffett-Gates today reminds me so much of the classic Richard Brown book, "Rockefeller Medicine Men," about how Rockefeller money and its hyper-scientism reshaped medical research and education. (And it's definitely not an Ivan Ilich/Stanley Aronowitz /STS anti-health science thing.)  Highly recommended book, esp. in light of the Gates crusade, which seems to eschew public health and infrastructural approaches while advocating neo-liberal schemes, like micro-credit.   Article below.  BTW, I seem to have remembered reading a critique of the Gates Foundation's approach, but can' tremember where.  I'd like to say Lancet.  Does anyone know? <div class="timestamp">June 27, 2006</div> <h1> Buffett's Billions Will Aid Fight Against Disease </h1> <div class="byline">By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. and <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/rick_lyman/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Rick Lyman">RICK LYMAN</a></div> <div id="articleBody"> <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/warren_e_buffett/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Warren E. Buffett.">Warren E. Buffett's</a> $31 billion gift to the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/g/gates_bill_and_melinda_foundation/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation"> Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation</a> will help the foundation pursue its longstanding goal of curing the globe's most fatal diseases, Mr. Gates said yesterday, along with improving American education. The foundation hopes to use the enormous gift, among other things, to find a vaccine for <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/aids/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about AIDS/HIV."> AIDS</a>, Mrs. Gates said. And Mr. Gates went further, saying that while he might be "overly optimistic," he believed there was a real shot at finding cures for the 20 leading fatal diseases, as well as ensuring that every American has a chance at a decent education. "Can that happen in our lifetime?" Mr. Gates said, sitting next to Mr. Buffett at the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/new_york_public_library/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about New York Public Library"> New York Public Library</a>, where the gift was formally announced after news of it broke on Sunday. "I'll be optimistic and say, Absolutely." But Mr. Gates acknowledged that spending the money effectively would be difficult. The scientific tasks the foundation has set for itself in fields like <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/malaria/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about malaria.">malaria</a> and <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/tuberculosis/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about tuberculosis."> tuberculosis</a> take time as well as money, because they require years of laboratory work followed by years of clinical trials, sometimes ending fruitlessly. Improving American education — once better ideas have been found — can take just as long. "It's incredibly difficult to give this much money away well," said Jean Strouse, a biographer who has compiled an oral history project on the Gates Foundation. "And giving it away to people who can use it well, especially in places where poverty is so overwhelming, where there's not much real infrastructure." Both Mr. Buffett, who will join the foundation's leadership, and the Gateses acknowledged as much. "In the last few months we have begun to really talk about and try to come up with a plan for that," Mrs. Gates said. They must, for instance, improve their dialogue with the governments of poor nations to make sure that vaccines get down to the people who need them. Mr. Buffett, for his part, said he saw no need to tinker with the foundation's essential goal: improving the lot of poor people elsewhere in the world without regard to their color, religion or other differences. Describing his own way of choosing companies to invest in, Mr. Buffett, one of history's most successful investors, said, "I've learned to adapt to other managers" and then jokingly compared the process to picking a spouse. "It's not a good idea to marry one expecting them to change," he said. Mrs. Gates was a Microsoft executive when she married Mr. Gates when he was 38 and she was 29. Upon hearing Mr. Buffett's remark, Mr. Gates leaned back on his stool with a big sheepish grin as his wife glanced knowingly at him. Then Mr. Buffett said, "I'm happy with the ones I'm marrying here." Later in the exchange, which was in front of 200 philanthropy executives, scientists, students and a few reporters, Mr. Gates got in his own reflection on the partnership. "It's scary," he said. "If I make a mistake with my own money, it isn't as big as making a mistake with Warren's money." To which Mr. Buffett replied: "I won't grade you more often than daily." Mr. Buffett is giving away about 85 percent of his fortune, most of it to the Gates foundation. The gift, representing the current value of 10 million Class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway, the insurance conglomerate he formed nearly 50 years ago, will nearly double the wealth of the Gates Foundation, which was already the world's biggest, at almost $30 billion. The stock will be transferred to the foundation in increments over many years; the first transfer will be half a million shares this year, worth about $1.5 billion. Although the money will not change the foundation's larger goals, Mrs. Gates mentioned yesterday that it had been moving quietly for the last 18 months into microlending, which is the granting of small loans to poor people so they can start small businesses. A microloan of less than $50 might finance, for example, the purchase of a loom or a set of bicycle repair tools. Though he is also leaving billions to separate foundations for his children, Mr. Buffett said he felt he was "not cut out" to be a philanthropist like the Gateses and preferred to remain at the helm of his company. "They'll spend more time and energy on it," he said. "I'm having so much fun doing what I do, and I think they'll be more able to accept any mistakes they made than I would if I made them." <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/bill_gates/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Bill Gates.">Bill Gates</a> was a quicker study on new topics, like medicine, that he would have to master, Mr. Buffett said, and added: "I wouldn't want to listen to as many people with as many different opinions as they do." Rather than spend every cent on fruitlessly trying to rebuild broken health care systems, the Gates Foundation follows a pattern of spending generously to chase solutions like a malaria vaccine. It also buys supplies, like vaccines or mosquito nets, but then tries to get rich countries to match its donations and poor countries to get organized well enough to distribute the goods. Similarly, in education, it creates model schools that public school systems can use as examples, rather than spending endlessly to pay the expenses of every impoverished American school district. Her "fondest dream," Mrs. Gates said, is an AIDS vaccine, something scientists have been pursuing since the 1980's and which she admitted could take an additional 20 years. A stopgap measure, she said, could be a microbicide: an undetectable protective gel that women could insert before sex. Mr. Gates said he wanted to use improved global health as a base upon which to build what he called "the virtuous cycle" of longer lifetimes, jobs, markets, infrastructure, tax bases and all the other steps that lift poor countries out of poverty. Dr. Richard Klausner, a former director of the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_cancer_institute/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about National Cancer Institute"> National Cancer Institute</a> and the Gates Foundation's former head of global health, said that besides microlending he also would not be surprised if the foundation followed the Rockefeller Foundation's example in seeking higher-yield, drought-resistant seeds for poor farmers. Dr. Harold E. Varmus, president of the Memorial-Sloan Kettering <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/cancer/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about cancer."> Cancer</a> Center, said the foundation could fight some of the major preventable causes of death in poor countries: cigarettes, alcohol abuse and automobile injuries. Dr. Varmus was the chief scientific adviser for the Grand Challenges in Global Health, a sort of contest in which Mr. Gates gave out $437 million to teams pursuing exotic goals like vaccines that can be inhaled or chemicals that can knock out mosquitoes' sense of smell. He said his advisory committee particularly wished it could make grants for water purification and for chronic diseases like <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/diabetes/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about diabetes."> diabetes</a> and cancer that have loomed larger in the poor world as people live longer. Asked if a richer Gates Foundation could divert scientists from other fields, Dr. Varmus said he was "more concerned with using the scientific horsepower we've already developed." Noting that the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_institutes_of_health/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about National Institutes of Health, U.S.">National Institutes of Health </a> give out $28 billion a year — ten times as much as even the enriched Gates Foundation will — he said its inflation-adjusted budget has been shrinking. Some aid recipients also worry that the Gates-Buffett fortune will let other donors, including the American government, feel that they can back away from public health. That would be disastrous for the world's poor, they said, since the foundation is only one stream in a vast river. If anyone does back away, Dr. Klausner said "it's because they were looking for an excuse, not because there's no need." Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector, a nonpartisan coalition that represents charities and foundations, said she expected the Buffett money to give the Gates Foundation more power. "They haven't served multiple programs," Ms. Aviv said. "They've been much more generous in a few. This gives them leveraging opportunities." Mr. Buffett said yesterday that he was a student of the same philanthropists that Mr. Gates modeled himself on: the oilman John D. Rockefeller; the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie; Irene Diamond, the widow of the real estate developer Aaron Diamond; and Joan Kroc, the widow of Ray Kroc, who founded McDonald's. Mr. Buffett is also famous for loving efficiency. He runs a company with 200,000 employees from an Omaha headquarters with fewer than 20 employees. The Gates Foundation, in Seattle, has about 300. Mr. Buffett was scathing yesterday in describing his feelings about estate taxes, which the Bush administration is trying to kill. The ability of rich men to pass on "dynastic wealth" to their grandchildren is offensive to the American tradition of meritocracy, he said. He gets particularly upset at his country club, he said, hearing members complain about welfare mothers getting food stamps "while they are trying to leave their children a more-than-lifetime-supply of food stamps and are substituting a trust officer for a welfare officer." To widespread applause, he smiled and asked: "Is there anyone I forgot to insult?" </div> <div>On 6/27/06, Marvin Gandall <<a href="mailto:marvgandall@videotron.ca">marvgandall@videotron.ca</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Pretty good article on the contradictions of Warren Buffett and charitable giving in general which Louis Proyect copied to the Marxmail list. It's by David Walsh who, like Proyect, writes astute film reviews. <a href="http://wsws.org/articles/2006/jun2006/buff-j27.shtml">http://wsws.org/articles/2006/jun2006/buff-j27.shtml</a> ___________________________________ <a href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk"> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</a> </blockquote></div>