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

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/gates-foundation-flu-grand-challenge/

by doener • 8 years ago

63 61 8 years ago

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

inciampati• 8 years ago

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.

Someone12342• 8 years ago

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...

melling• 8 years ago

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.

chaostheory• 8 years ago

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.

ebbv2• 8 years ago

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.

simonebrunozzi• 8 years ago

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

ekianjo2• 8 years ago

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.

nerdponx• 8 years ago

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

wycs• 8 years ago

What can redeem your past actions then?

drcode3• 8 years ago

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.

baseethrowaway• 8 years ago

In which category?

hsavit1• 8 years ago

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.

verylittlemeat2• 8 years ago

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.

lifeformed2• 8 years ago

he deserves a prize.... for what?

For the Gates Foundation?

knowThySelfx• 8 years ago

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...

dna_polymerase• 8 years ago

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.

prmths• 8 years ago

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.

TomMarius• 8 years ago

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.

lifeformed2• 8 years ago

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)?

sebleon• 8 years ago

What has he done to deserve it?

cimmanom2• 8 years ago

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

ebbv2• 8 years ago

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

maxerickson3• 8 years ago

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.

gehwartzen• 8 years ago

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

cimmanom2• 8 years ago

But then why would $12M be an incentive?

Someone12342• 8 years ago

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...

maxerickson3• 8 years ago

There's plenty of oral vaccines on the market.

A big one is polio.

ttul• 8 years ago

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

0xFFC3• 8 years ago

mottosso• 8 years ago

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

0xFFC3• 8 years ago

brent_noorda• 8 years ago

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.

0xFFC3• 8 years ago

nonbel• 8 years ago

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...

Jedd• 8 years ago

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.

theptip• 8 years ago

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.

rincebrain• 8 years ago

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

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

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