Bill Gates and Vaccines

whatthebutlersaw said:
Don't know. But I wouldn't put it past some people to criticize him for focusing on Jews only.
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You are right. The war cost a lot more lives than the Jewish holocaust. Schindler was free to spend his money on saving whoever he wanted, as long as he also stopped the war!
 
Yeah, how selfish of him to only focus on saving industrial slave labor when he could have stopped the war, invented new foods and new forms of energy!
 
whatthebutlersaw said:
Not even Bill Gates has the kind of money to end starvation. He could possibly feed the world for one day and then declare bankruptcy. The next day, the world continues to starve and Bill Gates can't help anyone anymore.

So the contention remains: Doing A is bad - even though it is in itself a good thing - because it means not doing B and in my opinion B is more worthwhile, even though it is far more complex, is less likely to have a succesful outcome and depends on political situations which can't be controlled. Yes. That sounds reasonable. I am totally convinced now. Just one thing: why the flaming hell doesn't Bill Gates stop aging? Aging kills 100% of its victims and as someone with a lot of money and a will to do something good with them, this and everything else that is wrong with the world is Bill Gates's responsibility.

DAMN YOU BILL! STOP AGING NOW! How many nanas and great grandmothers will have to die and leave grieving grand children and great grandchildren behind before you do anything! Where's my nan, Bill? Where is she? Screw you and your increadibly generous and completely voluntary altruistic work to prevent preventable diseases that kill!

Look at Donald Trump, Bill! Look at Alan Sugar! Look at the Axelsson-Johnssons of Sweden! These people UNDERSTAND that if they can't fix world hunger, it's better to do nothing! You could learn from them, Bill.
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I hate the kind of reasoning Kaggen is putting forth here -- the "who cares about x when y is a greater problem" argument. Doing good is doing good. I really can't put it any more simple than that. As has been stated in this thread countless times, there's no logical reason why someone should have to distribute his or her time and money across the board rather than helping the cause he or she cares about the most.

I used to volunteer at a shelter for homeless animals. Am I a bad person for devoting my time ansd efforts to this cause rather than to feeding starving people?
 
Safe-Keeper said:
I used to volunteer at a shelter for homeless animals. Am I a bad person for devoting my time ansd efforts to this cause rather than to feeding starving people?
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Isn't that what the homeless animals were for?
 
Safe-Keeper said:
I used to volunteer at a shelter for homeless animals. Am I a bad person for devoting my time ansd efforts to this cause rather than to feeding starving people?
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Bad Safe-Keeper. Now get into your crate--you're not going for a walk. ;)

Considering all the damage Wakefield did, and cultural attitudes about western medicine in the Third World, it's a great humanitarian effort.
Gates didn't become a gazillionaire by being a bad businessman. Whatever his passions, I think it's a fair bet he determined it was a good 'investment' of his philanthropic resources.
 
dtugg said:
Do you have any evidence suggesting that spending more money on ending hunger and less on vaccines would save more lives?
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I would hate for this to be overlooked as I think dtugg has hit on the crux of the disagreement.

I look forward to !Kaggen's response.
 
dtugg said:
Do you have any evidence suggesting that spending more money on ending hunger and less on vaccines would save more lives?
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Nice try in the use of semantics to twist my argument.

More lives are lost from starvation than from disease.
Stopping more people dying results in less deaths.
 
!Kaggen said:
Nice try in the use of semantics to twist my argument.

More lives are lost from starvation than from disease.
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Let's assume that is true (it might be I don't know).

It still doesn't mean that spending x amount of dollars on ending starvation would result in less deaths than spending that money on vaccines. What evidence do you have that it would?

Stopping more people dying results in less deaths.
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Really? What a revelation. :rolleyes:
 
!Kaggen said:
Nice try in the use of semantics to twist my argument.

More lives are lost from starvation than from disease.
Stopping more people dying results in less deaths.
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Even if your contention that starvation kills more is true (I doubt that) Bill Gates is not in any position to do anything about that. Only nations with military's powerful enough to crush the local governments (or warlords) behind the starvation can do anything and, as The Battle of Mogadishu showed, even that can be messy and unpopular.

So, seeing as how Bill Gates does not have his own military, dispensing vaccines is really the best thing he can be doing. So stop it with this Perfect Solution fallacy nonsense.
 
Travis said:
Even if your contention that starvation kills more is true (I doubt that) Bill Gates is not in any position to do anything about that. Only nations with military's powerful enough to crush the local governments (or warlords) behind the starvation can do anything and, as The Battle of Mogadishu showed, even that can be messy and unpopular.
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Actually, I'd go a little further than that and say that the work that Bill Gates is doing may actually be much more effective at preventing starvation than any more direct method. Simply put, disease, particularly diseases that affect the young, are a major drag on any economy. Improving that situation has a huge impact on the development potential of any economy, and development is exactly what's necessary to deal with starvation in any meaningful way.

Malaria, for instance (something which The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doing a great deal to try to prevent) kills a huge number of young people who could otherwise be economically productive members of their society.

For example:
Abstract. Malaria and poverty are intimately connected. Controlling for factors such as tropical location, colonial history, and geographical isolation, countries with intensive malaria had income levels in 1995 of only 33% that of countries without malaria, whether or not the countries were in Africa. The high levels of malaria in poor countries are not mainly a consequence of poverty. Malaria is geographically specific. The ecological conditions that support the more efficient malaria mosquito vectors primarily determine the distribution and intensity of the disease. Intensive efforts to eliminate malaria in the most severely affected tropical countries have been largely ineffective. Countries that have eliminated malaria in the past half century have all been either subtropical or islands. These countries’ economic growth in the 5 years after eliminating malaria has usually been substantially higher than growth in the neighboring countries. Cross-country regressions for the 1965–1990 period confirm the relationship between malaria and economic growth. Taking into account initial poverty, economic policy, tropical location, and life expectancy, among other factors, countries with intensive malaria grew 1.3% less per person per year, and a 10% reduction in malaria was associated with 0.3% higher growth. Controlling for many other tropical diseases does not change the correlation of malaria with economic growth, and these diseases are not themselves significantly negatively correlated with economic growth. A second independent measure of malaria has a slightly higher correlation with economic growth in the 1980–1996 period. We speculate about the mechanisms that could cause malaria to have such a large impact on the economy, such as foreign investment and economic networks within the country.
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!Kaggen said:
I guess the less glamorous methods don't appeal to Mr Gates sensibilities as they decentralize the responsibility, something all his money comes from avoiding.
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You insinuate that glamor and some vague notion of responsibility are important motivations behind this vaccine push by Gates. You imply that the non-vaccine suggestions would be a better choice.

Do you have any evidence that your highlighted suggestions for ameliorating childhood deaths from diarrhea are as cost effective in saving lives as vaccines? If yes, you have a point. If no, why not spend the money on the more cost effective option?
 
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!Kaggen said:
More lives are lost from starvation than from disease.
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Untrue.

Top 10 causes of death, broken up into three categories of wealth of country. Even treating diseases as separate entities, rather than as one all-encompassing category marked "disease", starvation doesn't make any of the three top 10s.

A WHO press release:

The World Health Organization (WHO) calls on donors to urgently invest in health services for 45 million children, women and men caught up in the world’s deadliest crises. WHO estimates that US$ 341 million is needed to build and maintain necessary health services for people in 21 countries in crises worldwide.

The 45 million are those who need immediate assistance. They are more likely to die from illness than from starvation, drowning or bullet wounds.
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Malaria (and Yellow Fever) was the reason I seriously doubted starvation was the bigger killer.
 
Let us summarize.

Facts:

Bill Gates is one of the three richest people in the world (which position varies with stock prices).
Vaccines save lives. Nobody but nutjobs dispute this fact.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is giving $10 billion towards vaccinating people.
They estimate that it will save millions of lives (even if they are off by an order of magnitude it is still a lot of people).

Conclusion:

Bill Gates is one of the greatest humanitarians in history.

Rebuttal:

They might have saved more people by spending that money doing x, thus spending money on vaccines is bad.

Counter-rebuttal:

You have no evidence that this is true. And even if it is, spending billions of dollars your own money vaccinating people is still a great cause. Anybody doing that is a great man worthy of respect of all humans in the world.

Counter-counter-rebuttal:

Strawman
 
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!Kaggen, I know you've already been asked this, but do you harbor the same resentment towards everyone who spend money on other causes than fighting starvation, or is it only wrong when the rich do it?
 
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Roboramma said:
Actually, I'd go a little further than that and say that the work that Bill Gates is doing may actually be much more effective at preventing starvation than any more direct method. Simply put, disease, particularly diseases that affect the young, are a major drag on any economy. Improving that situation has a huge impact on the development potential of any economy, and development is exactly what's necessary to deal with starvation in any meaningful way.
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I think this is a very important point. And if children are given a chance to grow up healthy, they will not only contribute to development, but it will also mean fewer children; families who expect each child to reach adulthood have fewer children,
 
Safe-Keeper said:
I hate the kind of reasoning Kaggen is putting forth here -- the "who cares about x when y is a greater problem" argument.
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Oh, it makes plenty of sense when you realize that Kaggan is just an anti-vaxxer, and is just trying to poison the well to make it sound less obvious.

According to !Kaggan, there will ALWAYS be something more important that should be done before vaccination.
 
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