Philanthropic double Bill aims to tackle Aids

Net Results: Most of the world with access to radio, television, internet or newspapers will know that the two Bills (Gates and Clinton) recently completed a five-nation visit to Africa to focus on initiatives to tackle Aids - initiatives that are heavily funded by Gates.

"Heavily" does not even do justice to the level of financial support the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (www.gatesfoundation.org) has put behind underfunded areas of health research: malaria, tuberculosis and Aids.

The foundation has at its immediate disposal some $30 billion from the Gates family. In June, financier Warren Buffet announced he would give away most of his own $40 billion Berkshire Hathaway fortune, with the bulk going to the Gates Foundation, thus doubling its value.

Not all of that is going to health research, nor is it going anywhere all at once, but Gates has promised a steady and reliable stream of funding in pursuit of success with major health issues that don't necessarily have enough payback to interest Big Pharma.

As he told the Guardian: "We can afford to have a lot of failures. We're going to have a lot of failures. I will not stop working on malaria, TB or Aids because of failures."

Spoken like a high-risk technology entrepreneur, but with the bonus of not needing to ship to a deadline.

Gates indicated that he was indifferent if it might take 30 years to see results. That's exactly what medical researchers need to hear. It's exactly what the markets won't tolerate coming from the pharmaceutical sector. Nothing underlines more dramatically why Gates's money should enable a quiet revolution on the research front.

The two Bills are a double act that can make things happen in a way no government can. But what strange bedfellows. Gates, who can be an awkward speaker and who really doesn't do warm and fuzzy, was there in the midst of appalling African slums with Clinton, who excels at the human touch.

This odd contrast was wonderfully highlighted in a story by Guardian writer Sarah Boseley, who trailed Gates and Clinton as they toured Africa. You can read it here: http://tinyurl.com/jmn3x.

She notes the discomfort apparent in the Gateses as they sit in a corrugated shack, talking to people unimaginably poor. By contrast, at a later event when Clinton is present, the ex-president garners all the focus, doing and saying exactly the right things, clearly at ease with a small child dangling from his hands and chatting to Aids workers.

Gates doesn't do the human touch very well, as Boseley notes. But he showed this week that he is willing to do and say the most unlikely things in pursuit of his vision. Gates stood before a global audience, in a joint keynote speech made with Melinda Gates at the 16th International Aids Conference in Toronto, and spoke of the need to move beyond the abstinence-based Aids programmes linked by the US government to foreign aid.

Abstinence is often not an option for poor women and girls, he said, adding that "we need to put the power to prevent HIV in the hands of women", whether they be a faithful wife or a sex worker.

Wow. Such a speech, and such criticisms of US policy, would make many adept speakers blanche; here, the quintessentially awkward man said what many have not been brave enough to say.

What Gates does, and does brilliantly, is focus in a detached way on what needs to be done, on how funding might work, which researchers to engage, and how to proceed. Focused detachment is a talent in its own right, and works very well when hammering out research approaches.

The end (or ongoing) goal may be to help that small child on retrovirals, or the woman ill with malaria, or the man racked with tuberculosis. But having a powerful individual who remains passionate about research, and who can offer a guiding hand and deep pockets, is just as important - maybe more so - as the person who can make the issue a human one. The end result is about caring for people. Some just take a different "road ahead".

It's not exactly the one Gates envisaged in his book of that title in 1995, but it's a better, more deeply satisfying road to travel for the software billionaire. You go, Bill.

weblog: http://weblog.techno-culture.com