Windows of opportunity
January 29, 2005

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Vaccines for HIV/AIDS and malaria are high on the list of priorities for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Sarah Boseley talks to the couple at the helm.

In the 7am blackness, the lights in the windows of the buildings peppering the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Seattle, tell of all-night sessions at the screen or early-morning logging on.

There are no trappings, no demonstrative wealth and little colour - brown carpets, beechwood tables and off-white walls hung with grey-toned linocuts and silk-screen paintings that have about as much impact as computer print-outs.

In these low-key surroundings, the richest man in the world sits at the head of the table discussing the ravages of disease in Africa. In an amiable fashion, Bill Gates refuses to be provoked by the reluctance of wealthy governments to put in the large sums needed to get children vaccinated against diseases such as diphtheria that are a fading memory in the developed world.

In spite of what some might consider the sluggishness of wealthy countries to get their wallets out for the very needy, Bill and Melinda Gates are "hopeful", not frustrated.

Gates is worth an estimated $US46 billion ($59 billion), according to Forbes magazine, which has put him at No. 1 in the rich list for years. He has reportedly said he will give away 95 per cent of it. "I'm not sure we've ever been that precise but it's accurate enough," Gates says. "We've always said the vast majority."
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Much of it will go on research efforts to find vaccines for HIV/AIDS, malaria and childhood killers that affect the poorest countries. His latest and biggest donation, of $US750 million, will help the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi), which he was instrumental in setting up.

But it's hard to see what draws this multibillionaire, who made his vast fortune from a love affair with a machine, to the poorest people on the planet.

The answer may sit beside him. While Bill appears to be talking Microsoft Basic, the language he created for the first personal computers, Melinda is warm, human and engaged with the people whose lives their generosity will save.

"I go to these villages and I sit with these women. That could be me in a heartbeat. Just like they could be on the other side if they happened to be born in the United States," she says.

"And so it is incredibly easy, I find, to connect with these women because they feel the same way about their children that I feel, or they feel the loss or death of their mother or father no differently than I would feel if I lost one of my parents.

"Some of my favourite days in the year are when we are out in these rural places or in a city slum and really connecting with the people and finding out what are their needs - not only what are their needs but what are they doing and how are they already lifting themselves up and for me it's how do we stand beside them and help them in that work that they're doing."

It's she who recalls the impact of the first trip to Africa in 1993, before they were married, on safari with a group of friends "just watching who had shoes on their feet and who didn't. And how it was different by country. And then when we would get out at some places to talk to the women in the villages and just hear what it was like for them and the long distances they would travel even to buy a few vegetables for their family - it moves you."

Bill and Melinda talk of their commitment to philanthropy. "We knew that our resources would go back to society in some way. We had that philosophy that we were sort of stewards of the wealth and should use our best thinking to make sure that it goes back in an effective way," Bill says.

Melinda says: "It's important, I think, to know that both Bill and I grew up in families where there was a very heavy sense of volunteerism in both families. So that for us was a natural. That brought us to the point of - of course this is going to go back to society."

They wanted a US cause - the linking of libraries to the internet - and a world cause, which developed from family planning to world health.

Bill talks much about inequity. The trigger for his interest in global health was a table, sent to him by his father, showing that a disease called rotavirus killed 500,000 children a year.

"The greatest inequity is between the developing world and the rich world. Any time you spend in the developing world, even if you are in kind of a nice part of it, you can't escape the fact that, boy, those are very different conditions."

What allows this inequity to flourish he has described as "a failure of capitalism" - an extraordinary remark for a man who has made billions from it. In fact he's a huge admirer of "this incredible system".

But, in his analysis, capitalism has a flaw, in that it provides no incentives to scientists to invent medicines for diseases of the poor. That's the shortcoming that governments and philanthropists such as himself have to address, he says.

There is real excitement for Bill Gates in the idea of using cutting-edge technology and scientific ingenuity to solve the problems of disease on the other side of the world. This is no hands-off philanthropist, in it for the tax breaks.

He is in regular email contact with staff at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, housed in downtown Seattle. It's a building unlike his office, full of warm tones and bright pictures of people in Africa and Asia.

He is enthusiastic about biotechnology. He reads avidly. Those who work at the foundation say he will get through a dozen books on holiday and send a report back on the strengths of each. Among the big scientific names he has hired are Rick Klausner, who used to run the US cancer program, and David Fleming, formerly acting director of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Satisfaction to Gates has a lot to do with enabling a scientist to use their talent. "Just sitting with these doctors who've devoted their life to hepatitis B - or we have this guy at the foundation whose life is tuberculosis and seeing his excitement that he gets to do this work that he always wanted. He knew he was going down a path where the rewards weren't the same as rich-world health but he believed in it and now he's got this opportunity, he's got this idea for improving the vaccine," he says.

Gavi, say the Gates, is the best investment they ever made. More than 670,000 lives saved already. Bill is enthusiastic about the possibility that it will become the pilot project of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown - a scheme to raise billions for the developing world, the international financing facility. If they reach $8 billion to $12 billion, they can immunise 90 per cent of children against common but lethal diseases by 2015. In 2002, almost 1.5 million children died from vaccine-preventable diseases.

But the Gates believe their role is to take on the riskier and more difficult enterprises. Is an HIV/AIDS vaccine possible? Nobody yet knows, but the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is out there paying for research to find out.

A malaria vaccine has always been a tricky prospect. They're in there too. It's the big challenges where they may make a difference that will put them in the history books.

"If we look back and there's an AIDS vaccine, I think we'll feel phenomenal about the money that we've spent and I think if we've changed malaria, that there's really a malaria vaccine and the right malarial medicines being delivered, we'll feel fantastic about the money," Melinda says. "Not that we don't already ... but I think those are big markers for us."

I don't hate him or admire him. I frankly don't care what he does.

i dont hate him or bash him, but i would really like to get on his charity list some how

I praise him for what he has done for the computer industry

I don't really ever bitch about Gates. I love Microsofts software for the most part, and the XBOX is simply the best video game system around. But the fact that someone who is worth 50 billion, and at times was worth almost double that, gives a couple billion to charity, doesn't really impress me all that much. Once you hit the billion mark, I dont really think it is neccasary to bring it up to the double digits. I do love the fact that Gates does give so much to charity, and it is quite noble, but really he isn't exactly blowing me away with his charitable efforts, when you realize he still has enough money left over to buy several countries. And I am not ragging oh him by any means, but I would have to say someone would have to be a complete ass hole not to give to charity if you were that ridiculously wealthy. I mean the guy could give 80% of his income and still be worth 10 billion. But if he does give away 95% of that, then shit man, he diserves some praise. I praise him for what he has done for the computer industry, if he becomes the greatest humanatarian of all time, all the more love to him.

I'm not a fan of Microsoft's products or their business practices, but I think it's admirable that Bill Gates has been so generous and it does seem like he intends to give almost all of his money away.

I'm not a fan of Microsoft's products or their business practices, but I think it's admirable that Bill Gates has been so generous and it does seem like he intends to give almost all of his money away.

"they are ants michael....they are ants!"

"aww who invited Ted Turner"

Plus he has a huge penis.

Funniest part of that episode is when Gates shines his flashlight in the sky to summon his helicopter (like batman) and it has the Windows symbol.