Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Newsday - January 27, 2003
Laurie Garrett, Staff Writer
The latest philanthropic venture from the software billionaire aims to create a panel of scientists who will establish research targets involving diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Grants would then be offered to scientists willing to tackle the targets.
In a speech at the World Economic Forum, Gates said he hoped to cast light "on the real health challenges in the world today" and "stimulate the collective IQs of the world's best young scientists."
"It's a wonderful, wonderful announcement for all of us," U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson said in a news conference. "Thank you, Bill Gates, for your tremendous generosity. What a great human being you are."
The committee will be led by Dr. Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate and former head of the National Institutes of Health who is president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. Also on the committee will be Dr. Richard Klausner, former director of the National Cancer Institute; Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Dr. Elias Zerhouni, current NIH director, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Also on the panel will be Dr. Francis Nkrumah, director of Ghana's largest scientific research institute and son of African freedom fighter Kwame Nkrumah, and Dr. Roy Anderson, noted British mathematical analyst of epidemics.
"We really want some off-the-wall proposals," Gates told a handful of reporters. "I hope this goes way beyond the $200 million, to affect the agenda of a whole generation of young scientists."
Zerhouni labeled the Gates challenge one of the historically most important moments in science.
"What has been lacking [in AIDS research] is a number of top-flight scientists working on it," he said. "In the end of my tenure at the NIH, my success will be measured by whether the number of top-flight scientists willing to get involved in this \ has doubled."
Gates said the guidelines require universities and researchers to make products that result from research he funds to be made available free, or at minimal cost, to the world's poor, though they also may be marketed for profit in wealthy countries.
U.S. officials said President George W. Bush will announce a sizable increase in funding for the global fight against HIV/AIDS in his State of the Union address tomorrow night.
In his remarks, Gates insisted that lack of decent health care and of the basic elements of public health - vaccination, clean water, freedom from infectious diseases - is the No. 1 factor slowing development in poor nations. He has previously committed hundreds of millions of dollars to addressing that problem.
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