Gates: Divorce with international… side effects

SITTL. Bill and Melinda Gates announced their decision to divorce after 27 years of marriage. Although the personal lives of celebrities should be indifferent to the public, such a decision is expected to have major political and health implications for the administrative developments at the Gates Foundation.

The institution of its creator Microsoft has generously funded medical research, contributing to the recent discovery of a reliable malaria vaccine, including. The influence that the institution has on medical research but it fuels the debate over the concentration of disproportionately large powers in the hands of a few - albeit generous - tycoons.

A year ago, the world's public opinion had backed Bill Gates, in the wake of accusations leveled against him by QAnon and other conspiracy theorists, who described the coronavirus pandemic as part of a secret plot to assassinate him. microchip under the skin of those who would be vaccinated. Last month, however, Gates angered even his most ardent fans by publicly opposing the abolition of vaccine patents. COVID-19, effectively excluding him developing world. In an April interview with Britain's Sky News, he made clear his opposition to the proposed abolition of vaccine patents, citing health shortages at drug production units in developing countries.

Gates thus adopted the same attitude he had taken when Microsoft had been accused by US authorities of monopoly practices. He and his foundation have come under the microscope, with many questioning his tactics. The fact that most of the foundation's funding ends up in the funds of Western researchers and pharmaceutical companies, as author Linzi Magawi points out in an article, widens the gap between the affluent North and the degraded South. Gates stubbornly refuses to admit that the current patent legislation on drugs and vaccines is unfair and dangerous for developing countries.

At the same time, the personal charity, such as Gates', can prove detrimental to democratic accountability. The kneeling of politicians to big donors means that billions of low-paid and oppressed people around the world should be content with the crumbs of the new, self-appointed aristocracy, without ever seeking economic justice.

From the worst moments of the AIDS crisis, when the cost to antiretroviral drugs Gaves on, even in the current scandalous pricing of diabetes or cancer drugs, Gates did not stop insisting that the patent system worked perfectly. His message to activists seeking to reduce the price of medicines is simple and raw: "leave business decisions to billionaires ”. It makes sense, as his fortune was built on protected software patents and technological innovations.

Source: Kathimerini