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... on the basis of some elementary googling.Well two can play at that game.This idiot makes great play of the fact that Gates gave $1bn to GSK. As of Friday, GSK was worth $106bn i.e. even after the market declines this year.Does anyone really think that a giant corporation like GSK could be "bought" for a (relatively) trifling sum like that?Or might it just be that Gates, who has a long record of donating to causes which fight a number of mortal diseases all over the world, has gone to one of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies to help in this field? Considering he's been doing that for years, I think it the more likely conclusion, as eg this report from 2011 illustrates:"A vaccine invented at drug giant GlaxoSmithKline and funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation cut the rate of malaria infection in small children roughly in half, providing real hope of cutting the toll from a mosquito-borne disease that infects 250 million people a year and kills 800,000 children annually in sub-Saharan Africa.The results, from a study of 6,000 children between the ages of 5 and 17 months of age, were published today in the New England Journal of Medicine to coincide with a forum on fighting malaria now occurring in Seattle."https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2011/10/18/glaxosmithkline-bill-gates-backed-vaccine-cuts-malaria-infections-by-half/The vaccine was approved by European regulators in 2015 and has since proven effective in preventing malaria in between 25-50% of infants and young children.Of course, that Forbes article brought Gates into it in order to attract readers. But if you look further into the background to RTS,S, it has a history which long predates his involvement:"The RTS,S vaccine was conceived of and created in the late 1980s by scientists working at SmithKline Beecham Biologicals (now GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines) laboratories in Belgium. The vaccine was further developed through a collaboration between GSK and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and has been funded in part by the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation."

Richard Cathcart ● 2383d