Just like Elvis from my previous article, Bill Gates should have an album of greatest hits, only his would include the number of people his foundation has saved globally. In this time of "Jobs" and how the world is being "Applefied" it's worthwhile going back a few years, to when thousands of people lined up at midnight for the latest Microsoft release before racing home and downloading it onto their PC. Seems Bill and Seattle are no longer relevant compared to Steve and the innovations coming out of Cupertino. The world is more interested in what cloud we put our information on and how we carry that information in our pocket.
Like many people who hit global heights of success, Gates suffered under the "Tall Poppy" syndrome and we couldn't wait to cut him down to size and look to the next coming of greatness. Steve Jobs gave Bill Gates a less than friendly summation in his biography, which Gates replied to in a most magnanimous manner allowing many an insight into a man whose direction in life has changed.
Stories abound about the sums of money that Gates is using to save the world's poor via his medical foundation. $6 billion is the latest number Gates has spent on just the vaccine side of his foundation's work, fighting hep- B, measles, AIDS, polio and rotovirus. Part of the largest single philanthropic enterprise in history, Gates is suitably humble and points to his money being able to focus the global pharmaceuticals into developing drugs that had no chance of being profitable but are effective in lowering death tolls. The measles drug has now been lowered to 23 cents and with one vaccine you never get measles again.
“The metric of success is lives saved, kids who aren’t crippled,” says Gates. “Which is slightly different than units sold, profits achieved. But it’s all very measurable, and you can set ambitious goals and see how you do.” “I’d be deeply disappointed,” says Gates, if in the next 25 years he can’t lower the death toll by 80%. Otherwise, “we’re just not doing our job very well."
Those 6 million from his "Greatest Hits" so far, add up to 3.4 million lives saved from hepatitis B, which causes liver cancer, 1.2 million lives from measles, 560,000 from the Hib bacteria, 474,000 from whooping cough, 140,000 from yellow fever and 30,000 from polio. In the past year the new initiatives have prevented another 8,000 deaths from pneumonia and 1,000 from diarrhea.
Makes you want to go out and buy a Microsoft product, doesn't it? Our attention span and our memory seems to get shorter and shorter, the more innovation and channels we have to work with today. With everything we say, cut down and shortened to the smallest possible throw away line and stories lasting less time, before being made redundant on the web, Bill Gates just doesn't have the same pull anymore when compared with the Kardashians of the world.
So what has Kim Kardashian done lately?
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