Capitalism means male baldness research gets more funding than malaria

Speaking at the Royal Academy of Engineering's Global Grand Challenges Summit (http://www.raeng.org.uk/international/global_grand_challenges_summit.htm) Bill Gates, almost somewhat cheekily said that "The malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need. But it gets virtually no funding. But if you are working on male baldness or other things you get an order of magnitude more research funding because of the voice in the marketplace than something like malaria."

At first I thought that he was trolling (a hang over from his Reddit IAmA?) but on reading the transcript further, the point that he was leading towards was that - "Our priorities are tilted by marketplace imperatives," His speech went on to talk about governments and philanthropic organisations have to step in to offset this "flaw in the pure capitalistic approach".

I did like one of the questions that was posed by a member of the audience around whether it was possible to build a social company that is also profitable. Something that I, along with a bunch of good folk (over at http://craftwell.rumcandyworkshop.com/Why) have been grappling with in our social venture to bring learning spaces and programs for third world and underprivileged regions.

Gates responded to this by saying "There are a number of areas where you can build a product that has value in the rich world, for middle income countries and the poorest. Ideally you create a business model that lets you get your margin from the rich countries and the middle income countries, or through tiering customers in developing countries." He used the example of eye clinics in India (http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/feb/08/india-tiered-pricing-combat-blindness) to illustrate his point.


For those of you who are not aware ... The Global Grand Challenges Summit is a new initiative by the national academies of engineering in the UK, the US and China. As quoting from their website - "The Summit will see leading international engineering thinkers and innovators sharing ideas with the next generation of engineers and policy-makers on how to solve the world’s most pressing challenges."