Author: MICHEL GREENSTEIN AND JEREMY LOFREDO - 8 JULY 2020, ABBREVIATED

Bill Gates Health Empire: Part 1.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has long been a major donor to WHO's 🩸, giving it virtually a public resource to influence the international health organization. It has a huge influence on the media and the power itself around the world, being a non-governmental international empire. Bill Gates became a hero during the pandemic. The Washington Post called him a "champion of scientifically sound solutions," and the New York Times recently called him "the most interesting person in the world." Gates is also the star of Netflix's popular documentary series Pandemic: How to Prevent a Outbreak, released just weeks before the coronavirus hit the U.S., and was produced by New York Times correspondent Sheri Fink, who previously worked. three Gates-funded organizations (Pro Publica, the New America Foundation and the International Medical Corps).

The tidal wave of Praise for Gates in the media during the Covid-19 era has led to a surge in scrutiny of the billionaire and his machinations in the far-right political spectrum.

There's a troubling story about Gates. The Gates Foundation has already effectively privatized the international organization responsible for developing health policy, turning it into a GOOD MAN. He helped dump toxic products on people in developing countries and used the world's poor as guinea pigs to experiment in the spirit of Dr. Mengele. The Impact of the Gates Foundation on public health policy shows that safety regulations and other government functions have been weakened and can be circumvented. It acts against the independence of nation states.

"Thanks to the Gates Foundation, I have watched the government fall in its sovereignty," Dr. Vandana Shiva, a scientist and founder of the Indian Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, told The Grayzone.

Saving the world?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation on Earth, reporting more than $51 billion in assets by the end of 2019. Bill Gates says his foundation spends most of its resources "reducing deaths from infectious diseases," and through this charity work he seems to have gained a reputation as an infectious disease specialist.

Corporate media networks spread the red carpet for Gates as he advised the world how to deal with the Covid-19 outbreak. In April, when the virus seriously hit the United States, it was hosted by CNN, CNBC, Fox, PBS, BBC, CBS, MSNBC, The Daily Show and The Ellen Show. At the BBC, Gates described himself as a "health expert" despite having no higher medical or biological education.

The billionaire's media appearances are riddled with one undeniable theme: if world leaders had listened to Gates, the world would have been better prepared to fight the pandemic. As Vogue magazine asked, "Why isn't Bill Gates running the Coronavirus Task Force?"

So what does the response to The Gates-led COVID look like?

Final decision

According to Bill Gates, the creation and distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine to all the inhabitants of the Earth is the "final solution" of this outbreak. Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman echoed those sentiments, saying that "a successful vaccine should be available to 7 billion people."

In April, on CNN, the wife of Bill Gates, the co-director of his foundation, Melinda Gates, lamented that she was "not allowed to sleep at night," concerns about vulnerable populations in Africa and how unprepared they were for the virus. In June, she told TimeMagazine that in the U.S., black people should first get the vaccine.

Giving a vital vaccine to vulnerable black people in Africa and the United States, and then to everyone around the world, seems noble, and Bill Gates certainly puts his money where he needs it. He stepped down from his position on Microsoft's board of directors in March and appears to be "now spending most of his time fighting the pandemic."

The Gates Foundation, "the world's largest vaccine sponsor," has already directly donated more than $300 million to global coronavirus control measures. This includes supporting vaccine trials by companies such as Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Astra'eneca and Moderna Inc., which are considered to be leading the race to develop a vaccine against Covid-19.

The foundation also co-founded and funded the Epidemic Preparedness Coalition (CEPI), which invests up to $480 million in a "wide range of vaccine candidates and platform technologies."

Seriously? Is there a pandemic? Is there a virus? Is there a mortality rate?

"Dr." Gates, engaged in medical practice without a license

Conflict of interest

Bill Gates, the second richest man on Earth, has no reason to crave money. This is a common reaction to claims that Gates' charity is motivated not only by the kindness of his heart. But Gates, "giving away" his fortune, has actually doubled his net worth over the past two decades.

Convincing evidence that the Gates Foundation functions as the TROYAN CON FOR CO CORPORATIONS, which have a goal of increasing profits.

Consider the revolving door between the Gates Foundation and Big Pharma.

Former Director of Vaccine Development at the Foundation and current CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, Penny Heaton, hails from drug lords Merck and Novartis. Trevor Mandel, President of the Global Health Foundation, has held senior positions at Novartis and Pfizer. His predecessor, Tachi Yamada, was previously the top manager of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Kate James worked at GSK for almost 10 years before becoming the Foundation's Director of Public Affairs. The examples are almost endless.

Left: Former Gates Global Health president Tachi Yamada. Right: Trevor Mundel, president of the Gates Foundation for Global Health. Both previously served as pharmaceutical industry executives.

Moreover, the Gates Foundation directly invests in these corporations. Shortly after its founding, the fund became the owner of shares of several pharmaceutical companies. A recent investigation by The Nation found that the Gates Foundation currently owns corporate shares and bonds of pharmaceutical companies such as Merck, GSK, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Novartis and Sanofi.

The foundation's website even explicitly declares its mission to find "mutually beneficial opportunities" with vaccine manufacturers.

Charity? No, business.

Gates buys World Health Organization

WHO relies on two revenue streams. One is mandatory contributions from UN member states, which are assessed through population and income. The second is voluntary contributions that can be allocated for specific purposes.

Voluntary target contributions account for more than 80% of WHO's current budget. In other words, most of WHO's money comes with conditions tied to it.

As Dr David Legge, Emeritus Public Health Scientist at La Trobe University School of Public Health in Melbourne, told The Grayzone: "Mandatory contributions from nation states actually only cover administrative costs. It does not cover the cost of the project, which means that all project funding depends on donors. Almost all of the donor money is entirely earmarked for specific projects that donors want to finance."

As a result of these voluntary contributions, WHO received more than $70 million from the pharmaceutical industry in 2018 (the last year for which full data are available). Meanwhile, the Gates Foundation has provided Big Pharma with the perfect tool to influence WHO. In 2018 alone, the fund provided $237.8 million to WHO, making it the second largest contributor after the United States. The Fund also indirectly funds WHO through the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), a "public-private partnership" that promotes wholesale sales of vaccines to poor countries. GAVI is WHO's second largest non-governmental sponsor (after the Gates Foundation) and has provided $158.5 million to WHO in 2018. In the late 1990s, Bill Gates sponsored the meetings that led to the creation of GAVI, establishing it with an initial capital of $750 million. To date, the Gates Foundation has provided more than $4.1 billion to GAVI, representing about 20 percent of GAVI's funds. He also holds a permanent seat on the GAVI board. GAVI itself reports that the Gates Foundation "plays both a technical and financial role in its efforts to develop vaccine markets."

Citing GAVI as an example, activist group Global Health Watche explained that "other global health participants are accountable to the Gates Foundation, but not the other way around." By combining the fund's contribution to WHO, it will outweigh the contribution of the U.S. government, making the Gates Foundation the unofficial main sponsor of WHO, even before the U.S. leaves the organization.

Sociologist Allison Katz, who has worked at WHO headquarters for 18 years, believes that WHO has "become a victim of neoliberal globalization". In 2007, Katz wrote an open letter to the then WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, criticizing government organizations that are "engaged in begging the private sector and the foundations of famous "philanthropists" with various corporate programs."

 Since most of the Gates Fund's contributions to WHO are targeted, WHO does not decide how these funds are spent - the fund does. For example, the WHO programme that receives the most money is a polio eradication programme because the Gates Foundation devotes most of its contributions to polio. In addition, the huge financial contributions of the foundation made Bill Gates the unofficial, albeit unelectable, head of the organization. That is why the World Health Assembly, which sets the WHO agenda, adopted the Global Vaccination Plan in 2012, co-sponsored by none other than the Gates Foundation. According to Dr David Legge, an honorary scholar at La Trobe University's School of Public Health in Melbourne, Gates' financial "donations" are actually a mechanism for setting the agenda. Legg told The Grayzone that "his huge contributions completely distort the budget priorities that the World Health Assembly would like to see."

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "some policy initiatives or regulations set by WHO are announced after they are randomly, informally verified by the Gates Foundation staff." Or, as Politico reported in 2017 from other sources, "Gates' priorities have become WHO priorities."

In an interview with Global Health Watch, a senior health policy officer from a major NGO said: "People at WHO seem to have gone mad. Gates in all "yes, sir," "yes, sir."

In 2007, Dr Arata Kochi, head of WHO's malaria programme, warned of the Financial Dominance of the Gates Foundation, saying its money could have "far-reaching, largely unintended consequences". Seven years later, margaret Chan, the organization's then director-general, noted that because the WHO budget was very targeted, it was "determined by what she calls the interests of donors". When Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus became WHO Director-General in 2017, Gates' influence was again criticized.

Tedros previously served on the board of directors of two organizations that Gates founded, provided start-up capital and continues to fund to this day: GAVI and the Global Fund, where Tedros was chairman of the board.

Today you can find Tedros, who is not a doctor, and he praises Bill Gates' articles on Twitter.

Another mechanism that the Gates Foundation uses to influence WHO is the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE), WHO's main vaccine advisory group. SAGE is a board of 15 people who are legally required to disclose any possible conflicts of interest. During a recent virtual meeting, half of the board members identified ties with the Gates Foundation as possible conflicts of interest. The fund's impact on the international health arena extends far beyond WHO. An analysis of 23 global health partnerships for 2017 showed that seven relied entirely on funding for the Gates Foundation, and nine others listed the fund as their main donor. As global non-governmental organization Global Justice Now notes, "the impact of the Foundation is so great that many participants in international development who would otherwise criticize the Fund's policies and practices cannot speak independently because of its funding and patronage." "The World Bank and IMF look like dwarfs the Gates Foundation in terms of strength and influence," Dr. Vandana Shiva told the Grey Area. 

Media formation

The Gates Foundation has also directed its wealth into news coverage of global health policy - and to quell criticism of its most questionable activities.

The foundation has donated millions to mainstream media including NPR, PBS, ABC, BBC, Al Jazeera, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Univision and The Guardian. In fact, the entire Global Development section of The Guardian was made possible by a partnership with the Gates Foundation. The Foundation has also invested millions in training journalists and in researching effective ways to create narratives in the media. According to the Seattle Times, "experts trained in Gates-funded programs write columns that appear in the media from the New York Times to the Huffington Post, while digital portals blur the line between journalism and the press." In 2008, PBS NewsHour's director of public affairs Rob Flynn explained that "there aren't a hell of a lot of things in global health care these days that don't have some Kind of Gates tentacles." That was around the time the foundation allocated $3.5 million to NewsHour to create a dedicated production unit to highlight important global health issues.

Mickey Huff, president of the Media Freedom Foundation, told The Grayzone that the Gates Foundation is influencing in a way that is typical of foundations working through PR firms, grants and donations from professors. "In short," Huff said, "Edward Berneis would be proud of the achievements of this type of propaganda."

It is not surprising that the fund's enthusiastic coverage is so common in the mainstream media or that its more questionable activities in developing countries attract so little attention.

Deadly double standards

The Gates Foundation has been helping to develop global health policies for poor countries for more than 20 years, mainly in Africa and South Asia. His close association with the pharmaceutical industry seems to paint a stain on this work.

While a statement on the foundation's mission says, "We see equal value in everyone's lives," a study of this recent history proves otherwise. The Fund appears to view the Global South as a dumping ground for drugs that are too dangerous for the developed world and as a testing ground for drugs that have not yet been identified as safe enough for the developed world.

The so-called Bill Gates/WHO Africa vaccination programme is a vaccine against pertussis diphtheria and tetanus (ACDS). It is a set of three vaccinations that are done to almost every child on the African continent, but are not currently performed in the United States or in most other developed countries.

Back in 1977, a study published by British medical professionals in The Lancet found that the risks of whole-cell whooping cough (used in the DTP vaccine) were higher than those associated with wild whooping cough. After accumulating evidence linking the drug to brain damage, seizures, and even death, the U.S. and other Western countries abandoned it in the 1990s and replaced it with a safer version (called DTaP) that did not contain whole whooping cough cells. Nevertheless, African countries continue to receive a financial incentive to continue using the outdated and extremely dangerous ACDS vaccine, and GAVI makes ACDS a priority for African children. Strikingly, a 2017 study funded by the Danish government found that more African children died from the deadly ACDS vaccine than from the diseases it prevented. Researchers studied data from Guinea-Bissau and concluded that boys died almost four times (3.93) more often than those who did not receive the vaccine, and girls - almost 10 times (9.98) more often.

However, these staggering figures have not prevented the Gates Foundation from spending millions annually on the introduction of the ACDS vaccine into African health systems.

Perhaps there is no better element in the work of the Gates Foundation than its efforts to eradicate polio. Both the polio drugs used by the Western world and the medicines given to the Global South are fundamentally different.

The Fund has spent more than $1 billion to spread oral polio vaccine (OPV), a living polio virus, to African and Asian countries. This live virus can multiply in the baby's intestines and spread in places with poor sanitation and running water. This means that people can contract the virus from the vaccine.

According to a 2017 study by the University of California, San Francisco and Tel Aviv University, the polio virus used in OPV did just that in at least two dozen cases studied by the researchers - it quickly regained its strength and began to spread on its own.

In recent years, more children have been paralyzed by the vaccine strain of the OPV virus than by wild polio. In an interview with NPR, Professor of Microbiology Raul Andino said: "It's actually an interesting puzzle. The very tool you use to eradicate polio is a problem." Back in 2000, the United States stopped using OPV. But in the developing world, the Gates Foundation is using its tools of influence to ensure that governments continue to use the discarded vaccine.

What kind of passion is such driven by a doctor without a license? Isn't it eugenics?

Polio outbreaks in the Philippines and Congo are the result of OPV. In 2005, Oxford's Clinical Infectious Diseases Periodical claimed that polio outbreaks in China, Egypt, Haiti and Madagascar were also caused by OPV, stating that "there comes a time when the only cause of polio is likely to be the vaccine used to prevent this."

A few years later, the same publication, arguing that developing countries should switch to an inactive polio vaccine (IPV) used by the United States, wrote that OPV not only does not help children from polio, but "seems ineffective in combating polio transmission."

As the British Medical Journal reported in 2012, "the most recent mass polio vaccination programmes in India, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have led to an increase in polio cases."

According to doctors in India, OPV also causes outbreaks of another disease called non-polio acute sluggish paralysis (NPAFP). After the NPAFP epidemic paralyzed 490,000 children between 2000 and 2017, doctors published a report stating that "the increase in NPAFP and the subsequent decline in such cases was indeed an adverse effect of the polio immunization programme .WHO".

NPAFP is "clinically indistinguishable from polio, but twice as deadly." Keith Van Haren, a pediatric neurologist at Stanford School of Medicine, explains that "it's actually like polio, but the term really scares public health professionals."

In 2012, the British Medical Journal ironically noted that polio eradication in India "was achieved by renaming the disease."

In the same year, the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics documented outbreaks of vaccine-derived polio and the massive rise of NPAFP. He compared efforts to destroy crops in India to the occupation of Iraq, saying, "When the U.S. got bogged down in Iraq in 2005, Joe Galloway suggested that the U.S. just declare victory and then come out. Perhaps it is time for such a noble strategy to eradicate polio."

However, the Gates Foundation and WHO have not backed down, distributing OPV to countries including Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the Foundation says WHO is now providing an "unprecedented level of technical assistance" to polio vaccination campaigns.

In Syria, with Gates' support, GAVI pledged $25 million for polio immunization in 2016. A year later, WHO reported that 58 children in Syria had been paralyzed by a vaccine caused by a form of the virus.

Despite the scientific consensus against OPV and opposition to such programmes in target countries, OPV continues to be used in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia through "assistance" programmes, creating unforeseen profits for pharmaceutical giants that would not be able to sell their products elsewhere.

Continuation follows...