&#62;I would much rather have Gates spend his money on clean energy research or infrastructure projects.<p>You have to look at the margins. Is the benefit of $10 billion spent on vaccine research greater than $10 billion spent on clean energy or infrastructure? I think it is.<p>There are already many companies, subsidies, and grants for clean energy. Honda has revenues of about $120 billion per year and it spends 5% of that on R&#38;D. Of course not all of that is spent on clean energy, but Honda is only one car company. $10 billion is a small fraction of the amount spent per year on clean energy research. For comparison, the WHO's yearly budget is around $1 billion.<p>What about infrastructure? The new bay bridge has a price tag of $6 billion. If that's anything close to the typical price of building big stuff, then vaccine research is definitely more cost-effective in terms of lives saved.<p>&#62;  these sorts of programs in undeveloped countries actually create more poverty then they solve.<p>Yes, it's a trade-off. More poor people for fewer dead people.<p>Living in Somalia sucks, but living in a Somalia with smallpox would be even worse. We know the problems of many 3rd world countries are more than just matters of supplying basic needs. You point out the harm caused by corruption and crime, but you neglect another reason for the lack of progress: disease. Workers can't work if they're stricken with malaria, or crippled from polio, or dead from smallpox.<p>It's true that many cannot afford to pay for vaccines. Luckily, philanthropists and governments like to give money to groups like the Pan American Health Organization (which eradicated smallpox and polio in the americas). If everyone had to pay for their vaccines, smallpox and polio would still kill millions.<p>Smallpox killed 400 million human beings in the 20th century. That's more than every war since 1900. Now it is gone. Polio crippled hundreds of millions. It remains in only four countries. There are hundreds of millions of cases of malaria each year. Several million die from it, mostly children. It is the biggest killer without a vaccine, and it's about fucking time that changed.