>More than 3.3 million people who would have died of malaria are alive today.
This does make him sound like a saint, but is number of lives saved really a good metric? I mean, what's the quality of life like for these three million people, what's their life expectancy?
I know this makes me sound like a horrible person but I think keeping extremely poor people barely alive looks good as a statistic and there's more worthy causes to spend our efforts on in those areas where malaria is prevalent.
Heh. I predicted a comment like this would be here before I even opened the comments page. "Getting rid of malaria is nice and all, but those people will still be poor." (I also expected, "Are we really sure that saving the lives of so many people is a good idea?", but fortunately that comment isn't here yet.)
It's difficult to have much empathy for people whose lives are so far removed from our own. For most of us, cancer is the boogeyman: most of the people here have had at least one friend or relative affected by it. What would you say to someone that suggested that saving the lives of cancer victims wasn't a worthy cause?
> ...there's more worthy causes to spend our efforts on in those areas where malaria is prevalent.
You are welcome to spend your efforts wherever you like. Gates has decided to spend his efforts on malaria. There is no room for an "our" there, unless you are a significant part of the Gates Foundation. I'm grateful that the mob doesn't get to decide how Gates spends his resources.
Malaria doesn't just kill. It maims. It scars families and communities. It impairs people's ability to earn. Childhood sickness inhibits the development all sorts of robustness later in life from physical strength to intellectual development. It makes certain areas underserved by public services and for profit services. It closes the doors to industries like tourism. etc. etc.
These measures aren't just extending life at the expense of quality. That's more of an advanced medicine concern.
Yeah, I spent a while hanging out in Malawi where malaria is rife and it's a nice place with friendly English speaking people but very poor to a large extent due to the malaria. If you fixed the malaria things would be much better there.
> This does make him sound like a saint, but is number of lives saved really a good metric? I mean, what's the quality of life like for these three million people, what's their life expectancy?
You can't really be improving living conditions of people who are dead can you. So it's a first step.
More people isn't necessarily a good way to improve living conditions, however. It is pretty common for deer populations to become unhealthy when predators are removed, for example, since with no predators they just over produce and then they all starve due to lack of tree bark. You end up with a sickly, miserable population.
Then be glad that someone else did not apply this principle to you.
After all, maybe someone out there in the world thinks that 1 person / km2 ought to be enough. Who's to say that you wouldn't be in his "TO TERMINATE" list?
And these are humans you're talking about, not deer.
Humans have more children to make up for the children who die. With fewer deaths come fewer births, to the point where many developed nations have a negative birth rate.
What if some of the poverty in these countries is because people die young/unexpectedly? Lots of people dying can't be good for the economy. What if curing the deaths helps the quality of life?
This does make him sound like a saint, but is number of lives saved really a good metric? I mean, what's the quality of life like for these three million people, what's their life expectancy?
I know this makes me sound like a horrible person but I think keeping extremely poor people barely alive looks good as a statistic and there's more worthy causes to spend our efforts on in those areas where malaria is prevalent.