Gates Foundation

Following the Gates Foundation’s lead on global health, many critics fault play-it-safe research for the failed war against cancer. Will upping the dose of risk in research bring about new cures?

Sock! Pow! Blam!

Posted Tue, Jun 30, 6 a.m.

Further adventures in the fight against malaria, as the Gates Foundations seeks to stomp it out permanently. Two dozen new grants limn an ominous foe pitted against vivid human imagination.

How Bill Gates caught the global health bug

Posted Mon, Jun 8, 6 a.m.

It was when he read about rotavirus, a cause of widespread death of children from diarrhea. A decade later, Gates Foundation's efforts have brought about WHO approval of a rotavirus vaccine.

And for Seattle's next 'world's fair,'...

Posted Fri, Jun 5, 6 a.m.

By Knute Berger

Puget Sound boosters are proposing to launch an annual Global Health Celebration in 2012 to re-brand Seattle for the new century.

'The Lancet' critique of the Gates Foundation: on the mark?

Posted Tue, May 19, 6 a.m.

The articles complain that Gates is doing too much in global health, or not enough. Amid the confusing complaints and muted praise is a clear call for more transparency.

The Cascadian Dream

Posted Thu, Apr 9, 6 a.m.

By Knute Berger

Can a Pacific Northwest utopia be shaped on the shared belief that nature is sacred? This latest installment in a series on regional identity looks at the patron saint of the environmental movement, John Muir, and how his thinking informs the desire for a new, greener, and elusive entity some call Cascadia.

777s and HIV, or your body is not an airplane

Posted Tue, Mar 24, 6 a.m.

What the challenges of building a safe plane show us about vaccines

Gates Foundation's 35 break-out ideas in HIV/AIDS fight

Posted Tue, Feb 17, 6 a.m.

The 'Explorations' proposals range from using the body's own defenses to creating new synthetic warriors.

Stymied by mosquitoes and bacteria

Posted Wed, Sep 3, midnight

Impatient for solutions to AIDS, tuberculosis, and infectious disease, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation put out a call for anyone who thought they had an idea — and more than 4,000 poured forth. A second request for grant applications goes out today.

For Gates, global health should drive foreign policy

Posted Fri, Aug 22, 4 a.m.

Gates Foundation-funded research is putting war deaths three times higher than conventional ways of counting them. In turn, good data might drive good international politics.

In the absence of an AIDS cure, prevention gains prominence

Posted Thu, Aug 7, 5 a.m.

As vaccine research retrenches, scientists seek to provide a stopgap with new approaches to HIV prevention that were first explored with help from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Salmonella may be a key for a new vaccine

Posted Wed, Jul 9, 2 p.m.

Gates Foundation-backed vaccine developers have found a way to send genetic text messages to the cells of the body to evoke immunity to pneumonia. It could save the lives of a million children a year, yet fluency in the language of the immune system will not come easily.

Bill Gates 2.0

Posted Sun, Jun 29, 9 p.m.

Traditional methods of scientific research have not produced the medical breakthroughs he expected. Now he's going to use his money, through the Gates Foundation, to challenge old ways. The man is breathtaking.

The new Seattle Center: light on the vision thing

Posted Thu, Mar 13, 5 a.m.

By David Brewster

The new master plan for the signature park near the center of the city creates more open space and adds some good amenities, but it keeps the awkward Center House and proposes a living-together arrangement with school football teams.

How Sputnik 'beeped' Seattle into the 21st century

Posted Wed, Oct 3, 5 a.m.

By Knute Berger

Fifty years ago, the launch of the first satellite changed the world, but one of the places that felt the impact most was Seattle. Not only did the orbiter alter the city's course, it influenced the generation of world-shapers that includes Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

A tortuous course through Seattle Center and Seattle process

Posted Tue, Aug 21, 5 a.m.

By William Echols

More than two years of planning and public hearings for a new skateboard park ended with an unplanned compromise site that is highly problematic. Here's what happened. Still unclear is why it happened.

The paradox of Seattle billionaires: The bigger they are, the less we know about them

Posted Mon, Jul 30, 11 a.m.

By O. Casey Corr

Paul Allen's recent interview with The Seattle Times provides a rare glimpse into the mind of a billionaire who's known more for his toys than for his intentions to develop Seattle.

Timothy Egan unleashed

Posted Sat, Jun 2, 1 p.m.

By Chuck Taylor

The longtime Northwest journalist and author lets fly some arrows in a guest column in The New York Times.

Greening Seattle Center

Posted Mon, Apr 23, midnight

By David Brewster

With downtown crying for more park land, the pressure is on to make Seattle Center more park-like. New plans for recasting the Center seem to respond to that.

Other media

States compete feverishly for $4 billion in education reform grants Gates Foundation is giving grants to help districts craft the best cases. Some worry about too much gaming of the system with short-term programs of little lasting value.

NEW YORK TIMES

Obama picks ex-Gates Foundation official to run U.S. foreign aid agency Rajiv Shah, 36, a medical doctor, will be the new head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, subject to Senate confirmation. At Gates, Shah managed the foundation's global vaccine program, among other jobs.

SEATTLE TIMES

Obama's real Education Secretary is Bill Gates Nothing against Secretary Arne Duncan but the Gates Foundation puts so much money into schools, and its views on education drive policy to such an extent, Bill might as well be in the Cabinet.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Texas deals itself into the global health game, with quest to cure cancer The state puts up $3 billion and issues a call to researchers: come and get it.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Can the Gateses really fix American schools? On the road with Bill and Melinda, peering into the despair of our school systems.

NEW YORK TIMES

Blog posts

Gates' funding surge reorders the world of global health

Posted Thu, Jun 18, 3:30 p.m.

by Robert Fortner

A new report documents how the Gates Foundation helped quadruple funding for global health since 1990. In washing away an older order, however, this surge may be creating accountability problems.

Bill Gates edges out Obama in public trust

Posted Tue, Apr 14, 2 p.m.

by Knute Berger

What do they have in common? Credibility.

Some questions about the Gates Foundation's new education push

Posted Wed, Nov 12, 12:07 p.m. 2008

by Dick Lilly

The goals are great, as are the resources. But the new focus risks perpetuating some problems with testing and misses a chance to do more with poor kids in early grades.

A vaccine-delivering mosquito, and other research ideas

Posted Thu, Oct 30, 10 a.m. 2008

by Michele Solis

Global health funding gets freaky.

A new site uncovers Bill Gates' new company

Posted Wed, Oct 22, 12:51 p.m. 2008

TechFlash launches as part of Puget Sound Business Journal, with two respected technology reporters who jumped from

Can Bill Gates also reinvent capitalism?

Posted Mon, Jul 7, 5:12 a.m. 2008

Michael Kinsley, the founding editor of Slate and a half-time Seattle resident, is involved in an interesting new project. It's a Web site gathering quality commentary about "Creative Capitalism." It's well worth looking at.

Librarian Deborah Jacobs takes new job with Gates Foundation

Posted Wed, Apr 9, 11:24 a.m. 2008

Seattle City Librarian Deborah L. Jacobs, who joined the library system in 1997 and spearheaded a remarkable period of building new libraries, is leaving on August 10 to become deputy director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Libraries Initiative. The announcement is a surprise, as Jacobs had expressed her desire to serve many more years as City Librarian.

We're not as mega-rich as we thought

Posted Thu, Mar 6, 2 p.m. 2008

All you folks seething with envy over the fabulous wealth in the region, you can calm down a little. Not only is Bill Gates III demoted to No. 3 on Forbes' recent list of the world's billionaires; the Northwest, by my count, only places eight folks in the top 500. Nor does America hog all the wealth, as you might have imagined. Of the top 25 billionaires, only four are from the U.S. of A. They are: Warren Buffett (tops the list at $62 billion), Gates (third at $58 billion), Sheldon Adelson (the Las Vegas developer, 12th at $26 billion), and Oracle's Lawrence Ellison (14th at $25 billion). The country with the most billionaires in the top 10? India (with four).

Northwest mega-donors were a little stingy last year

Posted Tue, Feb 12, 1:27 p.m. 2008