Gates Foundation Discovers Directed Research

Grantees Will Have to Share Data

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will require recipients of $287 million in research funds aimed at developing an HIV/AIDS vaccine to share all data prior to publication. The foundation's well-founded idea is that medical progress works best under conditions of scientific collaboration. "The whole field recognizes that in order to meet this humongous challenge, we have to change the way we work," Dr. Nick Hellmann, who runs the program for the foundation, told the Wall Street Journal. "There have to be better networks and collaborations."

Perhaps it took a monopolist to understand the efficiencies of having everyone working on a common platform of scientific understanding. It was the same "directed research" approach, documented in my book, that developed the AIDS triple cocktail. Perhaps Bill Gates' foundation can enforce the same kind of discipline on the AIDS vaccine community, whose government grantees have suffered from the government's laissez faire approach toward developing a vaccine since the late 1980s.