To: Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Bill Gates, will you invest in a CURE for AIDS?
Dear Mr. Gates:
Recently, a baby in Mississippi was cured of AIDS--the second person ever cured. But the NIH spends only 3% of its AIDS research money to find a cure and is facing cutbacks.
Now is the time to act.
Will you help by making a major financial commitment to curing AIDS? You will change the world if you do.
Recently, a baby in Mississippi was cured of AIDS--the second person ever cured. But the NIH spends only 3% of its AIDS research money to find a cure and is facing cutbacks.
Now is the time to act.
Will you help by making a major financial commitment to curing AIDS? You will change the world if you do.
Why is this important?
The Gates Foundation has spent $2.5 billion on AIDS grants and $1.4 billion for a global health fund. They fund AIDS vaccine research to develop a preventive vaccine for AIDS, and AIDS treatment research, to develop medications that treat--but don't cure--AIDS.
But they don't fund the search for a cure.
Yet only half of people with AIDS worldwide can access treatment--the rest are dying; 1.7 million die every single year. People with AIDS, many in extreme poverty, must somehow obtain an expensive pill every day for the rest of their lives to stay alive.
We are on the brink of a new era--but whether a cure for everyone happens in 5 years or 20 depends on whether scientists must wait, as they do now, for years to start their cure research projects due to lack of funding.
Bill and Melinda Gates could make a pivotal contribution by providing adequate funding for researchers to grasp the scientific opportunities in front of them and accelerate a cure for all.
(Don't forget to include both your first and last names :)
But they don't fund the search for a cure.
Yet only half of people with AIDS worldwide can access treatment--the rest are dying; 1.7 million die every single year. People with AIDS, many in extreme poverty, must somehow obtain an expensive pill every day for the rest of their lives to stay alive.
We are on the brink of a new era--but whether a cure for everyone happens in 5 years or 20 depends on whether scientists must wait, as they do now, for years to start their cure research projects due to lack of funding.
Bill and Melinda Gates could make a pivotal contribution by providing adequate funding for researchers to grasp the scientific opportunities in front of them and accelerate a cure for all.
(Don't forget to include both your first and last names :)