Misplaced Priorities

Bill Gates and NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg have decided to spend $500 million of their money on a worldwide anti-smoking campaign. They're rich enough and certainly can spend their money any way they want.

However, if they wanted bang for their buck, they could have spent that $500 million and improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people by using that money to eradicate malaria, rather than an anti-smoking campaign.

If you want to understand why much of the Third World remains economically precarious, all you have to do is look at the health care delivery systems in those countries and how diseases like malaria cripple countries.

Every year, 515 million people are afflicted with malaria. The world's population is just over 6 billion, which means that nearly 8.5% of the world's population is affected by malaria annually.

Countries that have dedicated themselves to reducing malaria outbreaks significantly have seen their economic conditions improve, including countries like Brazil and Vietnam.

$500 million could by a whole lot of anti-mosquito netting or insecticides that could eradicate the mosquito responsible for carrying the disease.

Yet, Gates and Bloomberg are plowing their money into the nanny state anti-smoking crusade, which affects a fraction of the number of people who are afflicted by malaria annually.