Buffett gift will help fight AIDS

[Vinod Gopani]

Warren E. Buffett's $31 billion gift to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will help the foundation pursue its long-standing goal of curing the globe's most fatal diseases, Mr Gates said on Monday, along with improving American education. The foundation hopes to use the enormous gift, among other things, to find a vaccine for AIDS, Ms Melinda Gates said.

Mr Bill Gates went further, saying that while he might be optimistic, he believed there was a real shot at finding cures for the 20 leading fatal diseases, as well as ensuring that every American has a chance at a decent education.

揅an that happen in our lifetime Mr Gates said, sitting next to Mr Buffett at the New York Public Library, where the gift was formally announced after news of it broke on Sunday. Mr Gates acknowledged that spending the money effectively would be difficult.

The scientific tasks the foundation has set for itself in fields like malaria and tuberculosis take time as well as money, because they require years of laboratory work followed by years of clinical trials, sometimes ending fruitlessly. Improving American education, once better ideas have been found, can take just as long.

It's incredibly difficult to give this much money away well,said Jean Strouse, a biographer who has compiled an oral history project on the Gates Foundation. and giving it away to people who can use it well, especially in places where poverty is so overwhelming, where there's not much real infrastructure.