Hand that heals also harms - Gates Foundation

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0701080164jan08,0,7734111.story?coll=chi-business-hed

EBOCHA, Nigeria -- By Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times; Times staff writer Doug Smith, data analyst Sandra Poindexter and researchers Maloy Moore and Robin Mayper contributed to this report.

Justice Eta, 14 months old, held out his tiny thumb.

An ink spot certified that he had been immunized against polio and measles, thanks to a vaccination drive supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

But polio is not the only threat Justice faces. Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it "the cough." People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The makeshift clinic at a church where Justice Eta was vaccinated and the flares spewing over Ebocha represent a head-on conflict for the Gates Foundation. In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Los Angeles Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.

[hedgehog]

1. This kind of thing has been a problem ever since someone

asked Jesus whether it was proper to pay the Roman tax. We all must live in the world as it is even as we try to make it better.

[ntesla]

2. Three words

Non-profit tax benefits.