Clive Bates on Substack

 Clive Bates has started a Substack. His first post is an interview he did a while ago...

 

You are a critic of Michael Bloomberg’s role in tobacco policy, why?

The New York financial services billionaire and philanthropist, Michael Bloomberg, spends hundreds of millions of dollars in this field and serves as a WHO ambassador for non-communicable diseases. Yet his policy instincts are those of an out-of-touch elitist, beset by a range of obvious, harmful, unintended consequences. He remains totally unaccountable for the consequences of his actions and interactions with governments through his giant complex of well-funded activists, academics, PR professionals, and officials. He is surrounded by people who refuse to engage with evidence suggesting he is doing more harm than good. Nowhere is this more evident than in low- and middle-income countries, where his staff and money can make a significant impact with little resistance. Though they like to pretend to be independent academics, journalists or civil society organisations, Bloomberg’s complex of organisations serves the ambitions and policy preferences of one overconfident, unaccountable billionaire and his prohibition agenda. It is the most counterproductive use of philanthropic money in the whole of public health, and it needs to stop before even more people are killed by philanthropic negligence.

 

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