As most of you know the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a major
supporter of global health initiatives.

Bill and Melinda Gates issue an annual letter in which they reflect on
broader issues and progress to date. 

They have just released their 2014 Gates Letter at:
http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/
	 This is the gist of an email I just sent to the Gates Foundation with
regard to the Bill and Melinda annual letter. 
	I am a development economist with half a century of work in this area and
tend to agree with the thrust of their 2014 "Gates Letter". But they have
made a grave error in opening the letter with a negative reference to Erik
S. Reinert's book "How Rich Countries Got Rich...and Why Poor Countries
Stay Poor". 
 If they had read it, or talked to someone who had, they would have seen
that it is almost completely consistent with their views. It is NOT a
negative opinion book about the post-WWII, post-Colonial, experience. It is
an evidence based book about the history of economic development, and the
lessons learned, from the past 1500 or so years.  

	Reinert has one of the best historical libraries on the globe on
development. The book has contemporary material of course, but of the
hundreds of books that do in fact exhibit the view that the Gates Letter is
objecting to, this book is not one of them. 
 As a matter of Foundation and personal integrity, I would expect someone
to (a) look at the actual content of the book, and (b) be very high profile
in issuing a retraction with regard to the error of citing this book. I am
a supporter of many of the views expressed in the letter , but an injustice
has been committed and I expect high profile correction. I have asked the
Foundation to let me know where the Foundation intends to go with this
problem.
 Prof. Sam Lanfranco 
----------------------------------------------
 "It is a disgrace to be rich and honoured
 in an unjust state" -Confucius
 ----------------------------------------------
 Dr Sam Lanfranco (Prof Emeritus & Senior Scholar)
 Econ, York U., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA - M3J 1P3
 email: [log in to unmask] (mailto:[log in to unmask])   Skype: slanfranco
 blog:  http://samlanfranco.blogspot.com (http://samlanfranco.blogspot.com)
 Phone: 613 476-0429 cell: 416-816-2852


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