It Makes Good Sense To Help Individuals Lose Weight If The Are Significantly Overweight

This appeared last week:

Big pharma steps up push for taxpayer-funded weight-loss drugs

Michael Smith Health editor

Feb 9, 2025 – 1.00pm

Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have asked the federal government to list their blockbuster weight-loss drugs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, arguing funding the treatment will reduce a costly obesity crisis.

Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant that makes Ozempic and Wegovy, used a submission to the government’s budget process to push for the inclusion of so-called GLP-1 drugs on the PBS for chronic weight management. It said not doing so would be more expensive in the long term.

“Novo Nordisk recommends decisive action, including increased investment in health promotion, integrated disease prevention and care, and expanded access to pharmacotherapy. The cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of intervention,” the company said in its submission.

Eli Lilly, the American company that makes a rival weight-loss drug called Mounjaro, has also called for the obesity drugs to be listed on the PBS in its pre-budget submission. The Eli Lilly submission has not been made public, but people briefed on its contents confirmed the inclusion.

A PBS listing means the government subsidises most of the cost of a drug. Ozempic is listed on the PBS but only to treat people with diabetes rather than obesity. Novo Nordisk plans to resubmit an application to have Wegovy listed with the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, this year.

Pharmaceutical companies argued there were economic benefits to improving access to the drugs, which sell for between $345 and $645 per month, because a reduction in the number of obese people would take the pressure off the health system in the future.

Novo Nordisk last week reported a 29 per cent increase in fourth-quarter earnings to 28.23 billion Danish kroner ($6.3 billion) as sales of Wegovy jumped 107 per cent year-on-year. Eli Lilly on Friday said fourth-quarter sales surged 45 per cent to $US13.53 billion ($21.5 billion). The companies do not break down sales data for specific countries, including Australia.

Novo Nordisk’s pre-budget submission said chronic disease was the leading health challenge in Australia, affecting 61 per cent of the population and accounting for 91 per cent of preventable deaths. Its submission said obesity was a major contributor and 6.3 million Australians were obese, with the number expected to rise to 47 per cent of adults by 2035.

Doctors say while the drugs are proven to help people lose weight there is still a lot they do not know about the long-term effects of managing fat chemically and that it is important to lead a healthy and active lifestyle. The drugs are taken once a week by an injection.

The latest move by the drug companies reopens the debate about whether taxpayers should subsidise the new class of medicines. Last year, Mounjaro was made available on Britain’s public healthcare system to some patients.

Jonathan Karnon, a health economist at Flinders University, said it would be more difficult to convince the Australian government because of the way that subsidising those drugs would affect the federal budget.

“It will be interesting to see what happens in England because it affects local budgets, whereas in Australia, it affects the Commonwealth government’s budget and so the effect on the budget is of greater concern to those making decisions about whether the GLP-1s should be funded,” he said.

‘Unaffordable for many Australians’

Patients groups said GLP-1s were unaffordable for most Australians and some funding should be provided.

“Given that GLP1-s remain unaffordable for many Australians who could benefit from them, some form of government-funded access needs to be on the horizon. That said, government funding must remain contingent on the usual processes assessing value for money against benefit to patients,” Lisa Robins, chief executive of the Australian Patients Association said.

Woolworths-backed telehealth business Eucalyptus, which has earned more than $100 million from weight-loss services over the past 18 months from its operations in Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and Germany, said a PBS listing was needed to tackle obesity in Australia.

“As we have seen recently, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has released figures showing that for the first time obesity has surpassed smoking as the leading risk factor contributing to death. This underlines the importance of ensuring patients have access to care,” Matt Vickers, the clinical director of Eucalyptus subsidiary Juniper said.

While a PBS listing could be restricted to a defined group of obese people with related health risks or the number of subscriptions capped, the popularity of the drugs and their wide use means government bureaucrats will be wary of approving a listing that could potentially bankrupt public healthcare systems if too many people wanted them.

Academics studying the take-up of GLP-1s said the lack of hard data on how many Australians were taking them was alarming, but they estimated the numbers were in the hundreds of thousands. Studies in the US suggest that between 8 per cent and 12 per cent of Americans are taking them.

Michael Smith is the health editor for The Australian Financial Review. He is based in Sydney. Connect with Michael on Twitter. Email Michael at michael.smith@afr.com

Here is the link:

https://www.afr.com/companies/healthcare-and-fitness/big-pharma-steps-up-push-for-taxpayer-funded-weight-loss-drugs-20250206-p5la1a

All this raises a lot of issues in my mind about the mass medication of a large number of people and just how both the costs and the side-effects would be managed.

There is certainly a strong case for use in the significantly obese as this will save lives etc. but how the costs (which will be significant) and the allocation of these meds will be managed will be a real challenge I suspect. Many clever bureaucrats will have to work out how all this will work given the large scale need, and the costs involved.

A real watch this space moment!

David.

I Have The Sense That The US System Of Government Is In For A Pretty Major Stress Test!

This appeared a day or so ago….

Judge extends brake on Musk’s Treasury raid, summons Trump to court

Hurubie Meko and Qasim Nauman

Feb 9, 2025 – 10.41am

A US federal judge in New York has temporarily restricted access by Elon Musk’s government efficiency program to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems, saying there was a risk of “irreparable harm”.

The Trump administration’s new policy of allowing political appointees and “special government employees” access to these systems, which contain highly sensitive information such as bank details, heightens the risk of leaks and of the systems becoming more vulnerable than before to hacking, US District Judge Paul Engelmayer said in an emergency order late on Saturday (Sunday AEDT).

Judge Engelmayer ordered any such official who had been granted access to the systems since January 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems”. He also restricted the Trump administration from granting access to those categories of officials.

The defendants – President Donald Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Treasury Department – must appear in February before Judge Jeannette Vargas, who is handling the case on a permanent basis, Judge Engelmayer said.

The White House called the ruling “absurd and judicial overreach” and attacked the judge as an “activist”.

“Grandstanding government efficiency speaks volumes about those who’d rather delay much-needed change with legal shenanigans than work with the Trump administration,” Harrison Fields, a spokesman, said in a statement.

Fundamental test

The situation could pose a fundamental test of America’s rule of law. If the administration fails to comply with the emergency order, it is unclear how it might be enforced. The Constitution says that a president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”, but courts have rarely been tested by a chief executive who has ignored their orders.

Federal officials have sometimes responded to adverse decisions with dawdling or grudging compliance. Outright disobedience is exceedingly rare. There has been no clear example of “open presidential defiance of court orders in the years since 1865”, according to a Harvard Law Review article published in 2018.

Saturday’s order came in response to a lawsuit filed on Friday by New York Attorney-General Letitia James along with 18 other Democratic state attorneys-general, charging that when Mr Trump had given Mr Musk the run of government computer systems, he had breached protections enshrined in the Constitution and “failed to faithfully execute the laws enacted by Congress”.

The lawsuit was joined by the attorneys-general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

They said the president had given “virtually unfettered access” to the federal government’s most sensitive information to young aides who worked for Mr Musk, who runs a program the administration calls the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

While the group was supposedly assigned to cut costs, members are “attempting to access government data to support initiatives to block federal funds from reaching certain disfavoured beneficiaries”, according to the suit. Musk has publicly stated his intention to “recklessly freeze streams of federal funding without warning”, the suit said, pointing to his social media posts in recent days.

In her own social media post on Saturday, Ms James reiterated that members of the cost-cutting team “must destroy all records they’ve obtained” and added, “I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again: no one is above the law,” she wrote.

New Jersey’s attorney-general, Matthew J. Platkin, said in a post on Saturday that the injunction meant “the world’s richest man has been stopped from stealing your data”.

Efforts to reach press officers at the White House were not immediately successful.

In a statement on Thursday, after the attorneys-general said they would sue, a spokesperson for the president said that Mr Musk’s team was acting legally. “Slashing waste, fraud and abuse, and becoming better stewards of the American taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars might be a crime to Democrats, but it’s not a crime in a court of law,” said the spokesperson, Harrison Fields.

Although the court order mandates an immediate halt to Mr Musk’s employees’ access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, it was not immediately clear when or if they would fully comply. Nor was it clear how the attorneys-general would monitor the administration’s actions.

In a previous action, 23 attorneys-general sued Mr Trump’s freeze of federal grants and won a temporary pause on January 31, with a judge ordering the administration to stop withholding funds. However, on Friday, the coalition appealed to the judge again, saying that the money was still being withheld from states, grantees and programs.

Musk unconstrained

Mr Trump has had scant success in the courts in years past. His first administration succeeded in only about 23 per cent of the legal challenges against the actions of his agencies, a review found, while prior administrations won about 70 per cent of the time.

But Mr Trump’s new term is already a thing apart.

The administration’s “shock and awe” approach since he was inaugurated last month has seen new policies and actions arrive at breakneck speed. On his first day in office, Mr Trump pardoned members of the mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He has signed dozens of executive orders, withdrawn the country from international agreements and even tried to install himself as chair of the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington.

The aggressive approach is beginning to be tested by scores of lawsuits on a host of issues, but the legal system’s ability to restrain the administration remains uncertain.

If federal officials fail to comply with the Saturday order limiting DOGE, the judge may hold them in contempt, said Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law School professor and a former federal prosecutor in New York City. Courts have done that in the past, he said, “albeit rarely.”

“A contempt citation can come with fines, more likely imposed on the officials rather than the government itself, and even possible imprisonment,” Mr Richman said.

In 2002, then-interior secretary Gale Norton was held in contempt for failing to fix the department’s management of billions of dollars in royalties earned on American Indian land. The following year, a federal appeals court found that she could not be held in criminal contempt for problems that existed before her tenure.

Although contempt findings can be “devoid of sanction, they nonetheless have a shaming effect”, which is often enough to spur officials to compliance, Nicholas Parrillo, a professor at Yale Law School, wrote in the 2018 Harvard Law Review article.

However, he wrote, the “rise of partisan polarisation could potentially fracture the pro-compliance community so badly that members of one party would refuse to acknowledge the shame of a contempt finding against a member of their own camp”.

Since Mr Trump entered office last month, Musk has so far been unconstrained. When DOGE first turned its attention to the Treasury Department, a top official refused to give members access, leading to a standoff. The official, David Lebryk, was put on leave before suddenly retiring.

Almost immediately, Mr Musk’s team was given access to the government’s most fundamental computer data, including the US Treasury Department’s payment system, which is used to disburse funds including Social Security benefits, veterans’ benefits and federal employee wages.

The system – which channels about 90 per cent of the payments for the US government, which spent about $US6.75 trillion last fiscal year – pays funds directly to people in the states as well as to state governments, the suit says.

Before Mr Trump took office last month, access was granted only to a limited number of career civil servants with security clearances, the suit said. But Mr Musk’s efforts had interrupted federal funding for health clinics, preschools and climate initiatives, according to the filing.

The money had already been allocated by Congress. The Constitution assigns to legislators the job of deciding government spending.

“President Trump does not have the power to give away Americans’ private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress,” Ms James said in a statement. “Musk and DOGE have no authority to access Americans’ private information and some of our country’s most sensitive data.”

Here is the link:

https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/judge-extends-brake-on-elon-musk-s-treasury-raid-summons-trump-to-court-20250209-p5lanh

It will be interesting to see if the centre holds here and that if Mt Musk is contained in what he can actually do without due and proper process! The next month or two will be very interesting I believe!

My view is that Mr Musk should stick to making cars and rocket-ships which he seems pretty good at and let the system get on with what is has done for the last few hundred years!

Will be fun to see how it all plays out!

David.

It Is Fairly Obvious We Need To Be Making Sure The Health System Does Not Have A Harmful Sex Bias.

These appeared last week:

Labor invest in female health, argue system ‘wasn’t working for women’

Improved access to birth control and treatments for UTIs, menopause and endometriosis will reform care for a health area ‘shrouded in shame and stigma’.

James Dowling

9 February, 2025

The Albanese government will announce half a billion dollars in women’s health investments, highlighting improved access to contraception and menopause care, with changes set to take effect on either side of the federal election.

On Sunday, Minister for Women Katy Gallagher, Health Minister Mark Butler and Assistant Health Minister Ged Kearney will announce a $573 million swath of policies including new subsidised oral contraceptives, more endometriosis clinics, access to intra-uterine contraceptive devices and greater Medicare support for menopause treatments.

A portion of the announcements, namely newly subsidised medicines, will take effect next month, while longer term goals such as constructing endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics are commitments Labor would take to its second term if re-elected. A joint announcement said the health package was informed by recommendations from relevant senate inquiries and the National Women’s Health Advisory Council.

Mr Butler said the government’s independent medicine subsidy agency, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, had not kept pace with social progress in ensuring access to a multitude of contraceptives, while keeping hormone replacement therapies out of reach for many women.

“With no new contraceptive pill or menopausal hormone therapy added to the PBS in decades, it was clear the PBS wasn’t working for women,” he said. “That’s why I asked our medicines experts to find a way to right that wrong.”

“It’s about time Australian women had more choice, lower costs and better health care

“Today’s announcement is a tribute to all the Australian women who have worked so hard, for so long, to have their voices heard and acknowledged.”

Two new contraceptive pills, sold under the brand names Yaz and Yasmin, will be listed on the PBS from March. The Health Department estimates one in three Australian women currently pay for birth control outside of the PBS, citing a lack of new subsidies in more than 30 years.

It will cut annual prescription costs from $380 to $126.40, or $30.80 for concession card holders.

Also from March, three new HRT types will be subsidised: Prometrium, Estrogel and Estrogel Pro.

While the Health Department frequently cites the independence of the PBS, it confirmed Mr Butler personally requested the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee consider supporting HRT and contraceptive subsidies.

“Women have asked government to take their healthcare seriously, and we have listened,” Senator Gallagher said.

“Our investment of more than half a billion dollars will deliver more choice, lower costs, and better healthcare for women at all stages of their lives.

“These changes could save women and their families thousands of dollars across their lifetimes.

“Whether it’s saving hundreds of dollars on contraceptives, opening more endo and pelvic pain clinics, or ensuring more reliable support for women going through menopause – this comprehensive package will deliver for millions of women and their families.”

Complimenting HRT access will be greater support for menopause health assessments under Medicare, along with a national awareness campaign, doctor training drive and new clinical guidelines to unify care. The rebate would take effect from July.

In May last year, Mr Butler announced more than $100 million in endometriosis supports through Medicare, with a new suite of endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics intended to build on this.

The construction of eleven new clinics will bring the national total to 33, while expanding their role to also assist in specialised care for menopausal and perimenopausal women.

Finally, the health package included a boost to Medicare rebates for IUDs and two national trials to ramp up access to treatment for uncomplicated urinary tract infections.

Australia’s IUD uptake tracks below comparative countries, at around 10 per cent compared to 12.5 per cent in New Zealand and 33 per cent in Sweden. By raising the rebate by 150 per cent and investing in eight specialised training centres, Labor hoped to drive up use while improving supplementary health outcomes from implants like reductions to heavy menstrual bleeding, endometriosis and period pain.

UTI treatment trials will begin from early next year, allowing concession card holders to receive free pharmacy consultations.

“From our first periods as young girls to menopause in older age, women’s health has been shrouded in shame and stigma. I’m proud to be part of an Albanese Labor Government that stands up for women and says this is not good enough, and it never has been,” Ms Kearney said.

“Women deserve choice and control when it comes to their healthcare needs, and they deserve a healthcare system that understands and responds to these needs as they change throughout their lives.

“This investment in women’s health of over half a billion dollars will shift the dial on an entrenched culture of medical misogyny – we’re talking about alleviating pain, reducing delays in diagnosis, avoiding unplanned pregnancies, and transforming menopause care.”

Health policies have been a central pillar in the early days of the Albanese government’s second term election campaign, driving up its contrast with the opposition through a revived ‘Mediscare’ tactic. It also comes after polling by the Nine Publishing newspapers indicated women were increasingly inclined to vote Labor, compared to a cohort of young men more partial to Peter Dutton.

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/health/labor-invest-in-female-health-argue-system-wasnt-working-for-women/news-story/0518eea1490b9518243d217b177054b4

We also have reaction from the College of GPs:

RACGP applauds Albanese Government’s $573m women’s health package

The Royal Australian College of GPs has applauded the Federal Government’s $573.3 million package for women’s health which includes new funding for menopause health assessments and increased funding for long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs). 

The Albanese Government package announced today includes more funding for LARC insertion and removal, and to establish LARC training centres. It also includes new funding for menopause health assessments, the development of national guidelines for menopause and perimenopause, and for new generation contraceptive pills to be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). 

RACGP President Dr Michael Wright said: “The RACGP has been calling for more funding for women’s health and we applaud the Albanese Government for this package, particularly funding for health assessments and LARCs. 

“We know cost-of-living is hitting women hard. Surveys show women are more likely to have delayed seeking essential healthcare due to costs than men. And, on top of this, medical misogyny is embedded in Medicare. 

“The current subsidy for Intrauterine Device (IUD) insertion is just $77, while a vasectomy, which is equally complex and time consuming, gets much more funding at $222. The RACGP spoke about this issue and the need for more funding with Health and Aged Care Assistant Minister Ged Kearney just last year. 

“Women across Australia need better access to affordable and comprehensive care for health issues like endometriosis, chronic pelvic pain, menopause, and perimenopause.  

New funding for menopause health assessments will immediately improve access to affordable and high-quality care from specialist GPs for those who need it. 

“The new generation contraceptive pills being added to the PBS will also give women greater options and choices. 

“There is no substitute for the quality care you get from a GP who knows you are your history. Everyone needs affordable access, no matter your gender, income, or where you live in Australia. 

“The RACGP has a comprehensive plan for accessible and affordable GP care, which includes a suite of initiatives for women’s health, which we’ll be releasing next week. As part of this, we have been calling for more funding for LARC insertion, and women’s health assessments.  

“Better funding women’s health including contraceptives and health assessments is an investment that will pay off. It will improve health and wellbeing, reduce pressure on our health system, and help reduce gender bias in our health system.” 

---

Media enquiries

Journalists and media outlets seeking comment and information from the RACGP can contact John Ronan, Ally Francis and Stuart Winthrope via:

RACGP Media

• 03 8699 0992
• media@racgp.org.au

Here is the link:

https://www.racgp.org.au/gp-news/media-releases/2025-media-releases/february-2025/racgp-applauds-albanese-government-s-573m-women-s

Somehow all this has the sincerity of big business applauding making profits – it goes without saying there should be a balanced and effective approach to female health issues – and given that women  outnumber men in medical graduations it seems pretty certain to happen without gratuitous press releases!

I must be getting too cynical in my dotage I guess! Anyway it is true there is some ground to be made up with female health issues with many years of under-investment in research etc. in female specific problems.

Let’s see what the next decade or two brings! Change will come for sure!

David.

AusHealthIT Poll Number 780 – Results – 9 February 2025.

Here are the results of the poll.

Do You Believe Donald Trump Has The Cognitive Capacity To Safely Be President Of The US?

Yes                                                                  3 (10%)

No                                                                  24(80%)

I Have No Idea                                               3 (10%)

Total No. Of Votes: 30

An interesting outcome with a huge majority not confident in Mr Trumps cognitive capacity!

Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!

Very good voter turnout. 

3 of 30 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!

Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted! 

David.

I Fear This Sort Of Manipulation Will Be A Major Problem Going Forward.

This appeared last week…

Audio deepfakes ‘the most effective we’ve seen so far’, says Microsoft

Tom McIlroy Canberra Bureau Chief

Feb 2, 2025 – 2.19pm

Deepfake audio content could be used to mislead voters and disrupt the federal election campaign, global technology giant Microsoft has warned, highlighting the risk to polls around the country.

Visiting Australia ahead of the poll – due on or before May 17 – Microsoft’s Democracy Forward initiative boss Ginny Badanes said manipulated audio content and deepfake videos designed to sound like a political candidate’s real voice could spread quickly on social media.

Ms Badanes said the company’s research into threats against recent US elections found foreign influence operations were focused on so-called “down-ballot” races, at the state and local government levels.

China, Russia and Iran are among the global leaders in electoral interference, often hacking accounts and spreading content to mislead voters.

The warning follows an Australian Electoral Commission assessment last month that found foreign interference was “a more prolific threat than ever before” as a wide range of individuals and groups were engaging in covert campaigns.

“Audio deepfakes are the thing people should be most focused on and interested in because they’re the most effective that we’ve seen so far,” Ms Badanes told The Australian Financial Review.

“The technology is in the best place, and access to that technology seems to be pretty easy for these actors. It’s also the hardest to detect. There aren’t as many signals to look at from a detection perspective.”

She said Australia would benefit from going to the polls after billions of people voted in elections around the world in 2024.

“We got to see how nation-state actors were behaving. We got to see how they were using AI, if they were using AI, and a lot of those lessons can carry over and inform, to a certain extent, how Australia is going to approach this election,” she said.

In a threat assessment published in January, the AEC said while attempts to interfere in Australia’s democratic processes were common, successful interference was not.

“Our democracy remains robust, our parliaments remain sovereign, and our elections remain free and fair.”

Campaigns in marginal electorates could see interference and hacking attempts, including targeting the personal email accounts of candidates and party officials.

In 2024, foreign operatives targeted Republican candidates and members of Congress who had advocated anti-China policies, sometimes parroting antisemitic messages, spreading baseless corruption accusations and promoting rival candidates.

Ms Badanes said elections in smaller countries such as Moldova and Romania had been targeted and similar activities in Australia were possible.

Iran has used fake videos and “pink slime sites” – websites purporting to provide local news but actually used to spread misinformation.

“We saw Iran set up 12 or more local news sites, likely created with or supported by AI. We think it’s likely that they were able to create more content, whitewash existing content into new articles,” she said.

“And these fake local news sites were meant to mislead people about news and stories and propaganda under the pretence that it was a trusted new site within the US.”

Crossbenchers in federal parliament have called for the Albanese government to take action on artificial intelligence threats, including deepfake video content.

Greens senator David Shoebridge last week co-operated with the ABC to produce a bogus video of him calling for cannabis to be legalised.

Independent David Pocock commissioned deepfake videos of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton last year. He has flagged he will raise the issue of AI threats when parliament begins its first sitting fortnight for the year on Tuesday.

Here is the link:

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/audio-deepfakes-the-most-effective-we-ve-seen-so-far-says-microsoft-20250127-p5l7eh

With our election coming in the next 3 months we may get early experience of how badly things can play out!

Watch this space!

David,

 

Given His Influence On Our Current World This is Worth Reading…

This appeared last week:

Bill Gates’ memoir Source Code reveals how a boy genius conquered the world

Bill Gates’ memoir Source Code delves deeply into his childhood with an undiagnosed gift, as he seeks to explain (and perhaps understand) his own, unique operating system.

Caroline Overington

12:00AM February 01, 2025.

Updated 8:52AM February 01, 2025

Bill Gates has written a memoir in which he says he would probably be ­diagnosed with autism were he a kid in school today.

Looking back, he can see how fidgety in class he was. He remembers how he liked to be left alone to nut out knotty problems. Other kids may have dipped excitedly into the Encyclopedia Britannica; by the age of nine, the young Bill Gates had read through every volume, A to Z. He knew the different heights of all the world’s penguins, and could talk about that for hours.

“And I had that rocking habit,” he writes, which he used to soothe himself.

“But, you know, no terms (like autism) were applied in those days,” says Gates, in a Zoom ­interview with Inquirer ahead of the launch of his book, and while many adults are these days seeking a formal diagnosis, he won’t be one of them.

Bill Gates reflects on his new book Source Code: My Beginnings, sharing insights into his childhood, early passion for computers, and the experiences that shaped Microsoft. He discusses his learning style, social challenges, and the possibility of being on the…

“I’m not going to start taking medicine or something,” he says. “That learning style I had, of intense concentration, was very beneficial to me, even though the social things were much more difficult … For kids nowadays, you know, is it better or worse that they are ­diagnosed?”

Gates stops short in his book of describing his autism – if that is indeed what he has – as a gift, or superpower. He thinks it only partly explains his success as a computer programmer who started Microsoft, invented Windows, and became, at least for a time, the world’s richest man. His book, which covers only the first 25 years of his life, delves deeply into all aspects of his childhood, as he seeks to explain (and perhaps understand) the development of his own, unique operating system. In that sense, the title, Source Code, is perfect, and I’m keen to know if Gates himself came up with it.

“No, but I approved it,” he chuckles down the line.

Gates explains the book is “a collaboration” with a former journalist from The Wall Street Journal, who “typed more words than I did”. He told the stories, and says Gates “ended up doing quite a bit of editing because things like my relationship with my mum, nobody else can really get … those are complex topics”.

The result is a surprisingly tender account of an all-American childhood in Seattle, in the wildly optimistic post-war boom years. Gates, 69, was one of three kids born to middle-class parents who encouraged good manners (“don’t put your elbows on the table, don’t eat in front of the TV”). He had his own room in a pleasant neighbourhood, where he could hear the crack of baseball bats through his bedroom window. A keen hiker and boy scout, he liked to play cards as a kid; he clearly remembers the moon landing and the arrival of the Jetsons on TV. That said, his parents recognised quite early “that the rhythm of my mind was different from that of other kids”.

He could go days without speaking, “emerging from my room only for meals and school”. One teacher said that he did not know – or seem to care – how to “put on his own coat”.

His parents sought the help of a psychiatrist, who “just talked to me” about ways of managing school work and friendships. His parents also decided to send him to a small private school – Lakeside, in North Seattle – where he was “given the opportunity at age 13 to play around with a computer funded by a mother’s club rummage sale”.

He was soon obsessed.

“I loved how the computer forced me to think. It demanded that I be logically consistent and pay attention to details. One misplaced comma or semicolon and the thing wouldn’t work,” he says.

He spent hours, days, weeks writing code, without the aid of guidebooks, because there simply weren’t any. So, he was a complete nerd, then? Well, no. Readers of his book may be surprised to hear that he smoked pot as a kid, dropped acid as a college student, and once spent a night in jail. He liked girls, too. There is a lovely moment in the book where he works up the courage to ask a pretty student to the prom. She says she’ll think about it, but ultimately turns him down and goes with a quarterback instead. It makes his heart hurt, but what’s a geeky kid to do? Boys like Bill just weren’t considered boyfriend ­material. His awkwardness with women accompanied him to Harvard. Gates still remembers attending “mixers” in 1973 – the year that Roe v Wade guaranteed the right to abortion, and the start of America’s slow exit from Vietnam – dressed in “an expensive brown leather jacket that I paired with blue velvet bell-bottoms (but) I never had any luck meeting women at these parties … Guys in our wider circle would come back (from the mixers) claiming they had. Almost in unison the rest of us would stammer, “How do you do that?”

Then, in 1987, at a trade fair in New York, Gates met Melinda French, who had just started working for Microsoft, the company he had founded with a former school friend, Paul Allen. They married in 1994, and stayed married for 25 years, raising three children. That marriage has since ended, and the terrain here is tricky, since Gates has acknowledged an affair, and poor behaviour. Given that he had always looked up to his parents, who had such traditional values, does he regret that his own marriage ended?

“Sure,” he says, without hesitation.

I figure it must have occurred to him, at some point: “Hang on, I’m the rock star now. I’m the quarterback. I’m the richest guy in the world…” and maybe that led him into temptation?

He’s not sure about that, but says: “I do remember going to a high school reunion once, and one girl – not the girl I asked out to the prom, but another girl – came up and said, Bill, I didn’t even know you had a personality.

“A lot of the time, when I was going into a cocktail party or something, I would think, ‘Oh, God, will anybody want to talk to me?’ That problem definitely did get solved.”

Gates’s former wife told Vogue magazine a few years ago that she had forgiven Bill for his transgressions, but loathed her husband’s connection to the vile sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, describing him as “evil ­personified”.

Gates has said that he, too, ­regrets the time he spent with ­Epstein. He was a bit lost after the divorce, rattling around his $US200m mansion on Lake Washington (it has 24 bathrooms and six kitchens, which he knows is ridiculous; he says he offsets the enormous footprint of his house and the near constant travel with carbon credits). He now has a new partner, Paula Hurd, who is the widow of the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, Mark Hurd (they came to Australia last January for the Open tennis) and his relationship with his children seems good.

Of course, his memoir stops well short of any of those developments, but he is likely to get to them, since Source Code is merely the first volume of a planned trilogy.

Why three books?

Like many men approaching the final quarter, Gates is thinking about his legacy, and it’s clear that he hopes to help shape it. You can sense his frustration in that regard. He was a boy genius – his invention, the Windows operating system, changed almost everything about the world in which we live – and he’s ploughed tens of billions of dollars from the colossal fortune he made into reducing poverty and curing malaria in some of the poorest countries on earth. He loves doing it – he has a jet that he can use to travel from one hot spot to another; he has teams of people working on all manner of exciting breakthroughs – and yet, when you go online, you’re likely to find his name linked with thousands of bat-poo crazy conspiracy theories (Gates is trying to depopulate the world by poisoning the water supply; Gates is using the Covid-19 vaccine to sterilise women in poor countries; Gates is not preventing but actively spreading viruses).

Does he try to counter these ­stories when they come up?

“Look, most of them are probably best to ignore,” he says. “They are a few thousand people in some weird group … like, there was a recent one about how I’m trying to change the weather … It’s such a fringe thing that any notice I take of it would actually make it worse. They’d be like, ‘Oh, must be true. He’s denying it’.

“But things that go mainstream, like the Robert Kennedy Jr book (he doesn’t name it, but it’s called The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, and it has sold more than a million copies in the US) which says I’m making money from vaccines, because it’s been widely read, I do feel the need to speak out and say, ‘hey, this is completely the opposite of the truth’. I saw another story where I was trying to track people’s location by embedding something in the virus. I mean, you just have to laugh at some of it … You really do have to have a sense of humour about it, because it’s so random.”

Does he have a view as to why he, in particular, has become a target of such wild claims?

“Well, if you’re looking for simple explanations, the idea that there’s a weird billionaire who somehow behind the scenes is ­manipulating things is an (easy) story to understand,” he says.

Gates also now finds himself on the wrong side politically, having donated $50m to Kamala Harris in her bid for the White House.

Was he surprised that Donald Trump won?

“I don’t pretend to be good at predictions. I wasn’t sure who would win … and he won,” he says, grinning.

Plenty of other tech bros, like Mark Zuckerberg, who were also once seen as progressive, are now sidling up to Trump, hoping for treats and favours. That’s not really Gates’s style, but does he feel that he will be able to work with the ­returning President?

“I had a chance to meet with him in Mar-a-Lago for a long dinner,” he says, cautiously.

“He’s obviously getting input from tonnes of people.”

He’s not yet sure how Trump will respond to the idea that the US should continue to support the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in its vital work across the globe (they say they have halved the number of deaths from malaria, and from HIV-AIDs, which is nothing to sneeze at).

As for the man who stole Gates’s title as the world’s richest man, Elon Musk … does Gates have any thoughts about him?

“He’s an incredible genius,” Gates says, without hesitation. “And he’s at the centre of the world right now. I’ve talked to him about technology and about philanthropy … I hope he becomes a good philanthropist too.”

Source Code: My Beginnings by Bill Gates (Penguin Books Australia, $55 HB) will be published on February 4.

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/bill-gates-memoir-source-code-reveals-how-a-boy-genius-conquered-the-world/news-story/6af0f2ab547e46a2a7589f5c96b8ceaa

I suspect this may be an autobiography that is worth reading for all sorts of reasons!

David.

I Suspect The World Has Moved A Little On Its Axis In The Last Few Weeks…

This appeared a few days ago…

Firms ditch OpenAI for DeepSeek

Danny Fortson

2 Feb, 2025

DeepSeek released its first free chatbot app, based on the DeepSeek-R1 model which had surpassed ChatGPT as the most-downloaded free app on the iOS App Store in the United States.

The arrival of DeepSeek, a super-cheap yet powerful artificial intelligence system from a little-known Chinese firm, has sent Silicon Valley into a psychological tailspin. Over just a few days, Big Tech appeared to go through all seven stages of acceptance. It started with shock. This was “a Sputnik moment”, exclaimed billionaire investor Marc Andreessen about DeepSeek, which, depending on how you crunch the numbers, offers a state-of-the art AI reasoning model for one-twentieth the cost of a rival such as OpenAI.

Denial and anger swiftly followed. San Francisco-based OpenAI said the firm may have “inappropriately” pirated its technology. Depression - one commentator called DeepSeek’s breakthrough an “extinction-level event” for investors who had ploughed hundreds of billions of dollars into AI start-ups - was followed by reconstruction, the “upward turn” and, finally, acceptance. And all before Thursday.

Indeed, even as OpenAI alleged malfeasance, Microsoft, its single biggest investor and most important partner, was integrating DeepSeek into its Azure cloud computing offering. Amazon’s AWS did the same. DeepSeek is here to stay.

Why have America’s Big Tech champions - the same companies that have poured billions of dollars into the AI companies that DeepSeek undermines - embraced the Chinese interloper founded by Liang Wenfeng?

“Because customers want it,” said Ed Sim, founder of Boldstart, a venture capital firm. All of his start-ups, he said, were looking at ways to swap DeepSeek for the expensive AI models being pumped out by OpenAI and its ilk. “A few years’ worth of cost compression just happened in a matter of days,” he added.

As the dust cleared, businesses worldwide were asking the same question: should they use DeepSeek too? The answer for many will be a resounding yes - but with important caveats.

OpenAI and Anthropic, the leading developers of private AI models, are not cheap. Companies that use their tools to, say, power a customer service chatbot pay a fee based on “tokens”. OpenAI defines a token as four letters or spaces, so that 100 tokens roughly equals about 75 words that are either entered into its chatbot as a question, or produced as an answer. The price per token depends on the model being used; the more powerful the model, the higher the price.

Enter DeepSeek. The most profound move by the company, spun out by founder Liang Wenfeng from his hedge fund, High Flyer, was to make its model open source. That means anyone can download it onto their servers, use it free of charge and, importantly, modify it as they see fit.

Chipmaker Nvidia lost nearly $600B in market value as China’s AI model DeepSeek shook confidence in US tech dominance.

Doing so is not trivial. DeepSeek’s models are large and require immense amounts of computing power. What is more, changing its “weights” - the algorithmic values that determine the answers it gives - requires deep technical knowledge. But it can be done.

Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine start-up in San Francisco, downloaded DeepSeek’s reasoning model, the system that shows the “thought process” that leads to its answers, onto its servers on US soil. It then doctored it to “Americanise” the output, before launching a version of its search engine last week that runs on top of it.

Making those changes was critical, as DeepSeek’s default settings do not allow content critical of, say, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or the Tiananmen Square massacre. “We’ve been sprinting to make it truly uncensored,” said Dmitry Shevelenko, a Perplexity executive. “For the vast majority of cases, it gives very impartial answers.”

There is also the question of data security. DeepSeek’s servers are based in China, where any company must comply with stringent oversight from the CCP, up to and including allowing the government to access user data. That is why, Sim said, he advises anyone against downloading the DeepSeek app, the number-one “productivity” app in Apple’s App Store. “All that data on your phone gets tracked, it goes into China. Who knows what they do with it?”

The US navy banned the use of DeepSeek last week due to “security concerns”.

However, what is certain is that the breakthroughs underlying DeepSeek are an unalloyed good for businesses and governments seeking to integrate AI. That is because its advances will be swiftly integrated by rivals across the industry.

Because of America’s semiconductor export ban against China, DeepSeek was forced to use mostly Nvidia’s H800 chip, a less powerful processor than the H100s used by other AI labs to train their models. DeepSeek rewrote some of the chip’s software, a huge technical feat, for extra performance.

They also pioneered an approach that draws only on relevant portions of the system rather than asking the entire model to weigh in. The result is a steep reduction in computing power, and thus electricity, and thus price.

“You’re talking about a twentyfold price reduction,” Shevelenko said. DeepSeek’s innovations will surely be integrated by rivals.

Shevelenko said: “We always thought there’s not going to be some enduring edge any one company has. The private AI companies no longer can charge a heavy premium for access to their models. You’re gonna see tectonic plates shifting.”

THE TIMES

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/firms-ditch-openai-for-deepseek/news-story/7e9d9bc22acf70413dba2c0d83a3e0bf

Sorry, all I can do is just watch and see the amazing pace of developments in this area. What I really need now is a guide-book to show me how best to apply these tools in day-to day life and answers as to what it will mean for all of the rest us.

We also need to watch for 'built-in' biases and possible distortion and false answers.....

I can imagine a wide variety of professional organisations wondering just what all this means for them and their members. I suspect it will take weeks, if not months, for sensible answers to emerge!

Stay tuned…

David.

 

It Looks Like The Crazies Are Loose In Queensland Again!

This appeared a week of so ago!

When it comes to fluoride, let’s do what’s best for children

TIM KEYS and MATT HOPCRAFT

3:31PMJanuary 21, 2025.

The debate over whether to fluoridate or not fluoridate local water supply in our towns and centres has become an issue once again, with anti-fluoride votes by a number of Queensland councils, and a political debate emerging in the United States.

In Queensland, several local councils have decided recently to remove fluoride from the water or continue to reject fluoridation, including Gympie, Cairns and Gladstone councils. They are joining about 50 of Queensland’s 77 counils that do not have fluoride in their water.

As a regional paediatric dental specialist, anecdotally I see much more tooth decay, and of greater severity, in children from non-fluoridated communities than their southeast Queensland counterparts.

Today a quarter of Queenslanders do not have access to a fluoridated drinking water supply, while 90 per cent of Australians do. Fluoride has been added to water supplies in Australia for seven decades, starting in 1953. The majority of Australian states and territories have laws requiring the fluoridation of public water supplies, with the exception of Queensland.

The results of this decision from an oral health perspective are not good.

Facts and fictions of water fluoridation in Queensland.

The removal of fluoride from regional water supplies in Queensland has been gaining pace since the decision to devolve decision-making responsibility to local councils in 2012. This is leaving the state’s most vulnerable children at an increased risk of pain, infection and preventable dental disease. With claims of potential harms, including lower IQ and cognitive impairment, now driving this debate, it’s time to reframe the discussion. Evidence, not fear, should guide public health policies, especially when the stakes involve children.

The proven benefits of fluoridation

Water fluoridation is one of the simplest, most efficient, equitable and cost-effective public health measures available to reduce dental decay. It works by adjusting fluoride levels in drinking water to strengthen tooth enamel and protect against cavities. This benefit is universal, regardless of income, location or access to dental care. However, it overwhelmingly benefits low socio-economic communities and regional and remote areas.

In Queensland, where children experience some of the nation’s highest rates of dental decay, fluoridation is not just beneficial – it is essential. Children in these regions face alarmingly high rates of dental disease. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, up to half of children in some Queensland regions have untreated decay before starting school. These children also have fewer dental services available.

Misguided claims: debunking the myths

Opposition to fluoridation, and fluoride, often hinges on claims that it poses health risks, including cognitive impairment or lower IQ. These claims have been amplified by figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the incoming secretary of health in the Trump administration. He recently called for the removal of fluoride from water supplies in the United States, citing concerns over neurotoxicity on the back of studies purporting to show a link to lower IQ or neuro-behavioural problems.

These claims of potentially harmful effects from fluoridation have garnered media attention but they do not stand up to scientific scrutiny. A recent University of Queensland study found no link between water fluoridation and cognitive impairment in Queensland children. People involved in the study who had a lifetime exposure to fluoridated water had an IQ score 1.07 points higher on average than those with no exposure. This is consistent with a long-term study from New Zealand following nearly 1000 people since their birth in 1972. There was no evidence that fluoride exposure was associated with lower IQ scores.

This local evidence aligns with global research. Organisations including the National Health and Medical Research Council, the World Health Organisation and the Centres for Disease Control agree that fluoridation at optimal levels is safe and effective, and poses no risk to cognitive development, cancer rates or other health conditions.

The cost of inaction

Despite the overwhelming evidence in favour of fluoridation, regional Queensland councils are opting out, often citing community pressure or cost concerns. However, the real cost of removing fluoride is borne by children and families. Without fluoridation, decay rates rise, leading to preventable pain, infection and expensive dental treatments.

Every dollar invested in fluoridation can save up to $18 in dental treatment costs, according to the National Health and Medical Research Council. With many families increasingly finding dental care unaffordable in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, water fluoridation is critical to mitigating health inequities.

Where to from here?

It is vitally important that key health decisions are based on evidence, and not the influence of a vocal minority.

At its core, access to water fluoridation is about equity. It ensures that every child, regardless of where they live or their family’s income, has a chance to grow up with healthy teeth and without preventable pain. In Queensland, where children are already grappling with high rates of decay and insufficient dental services, fluoridation is not a luxury – it is a necessity.

By denying water fluoridation, we are not just ignoring the science – we are neglecting our children. The new Queensland government needs to take back control of this issue. It will save them more money in the long-term, with a lower burden of disease for Queenslanders. They need to stand up and mandate that water fluoridation occurs in all communities possible. Hopefully, all of our state and federal health policy decision makers take note.

Dr Tim Keys is a paediatric dental specialist in public and private practice. He is also the head of advocacy and policy for the Australasian Academy of Paediatric Dentistry.

Associate Professor Matt Hopcraft is a dental public health expert at the Melbourne Dental School.

REFERENCES

• Community Water Fluoridation and Intelligence: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24832151/
• Early Childhood Exposures to Fluorides and Cognitive Neurodevelopment: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220345241299352
• NHMRC

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This column is published for information purposes only. It is not intended to be used as medical advice and should not be relied on as a substitute for independent professional advice about your personal health or a medical condition from your doctor or other qualified health professional.

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/health/when-it-comes-to-fluoride-lets-do-whats-best-for-children/news-story/0ee58cde92deba65f02d4a1ddce2bff1

I have got to the stage where I reckon the best thing to do is just fluoridate all water supplies and tell no-one so no-one will know or care except for a few water supply staff.

Simple and stops the nonsense! Unless someone tells you it is impossible to know of water has fluoride or not – and no one has ever shown any harm from the low amounts involved!

Can we please move on to something that matters?

David.