If you've been feeling a strong gust blowing toward the Northwest, it's probably the suction from the Gates Foundation vacuum, which seems to draw every expert from around the world into its lucrative doorway, from the World Bank and the UN to the government of Mexico and the former Clinton Administration.

UNAIDS

Peter Piot will work for the foundation through April.

Tom Paulson at the PI has an interesting interview with UNAIDS founding director Peter Piot, who will work for several months at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, advising the non-profit about its global health strategy. Piot is also known for discovering the Ebola virus.

Under Piot, the UN once assessed the HIV/AIDS epidemic at nearly 40 million people worldwide infected and more than 4 million new cases a year. Later, it revised those numbers downward, slashing its estimate of total cases by about 7 million and lowering the estimate of new infections 40 percent. Some critics had accused the agency of deliberately inflating the numbers, but Piot said it was a matter of using new methodologies to assess the situation.

Here's the story mentioning problems with world health data, and here's one in which Piot comments on the Gates Foundation's plan to address HIV/AIDS in China.