Bill Shore

He has written some great books about nonprofit work, and this review of his new book from Stanford Social Innovation Review is well worth a read.

An excerpt.

“The eradication of malaria is an “audacious goal,” according to Melinda Gates. “But to aspire to anything less is just far too timid a goal for the age we’re in. It’s a waste of the world’s talent and intelligence, and it’s wrong and unfair to the people who are suffering from this disease.” These words, uttered in 2007 by one of the world’s more admired philanthropists, sum up the spirit of Bill Shore’s latest book, The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men.

“An unabashed enthusiast for technology and social innovation, Shore contrasts a clinician’s obligation to treat individual patients’ symptoms with the work of medical research teams whose mission is to find the cure that can eradicate malaria. It is the approach of this latter group that he argues philanthropists should embrace, urging them to leverage markets to achieve their aim. “When we focus on the one rather than the many, on the symptom rather than the cause, on what we can accomplish on our own rather than on what needs to be accomplished by the broader community, we neglect our greatest opportunities to do the greatest good,” he writes.

“Shore points to the success of low-tech preventive measures, such as the distribution of bed nets. But he notes that malaria continues to take its toll, with the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting 243 million cases and 863,000 deaths from malaria in 2009. Between 300 million and 500 million people are infected with malaria each year, and although adults usually survive, approximately 3,000 African children die from malaria each day. Almost 50 million of the world’s poor have died of malaria in the past 15 years. The economic toll in Africa is believed to be billions of dollars per year. Despite these shattering statistics, Shore tells us that global spending on malaria is less than $2 billion per year.

“But although there has never been a vaccine for a parasitic virus such as malaria, a small number of people are seeking to create one. The WHO is currently tracking 35 vaccine development efforts. Shore tells the stories of many of these inspirational scientists and those who provided the support for their quest.

“Shore’s book starts with the source of its inspiration: a young girl he met in Yetebon, Ethiopia, who later died unnecessarily of malaria. This experience set him off in search of an answer to the daunting challenges that malaria presents. What he found were bold innovators—“unreasonable men”—who are dedicating their lives to developing the first vaccine.”