Gates pours millions into unorthodox health research

LONDON: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has poured millions of dollars into unorthodox and largely unproven health research that would normally struggle to find funding.

Scientific projects, such as developing an anti-viral tomato, a flu-resistant chicken and a magnet that can detect malaria, will share millions of dollars of grants to support unorthodox thinking -- and the outside chance of a world-changing discovery.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest philanthropic foundation in the world, has thrown a lifeline to scores of such projects, awarding 81 USD 100,000 (��65,000) grants designed to encourage scientists to pursue bold ideas that could lead to breakthroughs.

In a radical departure from conventional funding systems, the foundation sought only a two-page application for the first stage award.

Tachi Yamada, president of the Gates Foundation's Global Health programme, said that unconventional approaches were necessary to stir up the thinking on diseases where advances had been slow.

"Some things require a revolution, rather than an evolution, in thinking. The problem is we can be locked into an orthodoxy of thinking that shackles us and prevents us from thinking in novel ways," he was quoted as saying by the British news portal.