Recently, Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, the influential British medical journal, said via Twitter that “Bill Gates’s obsession with polio is distorting priorities in other critical BMGF areas. Global health does not depend on polio eradication.” (The initials are for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.)

And Arthur L. Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s bioethics center, who himself spent nine months in a hospital with polio as a child, said in an interview, “We ought to admit that the best we can achieve is control.”

Those arguments infuriate Mr. Gates. “These cynics should do a real paper that says how many kids they’re really talking about,” he said in an interview. “If you don’t keep up the pressure on polio, you’re accepting 100,000 to 200,000 crippled or dead children a year.”

Right now, there are fewer than 2,000. The skeptics acknowledge that they are arguing for accepting more paralysis and death as the price of shifting that $1 billion to vaccines and other measures that prevent millions of deaths from pneumonia, diarrhea, measles, meningitis and malaria.

– Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times.

Pretty fascinating read from the Times on Bill Gates’ efforts to eradicate polio. The argument raised in the excerpt suggests that Gates is so focused on ridding the world of one disease that he’s missing opportunities to save many more children than might fall victim to polio.

Of course, Gates disputes those assertions, and it’s probably best to defer to Bill Gates when math is involved. To his credit, it seems reasonable that though eradicating the disease now may be extremely tedious and expensive, ending polio would ultimately save a lot more children for less money than palliative care of other illnesses now.

Also, it seems odd to me to insist that a man who’s donating billions of dollars to a worthwhile cause donate those billions of dollars to some other worthwhile cause. Perhaps Gates would really like to be remembered as the man responsible for ending polio. There are worse legacies.

Finally, allow a haphazard segue: On the Colbert Report last night, Dr. Paul Offit mentioned the 500,000 Americans who cannot be immunized for medical reasons and need to rely on “herd immunity.” I am among that 500,000. If you’re basing decisions on whether to immunize yourself and your family on something you read in a sports and sandwiches blog you’ve got other problems. But if you’re looking to put a face on the large group of people that stand a better chance of enjoying a happy and healthy life if you get all your shots, feel free to use this handsome one.