Philanthrocapitalism, past and present: The Rockefeller Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the setting(s) of the international/global health agenda

This article reflects critically on the roots, exigencies, and reach of global health philanthropy, comparing the goals, paradigms, principles, modus operandi, and agenda-setting roles of the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations in their historical contexts. It proposes that the Rockefeller Foundation’s early 20th century initiatives had a greater bearing on international health when the field was wide open—in a world order characterized by forceful European and ascendant U.S. imperialism—than do the Gates Foundation’s current global health efforts amidst neoliberal globalization and fading U.S. hegemony. It concludes that the Gates Foundation’s pervasive influence is nonetheless of grave concern both to democratic global health governance and to scientific independence—and urges scientists to play a role in contesting and identifying alternatives to global health philanthrocapitalism.