Dr, Hellmich sent a message to Nicolas Berggruen – Chairman of Berggruen Holdings email address that said:
Mr. Berggruen, i recently watched a short segment about your charitable activities on Fareed Zakaria's CNN show. I fully understand why you and other billionaires like you support whatever you guys do. I laud your support of the arts, etc. However, the need for basic human services is so great as exemplified by the work of organizations like Medecins Sans Frontiers, Partners in Health, Mercy Ships, that try to bring basic healthcare services to the millions around the world who do not have access to nor can afford these services. This is just a question, why do rich people like you not give some of their charitable contributions to these organizations instead of putting their names on another "Institute, hospital building, etc" ? i get that you all have your favorite pet projects to support as you will but the needs of humanity everywhere is so great and as you know, the few thousand billionaires in this world own/control over 40% of the worlds wealth. i.e. a few thousand people own 40%, and the remaining 7.3 billion people have the rest. I would like you to consider sending some of the money that you plan to spend for charity to the three healthcare organizations that I mentioned. I am an academic, a research scientist who studies the effects of traumatic brain injury and i send my charitable dollars to these worthy groups but it occurred to me that if a few billionaires could help out, these organizations would have the resources to perform their greatly needed missions and possibly save thousands more lives and affect the health of more people than at the present time. Thank you for your attention.
Regards.
Dr. Hellmich
