Bill Gates, one of the world’s wealthiest men and also one of its greatest philanthropists, recently said that capitalism is “flawed” since more money is spent on research into minor ailments than on diseases and conditions that kill millions each year.

He used the example of male baldness and said that more money is spent researching the prevention of hair loss than on finding a cure for malaria, which kills more people worldwide than any other disease on the planet. I had to stop and read that line again and maybe you did too.

According to the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, some £1.3 billion was spent last year on research into male baldness. Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation says that just over a quarter of that (£361 million) was spent on malaria research.

Each year, malaria is responsible for the deaths of millions of men, women and children mainly in the poverty-stricken and undeveloped parts of the world. By contrast, as far as I am aware, nobody has ever died from hair loss or baldness.

That tells me two things, one that we in the West are more concerned with matters that directly affect us than things that do not, no matter how trivial. Secondly that we place personal vanity above death and suffering in the third world. Whichever way you look at it, it is a pretty sad indictment on modern society.