What was Bill Gates thinking?

Okay, so Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitoes at a conference to prove a point about malaria. That's fine. Odd, but fine. Hell, maybe even commendable. But what gets me is that he actually said this:

"There is no reason only poor people should be infected."

I think that has got to be the most hypocritical thing anyone has ever said. Bill Gates is among the wealthiest humans ever to exist in the history of our species. He owns more than what some nations own. He has obviously taken steps to protect himself and his people from the dangers of the world, and now he even has a big charitable organization. All of that is great, but then he runs off and makes a statement like that. This is worse than, "Let them eat cake."

Isn't that like saying, "Unless you have a mansion, you should catch malaria"? Or maybe it's more like saying, "It's okay for me to make my fortune from the computer industry, which poisons countless people, animals, and plants with pollution, as long as I throw money at malaria, and hope that everybody but me is plagued by mosquitoes"?

It seems to me, either you're egalitarian or you're not. Granted, we don't want captains of industry to be ruthless. We don't want people to only look out for themselves on one extreme, or exist only for others at the other extreme. The happy medium of reasonable self-interest is what we should strive for, but the question is, Where is that happy medium? Maybe Gates is trying to find it, but he hasn't found it yet. I'm sure he's trying to be both powerful and generous at the same time, and in principle that's fine. But a statement like that does not indicate a profound understanding of the problem. The world needs people helping people, not elitists from on high deciding who should live and who should die.