SPIEGEL: Mrs. Gates, how does it feel to be so rich that you can use your money to influence the lives of millions of people?

Gates: Our money looks huge, but it's actually not when you look at the range of projects that we're going after. Bill and I believe philanthropy can only be effective if it starts things and proves whether they actually work or not. That's the place that governments often don't want to, or can't, work. We might take on six candidates for developing a malaria vaccine knowing that five will fall away. But we'll get one hit. And to meet a mom and know that her baby is alive and that we had something to do with it, that feels great.

SPIEGEL: Why didn't you just entrust your fortune to an institution like the media mogul Ted Turner, who donated a billion dollars to the United Nations?

Gates: Bill and I felt like we had something to add from the private sector. He started Microsoft; I worked there for nine years. We felt the private sector has a view of things that is beneficial to this work. You bring a kind of thinking, an entrepreneurial thinking. And then, if it works, governments can scale it up.

SPIEGEL: Are you not challenging the UN's leadership role when it comes to development aid?

Gates: Every single thing we do has to be done with governments. Look, we could go out and spend the entire resource in two years. Gone, done. But would we have a catalytic effect? Would we have left something behind? Would we have saved as many maternal lives or childhood lives? The answer would be no. Continue reading

• Source: Spiegel Online
• Image: GirltalkHQ

"Individual Catholics have to take this on as a personal challenge to the integrity of the Church," Brown told LifeSiteNews.com "First of all they have to become well-versed on the Catholic teaching regarding contraception. Then they have to share that knowledge in very brief, one-line comments to the bishops, not only [Melinda Gates'] bishop in Washington state, but to every bishop, pleading with them to defend the poor."

The Catholic bishops, said Brown, are "always telling us that they are terribly concerned about poor people, immigrants, undocumented immigrants."

"Now is the time for them to step up and teach, in a unified body, that what is going to happen in the third world is totally unacceptable to Christ, it is totally unacceptable to his Church, and the victimization of poor women will be beyond the pale, and therefore they must act in unison, calling on the Gates Foundation to stop this madness, and learn how to teach NFP, which is the proper answer to this." Continue reading