CLAIM: Bill Gates is a eugenics advocate who wants to cull the world’s population. Conspiracy theories about global depopulation are legion, with everyone from the UN to the Illuminati supposedly preparing a massive thinning of the herd through “soft kill” techniques. So naturally, a Bill Gates speech about how vaccines can reduce the population of the world would be a big deal and prove him to be a murderous monster.
Of course, Gates never said such a thing.
What Gates DID do was give a TED talk in 2010, called “Innovating to Zero.” The focus of the talk was reducing global carbon emissions to, as per the title, zero. Out of that speech came this quote, which conspiracy mongers have seized on as an admission that Gates is a eugenicist in programmer’s clothing:
The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent, but there we see an increase of about 1.3.
Devoid of context, it looks like he’s saying that vaccines and health care could kill a billion people. But a rational person doesn’t look at this and see the richest man in the world calmly (and publicly) outlining his plans for genocide. What Gates is talking about is reducing population growth, and reputable science bears out that a higher-standard of living equals lower birth rates. Included in this are things like good health care, better food and, yes, vaccines.
Like all the other depopulation plans, this one appears to be either not real or moving incredibly slowly.
