CLAIM: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates wrote an article for The Sovereign Independent in 2011 called “Depopulation by Forced Vaccination: The Zero Carbon Solution!”
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Gates did not write this article. The newspaper used a quote from Gates out of context to support the misleading idea, but the text of the story was written by another author, according to a web archive of the page.
THE FACTS: Social media users are recirculating a photo of a years-old edition of an Irish publication to claim that nearly a decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, billionaire philanthropist Gates warned in an op-ed of an upcoming mass vaccination campaign to support depopulation efforts.
The blurry photo, shared more than 3,000 times on Twitter, shows someone holding a copy of the newspaper The Sovereign Independent. The paper has a headline that reads: “Depopulation by Forced Vaccination: The Zero Carbon Solution!” A photo of Gates alongside a longer quote by him appears next to the headline.
“This woman is holding a newspaper that she has kept since 2011,” reads the tweet’s caption. “The paper contains an article by Bill Gates called ‘Depopulation through Compulsory Vaccination’. Gates thinks it would be the most ‘environmentally friendly solution’. No one gave it much thought at the time.”
However, the article was actually written by an author named Rachel Windeer, not Gates. Windeer’s byline can be seen in a clearer image of the same newspaper that has been archived online. The website for the newspaper, which shared misinformation, including conspiracy theories,appears to have last been updated in 2014.
While the quote that appears on the front page of the June 2011 edition is an authentic quote from Gates, it has been taken out of context.
“The world today has 6.8 billion people,” the quote next to Gates’ photo reads. “That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”
Gates delivered this quote during a 2010 TEDx talk called “Innovating to Zero.” But he wasn’t speaking about killing people with vaccines. He was discussing how vaccines and improved health care could help reduce the rate of global population growth and subsequently lower carbon emissions, as The Associated Press has reported.
In past interviews, Gates has argued that improving vaccines and health care can slow the rate of population growth in poor countries, because it lowers the child mortality rate. With more children making it to adulthood, Gates has said, parents may choose to have a smaller family size.
“Amazingly, as children survive, parents feel like they’ll have enough kids to support them in their old age, so they choose to have less children,” Gates said in a 2012 interview.
He reiterated the same idea in a 2014 annual letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“When children are well-nourished, fully vaccinated, and treated for common illnesses like diarrhea, malaria, and pneumonia, the future gets a lot more predictable,” the letter states “Parents start making decisions based on the reasonable expectation that their children will live.”
The foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.