A video viewed thousands of times on social media attributes a quote about ‘sterilization and population control’ to Bill Gates. The clip shows a man saying, “In the words of Bill Gates, at least 3 billion people must die.” Reuters found no evidence that Gates had ever made such a statement.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation confirmed by email to Reuters that this claim was untrue.
A repeat posted on Instagram on January 25 (here) was viewed more than half a million times three days later. The clip was also shared on TikTok (vm.tiktok.com/ZMJoRcss3/), Facebook (here) and YouTube (here).
The viral track does not feature Bill Gates, but a man identified as’ Dr. Robert O. Young, who Gates allegedly quoted during a panel entitled “International Tribunal for Natural Justice”, a group that disseminated conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic, reads news reports (here, here).
The video of more than 90 minutes was posted on YouTube on November 20, 2019 (youtu.be/gKjnEz5s37o?t=5584).
In the clip distributed on social media, Young says: “For the purpose of sterilization and population control, there are too many people on the planet that we need to get rid of. In the words of Bill Gates, at least three billion people must die.” Audible around 1:33:03, youtu.be/gKjnEz5s37o?t=5583).
Young, a promoter of the ‘alkaline diet’ to cure diseases (a theory discredited by experts and set out here), was convicted in 2016 of practicing unlicensed medicine and spent several months in the spent time in prison (here, here).
Reuters found no evidence that Gates ever made this or a similar statement. A Google search for the claim brought up fact-checking articles exposing this allegation and articles on how Gates was a target of disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The alleged quote appears to be a misrepresentation of a statement Gates made during a 2010 TED conference (here), which was repeatedly taken out of context (see, for example, here, here). As part of a speech on reducing CO2 emissions to zero, he said: ‘First, we have population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. It amounts to about nine billion. If we do a really good job now with new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we might be able to reduce it by maybe 10 or 15 percent. But there we see an increase of about 1.3. ‘
As previously explained here by Reuters, in his speech he did not suggest that the world population should be killed by the use of vaccines.
Gates has long been a proponent of delayed unsustainable population growth (here) by addressing the causes of poverty and unrest, and told Forbes magazine in 2011 that when he first entered public health, it was on contraception. (here) had to focus. When he later saw data suggesting that as mortality rates fall, so do birth rates, Gates shifts his focus from contraception to rescuing people who are already alive. He told Forbes: “We went pretty hard into vaccines once we understood that.”
Some repetitions (here, here around timestamp 4:33), also show that Young is referring to a fabricated quote attributed to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about ‘compulsory vaccination’. Reuters downplayed it here earlier.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates was a constant target of disinformation (here, here). In an interview with Reuters this month, he said he was surprised at the amount of “crazy” and “evil” conspiracy theories about him spreading on social media during the pandemic and wanting to investigate what was behind it.
VERDICT
Untrue. There is no evidence that Bill Gates said that “at least 3 billion people should die”. The statement appears to be a misrepresentation of his view on slowing population growth by improving access to health care, including vaccination and contraception.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to actually check social media posts.