by James Tillman

March 8, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – When Microsoft co-founder and population-control advocate Bill Gates spoke recently of using vaccines to reduce world population, he set off a wave of speculation over his possible allusion to covert sterilization programs. According to the Gates Foundation, however, the multi-billionaire in fact advocates vaccine use to decrease child mortality – something he claims actually decreases population growth.

Gates’ comments occurred while he was speaking to a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference on how humans might reduce their CO2 emissions in order to reduce global warming. “Until we get near to zero [carbon emissions]” he claimed, “the temperature will continue to rise” – which he said would lead to “extremely bad” consequences.

Because the quantity of CO2 emitted is related to the human population, Gates briefly mentioned means to reduce the projected world population, including “reproductive health services” – abortion and contraception – as well as vaccines.

“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,” he said.

Gates is well-known for funding pro-abortion population control measures – but Gates’ vaccine reference immediately launched speculation regarding the use such drugs to disseminate sterilizing agents on a large scale.

Previous vaccination programs have been shown to have covertly been used to sterilize women. In 1995, the Supreme Court of the Philippines found that vaccines used in a UNICEF anti-tetanus vaccination program contained B-hCG, which when given in a vaccine, permanently destroys women’s ability to sustain a pregnancy. Aproximately three million women had already been given the vaccine.

Despite this, Gates claims to operate on the seemingly paradoxical view that decreasing child mortality also decreases population growth. In response to LifeSiteNews.com’s query, the Gates Foundation – noting that Gates spoke at the TED event solely in a personal capacity – pointed out that Gates said in his 2009 Annual Letter that a “surprising but critical fact [is] that reducing the number of [infant] deaths actually reduces population growth.”

He continued by explaining the theory that parents will have more children when infant mortality is high, so as to ensure that several children will survive to take care of them as they grow old.

“If you improve health in a society … surprisingly, population growth goes down,” Gates told CNN in 2008. “And that’s because a parent needs to have some children survive into adulthood to take care of them when they’re old.”

“And so, if they think having six children is what they need to do to have at least two survive, that’s what they’ll do. And amazingly, across the entire world, as health improves, then the population growth actually is reduced.”

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently pledged ten billion dollars to help vaccinate children around the world.