Bill Gates: A Failed Philanthropy For The Planet

Fr. Dale Matson
03-17-11

“And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’." (Genesis 1:28)

“I'd like to share a revelation I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we … are the cure.

(Agent Smith speaking to Morpheus in the movie “The Matrix”)

“One of the world's wealthiest men and the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, has suggested vaccines as one method of reducing the world's population. Gates made his remarks to the invitation-only Technology, Entertainment and Design 2010 Conference in Long Beach, Calif. His February address was titled, "Innovating to Zero" http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=127346 He presented a speech on global warming, stating that CO2 emissions must be reduced to zero by 2050. Gates said every person on the planet puts out an average of about five tons of CO2 per year. "Somehow we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero," he said. "It's been constantly going up.” .

Bill Gates would probably see himself as a major contributor to humanitarian causes in third world countries. He is a man with enormous financial clout who is attempting to literally change the face of our planet. I am not prepared to argue whether increased CO2 increases temperature or the reverse. I am also not prepared to argue whether humans are major or only minor contributors to CO2 emissions. I am here to argue against what seems to be a counter-intuitive rationale that increased immunization will lead to less mortality and less population. In his 2009 annual letter, he wrote that a "surprising but critical fact [is] that reducing the number of [infant] deaths actually reduces population growth." “…parents choose to have enough kids to give them a high chance that several will survive to support them as they grow old. As the number of kids who survive to adulthood goes up, parents can achieve this goal without having as many children.”http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/2009/Pages/2009-preventing-childhood-deaths.aspx.

This may be the understanding of Bill Gates as to why parents in third world countries have lots of children but the reason could also be economic. More children are more workers who can contribute to family subsistence. They are seen as an asset in the here and now, not an investment in the future comfort of the parents. In third world countries children are seen as making poor parents rich.

I believe that Bill Gates sees humans not a resource or holding a special place in creation. I believe he sees humans ultimately as a liability. He is a depopulationist whose father was head of Planned Parenthood. He has contributed tens of millions of dollars to groups that perform and proselytize for abortions.

If he is wrong about immunizations leading to lower populations, then his strategy of reducing infant and childhood mortality must lead to lower populations through other mechanisms resulting from overpopulation pressures. Starvation and war are other checks on overpopulation. It would be tragic indeed if his immunizations resulted in more people, more CO2 and more suffering. In any intervention the prime directive is to first do no harm. If human beings continue to be seen as a threat to the planet because they are a source of CO2 emissions, then the search for effective interventions will focus more on limiting human populations via inhumane measures such as sterilization and abortion.