Bill Gates: Seduced by the Siren Song of Vaccination

On February 4th Bill Gates (pictured above) appeared on CNN with Dr. Sanjay Gupta. The interview revealed a man obsessed with vaccines and vaccination. It appears years spent suffering delusional fantasies about saving the world from poverty and disease have taken an extraordinary toll on Gates. In this segment he imagines thousands of imaginary deaths being a result of a 1998 study out of England suggesting a possible link between vaccines and autism. Sadly Sanjay Gupta, revealing his own ignorance, does't challenge Gates' descent into fantasy. Here's Gates:

Well, Dr. Wakefield has been shown to have used absolutely fraudulent data. He had a financial interest in some lawsuits, he created a fake paper, the journal allowed it to run. All the other studies were done, showed no connection whatsoever again and again and again. So it's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts -- you know, they, they kill children. It's a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important.

But I'm not the only one who's noticed Gates obsessive behavior. The New York Times just last week reported: 

...Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, the influential British medical journal, said via Twitter that “Bill Gates’s obsession with polio is distorting priorities in other critical BMGF areas. Global health does not depend on polio eradication.” (The initials are for theBill & Melinda Gates Foundation.)

And Arthur L. Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s bioethics center, who himself spent nine months in a hospital with polio as a child, said in an interview, “We ought to admit that the best we can achieve is control.”

Of course those profiting from his compulsive spending aren't going to discourage his crusade to save the Third World . After all there's a lot of money to be made from such endeavors. It was just last month in fact that the AP reported:

A $21.7 billion development fund backed by celebrities and hailed as an alternative to the bureaucracy of the United Nations sees as much as two-thirds of some grants eaten up by corruption, The Associated Press has learned.

And:

Other prominent backers include former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan, French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gives $150 million a year.

So Mr. Gates, go to Pakistan and Nigeria and Afghanistan and spend your money as you will, just give me a break with the pro-vaccine lies and propaganda when it affects me and my country.

Thanks to Ginger Taylor and Adventures in Autism for making me aware of Gates' statements and inspiring this piece.