In his February 2010 TED talk 'Innovating to Zero,' about cutting carbon emissions, Bill Gates noted that better vaccines, health care, and reproductive services could help lower the rate of population growth 'by perhaps 10 or 15 percent' — invoking the well-established demographic pattern in which falling child mortality leads families to choose to have fewer children. Years later the clip was selectively edited and recirculated to falsely claim Gates wanted to use vaccines to 'depopulate' the planet. Fact-checkers including PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and Africa Check have repeatedly rated the claim false, but it became one of the most durable pieces of misinformation about Gates, foreshadowing the wave of pandemic-era conspiracy theories that would later make him a prime target.