Bill Gates spoke at the Munich Security Conference in Germany this Saturday where he urged world leaders to spend less money on weapons and spend more money on preparing for biochemical warfare.
He warned that the threat of bio-terrorism is "right up there with nuclear war and climate change" and that should terrorists get their hands on deadly pathogens, they could create a pandemic which would kill as many as 30 million people in a year. The scary part is that his sources believe that this could happen within the next 10-15 years.
"Whether it occurs by a quirk of nature or at the hand of a terrorist, epidemiologists say a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year," he said. "They say there is a reasonable probability the world will experience such an outbreak in the next 10 to 15 years."
'The good news is that with advances in biotechnology, new vaccines and drugs can help prevent epidemics from spreading out of control,' he said -- but that requires funding preventative research.
"I'm optimistic that a decade from now, we can be much better prepared for a lethal epidemic if we're willing to put a fraction of what we spend on defense budgets and new weapons"
He warned that the threat of bio-terrorism is "right up there with nuclear war and climate change" and that should terrorists get their hands on deadly pathogens, they could create a pandemic which would kill as many as 30 million people in a year. The scary part is that his sources believe that this could happen within the next 10-15 years.
"Whether it occurs by a quirk of nature or at the hand of a terrorist, epidemiologists say a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year," he said. "They say there is a reasonable probability the world will experience such an outbreak in the next 10 to 15 years."
'The good news is that with advances in biotechnology, new vaccines and drugs can help prevent epidemics from spreading out of control,' he said -- but that requires funding preventative research.
"I'm optimistic that a decade from now, we can be much better prepared for a lethal epidemic if we're willing to put a fraction of what we spend on defense budgets and new weapons"
