Did Pfizer’s CEO say he wants to reduce world population by half by 2023?

A video shows Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla, saying his goal is to reduce the world’s population “by 50%” by 2023.

The claim is FALSE!

The thirty-second video obtained on WhatsApp showed the Pfizer CEO allegedly saying that his goal is to reduce the population of the world by 50%by 2023.The video was shared with the caption:

“Holy Crap! Can you believe Pfizer CEO says it’s their dream to reduce the population by 50 percent in 2023?”

This is an edited version of what Bourla said. In the edited video, Bourla appears to say: “By 2023 we will reduce the number of people in the world by 50%.” Numerous people across social media shared the edited footage, including one Facebook user who asked, “Who will arrest these two men and set up a citizens court to try them for charges of premeditated mass murder?”

The video was an edited version of an actual conversation Bourla participated in at the World Economic Forum in May 2022. In the real video, he says:

“I think that is really fulfilling of a dream that we had, together with our leadership team when we started in 2019. The first week we met in January of 2019 in California to set up the goals for the next five years – and one of them was by 2023, we will reduce the number of people in the world that cannot afford our medicines by 50 percent. I think today this dream is becoming reality.”

The edited clip omitted the words “that cannot afford our medicines.” The full interview is available on the World Economic Forum’s YouTube page, and the moment can be seen at the 2:35 mark:

 CONCLUSION

The claim that Pfizer CEO said he will reduce the world by half is FALSE, given that the original source of the video was edited to present a misleading version of what Bourla.