Priscilla Chan spoke at SXSW.
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Priscilla Chan has seen measles, and the disease isn’t pretty.
“As a pediatrician, I’m a huge believer in the power of vaccines. We often forget how far we’ve come,” Chan said Friday during a session at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
Chan, a doctor, former teacher, co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and wife of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, addressed the topic a day after Facebook said it would demote rankings of pages and groups on the platform that spread misinformation about vaccines. Facebook also said it wouldn’t recommend those groups and pages when people search for vaccine information on the platform.
In Chan’s discussion with CNN’s Poppy Harlow, the issue of taxes also came up. Though Chan noted she isn’t a politician and wasn’t endorsing any specific plan, she did say she supported higher taxes on the wealthy.
“For people who can afford it, paying higher taxes isn’t a bad thing,” she said. Chan also talked about putting resources toward tech that can address societal issues.
In 2015, Chan and Zuckerberg said they’d give 99 percent of their stock to their philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
They founded the nonprofit in 2015 and have since taken on topics such as affordable housing, criminal justice reform, biochemical research, and education. In February, the organization helped launch a program in Oklahoma to teach women inmates how to code. And in 2016, the organization promised to put $3 billion over the next decade into an effort to cure all diseases.