In 1956, the US military released Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with the malaria virus in Savannah, Georgia as part of Operation Big Buzz. Now, the military is testing genetically modified mosquitoes to deliver vaccinations, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. However, some residents are concerned about the potential risks and lack of scientific investigation. Similar efforts are being made in Houston to combat the Zika virus. Meanwhile, Oxford University has developed a vaccine that could reduce malaria deaths by 70% by 2030. In Fresno, California, a project is releasing a million mosquitoes per week to reduce the population. In Medellin, Colombia, Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes are being released to control diseases like dengue.
Speaker 0: Hilarious. Of course, transmitted by mosquitoes. I brought some here so you could, experience this. We'll Let let those roam around the auditorium a little bit. There.
There's no reason Only poor people should have have the experience.
Speaker 1: In 1956, During their biological warfare testing, the US military released an undisclosed number of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes into the residential areas of Savannah, Georgia, Which many say were infected with the malaria virus. This event was called Operation Big Buzz.
Speaker 2: But the US military wanted to keep this research a secret, So they tested it in their own backyard.
Speaker 3: One of the things that stands out for me about Operation Big Buzz is that the US tested Did it on Americans.
Speaker 0: Nasty little insects and certainly, you know, weaponizing them could That would be useful to
Speaker 1: the military. It's kind of
Speaker 3: biological warfare before biological warfare.
Speaker 1: The very same military is now testing mosquitoes that are genetically modified to deliver vaccinations, a great way to reach the vaccine hesitant, a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And let's not forget why the world's most powerful doctor does what he does.
Speaker 2: Hearing you say that you're getting into this because there's more bang for your buck is not inspiring, Bill.
Speaker 4: Well, that's too bad. I'm at, you know, it's not my goal to be inspiring. The world has limited Resources.
Speaker 2: So if you're not doing things to be inspiring, what are you doing things for? Optimization.
Speaker 5: Moving forward with a controversial plan to release genetically Find mosquitoes to help combat the population.
Speaker 6: But some residents don't want the mutant mosquitoes under the mandate to know where they will be released. Ocwen Tatavalla reports.
Speaker 7: In some Key Largo neighborhoods, the signs are there. They do not want genetically modified mosquitoes.
Speaker 8: Originally, I was engaged by
Speaker 7: Mara Daley owns this hair salon. Aside from being part time business owner, she's a mom and activist.
Speaker 8: I do not feel comfortable having my child in the environment where Up to 3 quarters of a 1000000000 mosquitoes will be released in our environment.
Speaker 7: The genetically modified mosquito fight has been going on for 10 years now. Your fellow citizens are concerned about this.
Speaker 3: Many fellow citizens are concerned.
Speaker 7: Barry Ray heads the Florida A Keyes Environmental Coalition, an organization that argues the project lacks independent scientific investigation.
Speaker 3: You don't really know what the long term outcomes Could be or what, you know, how to quantify those risks. And if you can't do that scientifically, then you don't know how to Responsibly mitigated or detect if something's going awry.
Speaker 6: Is Houston about to use genetically modified mosquitoes to curb the Zika virus?
Speaker 9: But doctor Mustafa Daban with Harris County Public Health says the county is talking to a couple companies about bringing in genetically and modified mosquitoes to kill off their Zika carrying brethren.
Speaker 7: We're gonna use another mosquito against another mosquito.
Speaker 9: Doctor Davon says the county is working with Oxitec, which inserts a gene into a specific kind of male mosquito.
Speaker 10: Larry, a medical emergency. The CDC says the cases were hundreds of miles apart, 4 in Florida and one in Texas. No evidence to suggest they're related, but what they do have in common is no link to travel abroad. The last time malaria was transmitted locally in the US was 2003. Tonight, the CDC says mosquito surveillance and control have been implemented.
Malaria isn't contagious, but the parasite that causes it is transmitted by certain mosquitoes.
Speaker 5: Are calling a new vaccine against malaria potentially World changing. A team at Oxford University has developed a vaccine that could reduce malaria deaths by 70% by the year 2030. Clinical trial results published in The Lancet show it could give up to 80% protection from the disease. Abby Kugudhasan is on that story. She's in London for us today.
Abby, tell us more about what the Oxford researchers have discovered.
Speaker 11: Heather, some great news today that this r twenty one vaccine could help eradicate malaria. It has shown to offer 80% protection, as you mentioned. That meets the World Health Organization's efficacy standard, and the findings come out of trials conducted in Burkina Faso. It included more than 400 children under the age of 2, and the results show that 3 initial doses with a single booster shot given a year later provides that 80% protection. They did not note any serious side
Speaker 12: It's just after sunrise in Fresno, California, and this van circling a residential Neighborhood is making a rather unusual delivery. It's hard to see with the naked is running this experiment for Verily, the life sciences corporate cousin of tech powerhouse, Google. In total, they're releasing a 1000000 mosquitoes a week for 20 weeks this summer.
Speaker 13: So you are going to release 20,000,000 mosquitoes in the Fresno area. 20,000,000 mosquitoes.
Speaker 12: New additions to the community.
Speaker 13: 20,000,000 mosquitoes in the Fresno area. Are neighbors not concerned about that?
Speaker 1: Once people understand if we're successful, we're gonna reduce the population. People are usually thrilled.
Speaker 14: Hi. I'm Scott O'Neill here in Medellin, Colombia today, and I'm at the world's biggest mosquito factory for the World Mosquito Program. We're making in here 30,000,000 mosquitoes a week. Come have a look. We're doing it for a very serious reason.
Cities like Medicine from diseases like dengue, Zika, chikungunya for decades, but not anymore. We've been able to bring the solution of Wolbachia and mosquitoes To the city, when this bacteria called Wolbachia gets introduced into the mosquito, it stops their ability to transmit dengue. We release Mosquitoes that have Wolbachia, now they go and mate, and Wolbachia gets passed into the wild mosquito population. If we're going to Control these diseases in all the tropical cities of the world. It's gonna require a lot of mosquitoes.
Mosquito life cycle starts with the egg, and in this room, we've got a lot of eggs. Each one of these strips, these Tiny black dots, up to 10,000 mosquito eggs. Across all of these strips, about 1a half 1000000 dried eggs waiting to hatch. In this tray, we've got the newly hatched eggs. They're little larvae, so small you can hardly see them.
They're gonna sit in here for a few days and eat and get bigger until they look like these ones over here. They're starting to turn into Kupi. We're wanting to do the next step of sorting, sorting the males from the females. We wanna do that so we can manipulate the sex ratio in the cages to be more female than male. The bottom ones along here are the boys and the ones at the top are the girls.
They're bigger. From here, they're going into the adult cages. We have adults that we continuously grow in what we call our broodstock. And then over here, We have the mass produced mosquitoes getting ready to give us the eggs to go out directly into the field. It's crazy how they sound.
You might wonder, what do we feed all these mosquitoes here?
Speaker 1: Well, I
Speaker 14: can tell you, we've got Good stuff in here. On the top shelf, literally, we've got the blood. They love it. Once the mosquitoes are grown, they're ready to go out into the field.
