Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s 32,000,000 mosquitoes.
This is what search engine and AI giant Google is planning to do as part of an ambitious public health project in California and Florida.
Google is seeking federal approval to breed and release swarms of mosquitoes carrying an infection that is harmless to humans.
Mosquitoes are among the deadliest animals in the world, making millions sick every year with diseases including West Nile virus, St Louis encephalitis, dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever.
To combat this, Google researchers want to make the buzzing insects sterile, so they can’t mate.
How would it work?
Only female mosquitoes spread viruses when they bite an animal infected with the virus and then bite a person. Males only nibble on plant nectar.
Rather than tinker with their DNA or spray streets with insecticides, the Google team wants to infect them with the parasitic bacteria Wolbachia.
Wolbachia lives quietly in almost all kinds of insects from bees to butterflies, and doesn’t harm humans.
In mosquitoes, Wolbachia burrows into the insect’s reproductive machinery and shields them from infections like the West Nile virus.
An infected female carries Wolbachia in her eggs, so her offspring are born infected – if they even hatch, as the bacteria can also make mosquito eggs non-viable.
This plan, called the Sterile Insect Technique, could cause the local wild mosquito population to plummet, according to Google.
The first year of the project, called Debug, would see up to 16million mosquitoes released in Florida.
The second year of the project would see another 16million let loose in California, according to a notice from the Federal Register.
Google hopes to use robots to rear the droning bugs and AI-powered visual sorting systems to separate them by sex.
These ‘good bugs’, as the company puts them, would then be released in the locations and quantities needed to outnumber wild mosquitoes.
The Debug website says: ‘We’re combining the Debug team’s scientific and engineering expertise with the help of international partners to raise and release lots of good bugs and stop bad mosquitoes that can spread disease.’
By wild mosquitoes, Google means Culex mosquitoes, infamous for carrying West Nile virus and St Louis encephalitis.
West Nile virus disease causes eye pain, skin rashes and fever and leaves people physically exhausted for months.
In rare cases, the mosquito-borne viral disease causes severe neurological disease, causing paralysis, meningitis and brain damage.
St Louis encephalitis, meanwhile, is a potentially fatal inflammation of the brain.
Rentokil, a pest control company, told Metro: ‘Mosquitoes may be small, but their global impact is anything but.
‘In today’s world, where climate change, travel, and urban growth are making mosquito-borne illnesses more common, staying protected is more important than ever.’
But Brent Nye, a Florida local, wasn’t sold.
‘I’m not sure whether I would want them in my backyard because there are going to be a lot of things that go wrong,’ he told 10 Tampa Bay News.
‘I’d rather have some other state to experiment on.’
Debug was launched by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, in 2016.
The Debug FAQ page says Google is ‘actively working with organisations like national and local governments, community leaders and research institutes’ to ensure it ‘understands local concerns and considerations’.
The Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing Google’s Experimental Use Permit application and is accepting public feedback until Friday.
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