Bill Gates’ Colombian ‘mosquito factory’ is breeding 30 million bacteria-infected mosquitos per week. The project’s objective appears to be to introduce Wolbachia into native mosquito populations by employing lab-bred mosquitoes, resulting in the infection of such populations.
In a plant in Colombia, Bill Gates is currently producing 30 million bacterially-infected mosquitoes every week and he has threatened to “scale and deliver” the mosquitoes to “communities around the world.”
As part of his World Mosquito Program (WMP), the Microsoft founder and self-declared World Health Czar has already invested $185 million in the establishment of the mosquito factory.
What is the project’s stated purpose? In order to eradicate native mosquito populations thought to be responsible for dengue, zika, and other viral illnesses in humans, it is necessary to utilize mosquitoes that are infected with a bacteria that induces sterility.
Gates, whose unethical “cervical cancer vaccine” trials have drawn criticism from the Indian Parliament, uploaded the video below to his YouTube channel. In the description of the video, Gates provides a broad overview of how the WMP operation in Medelln—the location highlighted in the marketing gimmick—breeds mosquitos with the bacteria Wolbachia on purpose before releasing them “across the country to breed with wild mosquitos that can carry dengue and other viruses threatening to sicken and kill the population.”
According to SensorReceptor, the project’s objective appears to be to introduce Wolbachia into native mosquito populations by employing lab-bred mosquitoes, resulting in the infection of such populations. The Wolbachia bacteria, which is present in 50% of all insect species on Earth (which include the fruit flies, dragonflies, moths, butterflies, etc.), influences mosquito reproduction, namely that of the African mosquito species Aedes aegypti.
As shown in the WMP video directly below, if a male mosquito carries Wolbachia and mates with a female, the female’s eggs will not hatch; if a male does not and a female does, the female’s offspring will hatch and carry Wolbachia; and if both the male and female carry Wolbachia, the offspring will all hatch and carry Wolbachia.
Obviously, the end outcome of this interbreeding is a completely different mosquito population, complete with Wolbachia infections in each and every one of its members. And, of course, the full eradication of any males who are not infected with the bacterium.
Watch the video below:
According to Gates and WMP, this is advantageous since Wolbachia—allegedly—helps to reduce the amount of virus in a certain mosquito population. (In Colombia, the diseases being targeted include dengue, chikungunya, and zika. The target diseases mainly coincide in the other 10 nations where the WMP is releasing its bacteria-laden mosquitoes, including Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Australia, Fiji, Kiribati, New Caledonia, and Vanuatu.) WMP claims that this is the case since its researchers have introduced dengue virus into Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes and discovered that “the virus didn’t grow well in the mosquito.” If the virus “can’t grow, it can’t be transmitted to other people,” the WMP video continues.
In his post on Gates Notes outlining WMP’s efforts, the former Microsoft CEO highlighted a couple of studies allegedly demonstrating the strategy’s effectiveness in disease prevention. He cites one randomized controlled trial (RCT) from Yogyakarta, Indonesia, which claims to have reduced (read below) the city’s dengue cases by 77% and dengue hospitalizations by 86%. Gates also praises a recent study from Medellín that claims to show an 89% decrease in dengue incidence since the release of Wolbachia mosquitoes in 2015.
“[W]hat’s remarkable about the Wolbachia mosquitoes is that once enough of them are released to offer disease protection, it’s a solution that’s self-sustaining,” Gates writes in his blog post. “Over time, families will be spared the heartbreak of losing loved ones and communities won’t need to spend money on prevention and treatment for these mosquito-borne diseases, freeing up funds for other health priorities,” the multibillionaire says.
On its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes the use of Wolbachia, stating that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “has registered mosquitoes with Wolbachia to evaluate how effective they are in reducing numbers of Ae. aegypti mosquitoes, not other types of mosquitoes.” According to the CDC, “Mosquitoes with Wolbachia are not genetically modified.”
However, it appears that the CDC’s account of Wolbachia may either be false or misleading. The CDC states that the bacteria “cannot make people or animals (for example, fish, birds, pets) sick” in its description of the bacterium (excerpted above). Unambiguously, a 2010 research in the National Library of Medicine indicates that “Wolbachia [species] are gram-negative bacteria that infect filarial nematodes, including Dirofilaria immitis, and elicit an inflammatory response in cats and dogs.”
In addition to the CDC’s major misrepresentation, it should be highlighted that the studies Gates cites as indicating a drop in dengue don’t really seem to address two essential points: the amount of real virus in the local mosquito population, and all-cause mortality. If neither study detected a drop in the amount of virus in native mosquito populations, then the change in hospitalization rates, etc. would have to be due to another confounding cause. And, if the bacteria-infected mosquitoes had no influence on all-cause mortality, why bother with them at all?
Making the situation worse, it appears that there has not been extensive research on the effects of Wolbachia on human physiology. WMP does not appear to provide readily robust proof that Wolbachia does not negatively impact people’s health—specifically, their reproductive health, given the bacteria’s effect on mosquitoes—and a vast number of superficial searches on Google Scholar do not either.
Besides the fact that Wolbachia purportedly creates an inflammatory reaction in dogs and cats, the literature indicates that experts are unsure how the bacteria induces infertility. Another article available in the National Library of Medicine, published in PNAS in October of 2021, argues that “many Wolbachia strains manipulate host reproduction, most commonly through cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI),” but that “its mechanisms [of action] remain unknown.”
Watch the video below:
Worse still, a study titled “Wolbachia in the Inflammatory Pathogenesis of Human Filariasis” that was published in The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences in July 2008 notes that “Filarial nematodes cause some of the most debilitating diseases in tropical medicine [but] Recent studies… have implicated the parasites’ endosymbiotic Wolbachia bacteria, rather than the nematode, as the cause of inflammatory-mediated filarial disease.” The study goes on to say “studies suggest that Wolbachia are the principal cause of acute inflammatory filarial disease [in humans].”
Additionally, there is a chance (maybe even a guarantee?) that this technology will be misused. This would be particularly problematic if gene drives—a form of genetic engineering technique that uses CRISPR technology to alter genes so that they do not adhere to the usual principles of heredity—were to be used. The TED Talk directly above features journalist Jennifer Kahn who claims that gene drives, which have previously been shown to work in mosquito populations, “are so effective that even an accidental release could change an entire species. And often very quickly.” “A gene drive might not stay confined to… a target species,” Khan continues in her TED lecture. And that the method gives researchers the “ability to change an entire species.”
Khan concludes her TED Talk by questioning, in part, “Are we Gods now?” Bill Gates, like many others working on gene-editing technology, is likely to have a disconcerting and delusory response.
Read the document below:
Bill-Gates-Colombian-Mosquito-Factory-Breeding-30-Million-Bacteria-Infected-Mosquitos-Per-Week
