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Social media posts suggest malaria cases in the states of Florida and Texas are linked to a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation project using genetically modified mosquitoes. This is false; the philanthropy has funded no US malaria projects, and a disease control program in Florida uses insects that are incapable of spreading the parasite.
“Bill Gates Releases Mosquitos That Transmit Malaria In Florida & Texas,” says a June 27, 2023 tweet with tens of thousands of interactions.
The post shares a video of InfoWars host Harrison Hill Smith. In another clip on Instagram, Smith says: “What are the odds that we go 20 years without mosquito-borne malaria in the United States, and then a mere year after mosquitoes genetically modified are released in Texas and Florida do we have five examples of mosquito-borne malaria?”
Similar messages have circulated elsewhere on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Some suggest the malaria outbreak could be designed to promote a vaccine, for which the Gates Foundation has provided funding.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on June 26 issued an advisory (archived here) about five malaria cases in Florida and Texas — the first locally acquired outbreak in two decades.
But the notion that Gates Foundation projects are to blame is false.
“The foundation does not fund any work involving mosquito release in the United States,” a spokesperson told AFP in a July 3 email. “Malaria eradication has been a top priority of our foundation for more than two decades, and we remain committed to devoting resources and expertise toward the goal of ending the disease for good.”
GMO mosquitoes
The Gates Foundation has funded research and projects involving GMO mosquitoes in other parts of the world as part of an effort that has prevented 1.7 billion cases and saved 10.6 million lives, according to the philanthropy.
Researchers say the modified insects reduce malaria because they cannot spread the disease.
Oxitec, a biotechnology company funded by the Gates Foundation, is behind the release of millions of GMO mosquitoes in the United States. But Oxitec told AFP in a July 3 statement that its US work did not receive money from the philanthropy.
While the company has worked in the Florida Keys, an Oxitec spokesperson said the state’s malaria cases are “nowhere near” there — and that the company has “never released mosquitoes in Texas and has no plans to do so.”
The spokesperson added that it is “scientifically impossible” for the company’s mosquitos to carry malaria because it uses “only male Aedes aegypti to combat the female mosquito species, which carries dengue fever, chikungunya, Zika fever and yellow fever — not malaria, which is transmitted through infected Anopheles mosquitoes.”
“There is no interbreeding between species,” the spokesperson said. “And Oxitec mosquitoes are 100 percent male, meaning they do not carry diseases nor do they bite humans.”
John Adams, a professor and malaria researcher at the University of South Florida, agreed that the Aedes aegypti mosquito used in Oxitec’s Florida project “is a vector for dengue but does not transmit any human malaria parasite.”
“It is not plausible that GMO mosquitoes would have spread these recent infections,” Adams told AFP in a July 5 email.
He said it is still unclear “where the local cases originated” but that “it is possible there is more than one source of infection for the Florida cases and almost certainly for the separate case in Texas.”
The CDC says it has found no connection between the Florida and Texas malaria cases.
“Despite these cases, the risk of locally acquired malaria remains extremely low in the United States,” the agency said in its June 26 advisory. “However, Anopheles mosquito vectors, found throughout many regions of the country, are capable of transmitting malaria if they feed on a malaria-infected person.”
Gates and his philanthropy have been the subject of considerable misinformation. AFP has fact-checked other false and misleading claims about the Microsoft co-founder here.
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