Google Seeking EPA Permission to Release GMO Mosquitoes in CA and FL

Google isn’t just guilty of using its tech power against Americans by illegally spying on them, for which it was fined over $425 million just last year. It is also set to bug Americans literally with its new project—filling the states of California and Florida with mosquitoes infected with bacteria.

As reported in California Post (May 30), this ambitious public health experiment is part of Google’s “little-known Debug initiative” that the tech giant launched over a decade ago. The plan involves breeding millions of mosquitoes infected with the bacteria called Wolbachia, and releasing male mosquitoes from this modified lot into places where naturally existing mosquitoes cause diseases in people. The modified male mosquitoes will breed with natural female mosquitoes of the area and due to the bacteria in the males, their offspring won’t survive, thus leading to fewer mosquitoes that can bite and make people sick.

On the face of it, this plan sounds reasonable and beneficial for overall public health as it would likely reduce the incidence of mosquito-transmitted infections like dengue fever, Zika, and infections from West Nile virus etc. But the Frankensteinish nature of this experiment and its potential risks as well as impact on the ecology of the areas where the modified mosquitoes are released are all raising questions and criticism from skeptics who do not trust Google or the government agencies in charge of issuing permissions for such projects.

This was the sentiment among the aware segment of the general public and health experts when UK-based biotech company Oxitec got the EPA’s permission to release such genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida. Despite hundreds of thousands of objections from the public in signed petitions, the EPA fast-tracked the approval process for Oxitec’s mosquitoes, thousands of which were released in April last year into the Florida keys. This was the first-ever release of such mosquitoes in the United States while previous such releases in Brazil and Cayman Islands were reported to have disputed results. The website GMO.news wrote after the Oxitec’s mosquitoes were released in Florida last year:

What makes this release even more alarming? No independent long-term safety studies. No real public consent. And a regulatory system that prioritizes corporate interests over human and environmental well-being.

The Oxitec project of releasing mosquitoes in Florida was akin to testing the waters. Seeing that they faced no real resistance from federal or state authorities, big tech is now doing it again on a much bigger scale by including California as well as substantially increasing the number of mosquitoes bred for release. Whether these releases can bring harm to human health is not known but the concern does exist. Critics are also worried that this could seriously disrupt the natural ecology of the target areas. Nicolas Hulscher, epidemiologist and administrator at the McCullough Foundation, expressed his concern over the proposed release of GMO mosquitoes because it can disrupt the food chain and damage the population of several species that feed on mosquitoes. He also reminded that such a project previously carried out by Google elsewhere resulted in the return of the natural mosquito population back to its natural level soon after the project ended.

It is noteworthy that Oxitec got funding from Bill Gates’ foundation for creating these mosquitoes. Since 2008, Gates has been dreaming of creating vaccine-carrying mosquitoes that would bite people and thereby vaccinate them, obviously against their will. His target is people who refuse vaccines and that can be achieved easily by putting the vaccine in mosquitoes—a project initially called the Flying Jackets. Last year, Dr. Simone Gold questioned the continued ambition of Gates to vaccinate people against their consent using modified mosquitoes. In her Substack article (January 8, 2025), Dr. Gold wrote:

More recently, researchers at Leiden University Medical Center, who received $2.2 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, published a study showing how they used genetically modified mosquitos to vaccinate humans against malaria.

It’s hard to ignore the recent history of globalist tech owners like Bill Gates venturing into public health while using their money to influence the decisions of government agencies. Their motives must be questioned and a healthy skeptic’s default mode is distrust of their projects and intentions.

Currently, the EPA is accepting public comments through June 5 after which the agency will decide whether or not to issue Google a permit allowing the release of these mosquitoes in CA and FL.