Bill Gates is Funding Flying Vaccine Research
The Claim
Tech billionaire Bill Gates is funding a research project that genetically modifies mosquitos to make them inject vaccines.
News posted on
Emerging story
Social media users discussed the claim throughout summer 2021.
Misbar’s Analysis
Bill Gates is a common figure in conspiracy theories. They range from the mundane to the outlandish, some even speculating that he is a baby-eating pedophile.
However, the claim about him funding injecting mosquitos is not a conspiracy theory. In 2008, the Gates Foundation announced that it will fund over a hundred “novel ideas” to make the world healthier. This includes funding a project that intends to genetically modify mosquitos to make them “flying syringes.”
Mosquitos are already flying syringes, except they’re keener on injecting diseases than cures. When a mosquito bites, they inject some of their saliva, which causes itchiness.
Along with the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command and the Seattle Children's Research Institute, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation helped fund a study to “assess the safety, tolerability, and biomarkers of protection in healthy malaria-naïve adults, who will receive bites from Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes either infected with Plasmodium falciparum Sporozoites (PfRAS) (true-immunization) or noninfected (mock-immunization).”
While this claim is true, it’s just a research grant and study. Actually implementing this would likely be quite difficult.
