Google Requests Permission to Release 32 Million Mosquitoes In California and Florida (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0183548468
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/06/02/052244/google-requests-permission-to-release-32-million-mosquitoes-in-california-and-florida
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/01/google-permission-release-mosquitoes-california-florida
> As part of its successful " [2]Debug" program , Google is tapping into its tech expertise to raise an army of sterile male mosquitoes to lower the number of illness-spreading bugs. Mosquitoes -- the world's deadliest animal -- kill more people than any other creature in the world every year by spreading lethal diseases such as dengue, West Nile virus, Zika, chikungunya and malaria.
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> A [3]notice (PDF) from the federal register shows the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reviewing Google's request to release up to 16 million mosquitoes annually, in Florida and California, over the span of two years. The EPA will decide whether to greenlight Google's request for an experimental use permit after a public comment period, which ends on 5 June.
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> Male mosquitoes don't bite or carry disease. One of the main approaches Google is testing involves rearing male mosquitoes with a naturally occurring bacteria, called wolbachia, which stops them from having offspring with wild female mosquitoes. When an infected male tries to mate with a wild female, her eggs won't hatch; Google explains in a [4]blog post : "the population gets smaller with each generation."
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/01/google-permission-release-mosquitoes-california-florida
[2] https://debug.com/
[3] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-05-06/pdf/2026-08808.pdf
[4] https://blog.debug.com/2016/10/were-trying-to-reduce-mosquito-borne.html
Unintended consequences... (Score:3)
I don't want to sound alarmist and I am obviously not an expert but... we know what happens when you remove a species from the food chain. 1. Their predators die off. 2. Other species rise to take their place. While obviously mosquitos are the most harmful-to-humans animals on the planet, have the scientists really figured out what the potential adverse long-term effects of permanent mosquito reduction will be, or are we rushing headlong into solving one problem just to create a worse one further down the line?
With mosquitoes? Nothing. (Score:5, Interesting)
One specie of mosquito means nothing - there are just so many other ones.
That said, this does not even do that. Mosquitoes with wolbachia still survive and breed - but they don't live as long, and when the mosquito infected the dengue virus can't survive in the mozzie, so it doesn't get infected and so it can't spread the disease.
It is done pretty much everywhere - I'm a little surprised it isn't standard procedure in the US too.
Re: (Score:3)
> I'm a little surprised it isn't standard procedure in the US too.
Then you don't know the US healthcare system very well, something inexpensive, effective, and easy to implement is anathema to the insurance cartels which control it.
Re: With mosquitoes? Nothing. (Score:2)
You're surprised how environmental engineering done by a data mining company isn't standard practice?
Re: (Score:2)
> I don't want to sound alarmist and I am obviously not an expert but... we know what happens when you remove a species from the food chain. 1. Their predators die off. 2. Other species rise to take their place.
1. is not a significant problem. There are only a couple of species which survive entirely on mosquitoes, they are not common, and there are many kinds of mosquito. 2. is even less of a problem, there's nothing else just waiting in the wings to upstage mosquitoes as they don't compete with anything else.
Re:Unintended consequences... (Score:4, Funny)
Sucking blood and causing the death of millions? Politicians are their primary competitor.
if you get west nile virus just sue google they ha (Score:2)
if you get west nile virus just sue google they have deep pockets
Re: (Score:1)
These "tech" companies do not have "leaders" who think. They only want to destroy. That is their mindset.
We're moving carefully (Score:5, Informative)
> I don't want to sound alarmist and I am obviously not an expert but... we know what happens when you remove a species from the food chain.
The Culex quinquefasciatus (from Google's [1]EPA request [govinfo.gov]) is not native to N. America, it likely originated in Africa and came across due to human activity.
There are over 200 species of mosquito in N. America (worldwide about 3500). Taking one out will have negligible effect on the food chain.
Bats, specifically, will eat mosquitos but prefer larger insects. Mosquitos are small relative to the effort the bat takes to catch therm.
The specific mosquito mentioned is available in lots of places around the world (not native - see first point above), so we could repopulate if we notice a problem.
Google is breeding these mosquitos, so we have breeding populations and we could repopulate if needed.
It's the primary vector for West Nile virus, St. Louis encephalitis virus, Avian malaria, and Wuchereria bancrofti (a parasitic worm).
I've been following the progress of these sorts of activities for many years. With proper care and monitoring, it's possible we could fix a lot of invasive species problem such as Cane Toads in Australia, Mongooses (mongeese?) in Hawaii, and Aedes aegypti. A. aegypti strongly prefers to bite humans and is carrier to disease, and is also not native to N. America.
The US used to have screw worms. The screw worm would lay eggs in an open wound on mammals (usually domestic animals such as livestock, but sometimes humans) and the larvae would develop under the skin by eating healthy tissue.
The US government began a program of releasing irradiated screw worm males, which are sterile, into the environment to compete with healthy males. This reduced the population, eventually down to zero, and now the US is largely screw worm free. This only took about 10 years.
Good riddance.
Now do ticks.
The full explanation is [2]Sterile Insect Technique [wikipedia.org].
[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-05-06/pdf/2026-08808.pdf
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique
Re: (Score:2)
I am obviously not an expert but... we know what happens when you remove a species from the food chain.
In other words: "I don't know what happens, but we (I) know what happens ... "
Like, honestly, dude.
Re: (Score:2)
Fudge, obviously I meant to reply to the OP. Your post clearly has some basis in being informed on the subject.
Re: (Score:2)
go view this for a similar situation with another mosquito specie
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
we are talking about controlling one bad specie, other mosquito specie still exist. This is basically expanding the above to another specie that is showing up more and more in non tropical areas
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxq60I5RSW8&pp=ygUZdmVyaXRhc2l1bSB3YXIgbW9zcXVpdG9lcw%3D%3D
Re: (Score:2)
Specie is money. Species is one of those English words that is both the singular and plural.
Re: (Score:2)
We've been controlling mosquito populations for quite a while, by various means. Malaria was endemic to much of the US. The guy who proposed to turn Florida into a vacation hotspot was insane because it was a disease ridden hellhole. Washington DC too. You can still catch malaria in many places in the US if you try hard enough.
Since mosquitos are such a scourge, controlling them has been pretty well studied. This isn't even the first release of this kind in the US. It's not even the first time Google's done
Re: (Score:3)
It won't do anything. This has been studied extensively.
Adeptus aegypti, the mosquito that carries so many diseases and tends to bite humans a lot, is an invasive species all over the world; removing it would actually create more space for native species. The predators that feed on Adeptus aegypti like bats, birds and dragonflies are generalist predators; they can eat other things. Adeptus aegypti is actually a poor pollinator, so this would create space for better pollinators like bees and butterflie
Re: (Score:2)
a) This particular species is not a major (or even minor) contributor to the food chain where they live in the US and b) They are an invasive species in North America.
Unpredictable Side Effects (Score:2)
There are myriad animals whose diet depends on mosquitos, many of which are threatened or endangered. I'm no biologist, but I would think that taking measures to preserve those species and their habitat would be the best way to control mosquito populations. Wiping out the base of the food chain, while beneficial to humans in the short term, is not something to be taken lightly.
Now is a time when I really wish the EPA hadn't been gutted, so I could have confidence that proper scientists were being consulted.
Re: (Score:3)
Aedes aegypti is an invasive species to North America, only been here for a few hundred years, so I doubt that the food chain has grown radically dependent on them.
Re: Unpredictable Side Effects (Score:4, Interesting)
Aedes Egypti is not native to the Americas. They arrived with European colonists. There are about 3500 different species of mosquitoes so wiping out Aedes will leave about 3500 species.
There are many species that eat Aedes mosquitoes and their larvae as part of their diet, but none are dependent. Those fish that are known for being mosquito eaters are also not native and like everything else prefer to eat other things.
Mosquitoes are tiny and offer very little nutritional value, so the caloric cost of hunting them isn't profitable for anything significantly larger than the mosquito. Bats, for example, get less than 1% of their diet from mosquitoes.
After we deal with the Aedes, there is still Anopheles and Culex blood-sucking species to get rid of, and good riddance to all of them. They offer nothing and kill millions. It's not just humans that suffer, these blood suckers are a curse to many species.
FTFY Re: Unpredictable Side Effects (Score:2)
European colonist is not native to the Americas.
After we deal with the Europeans, there is still other blood-sucking species to get rid of, and good riddance to all of them. These blood suckers are a curse to many species. /s
Re: (Score:2)
that!!
but please do not send them back, we do not want them too!!
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, First Nations people aren't native to The Americas, either, they wandered over a land bridge about 15,000 years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
> Mosquitoes are tiny and offer very little nutritional value, so the caloric cost of hunting them isn't profitable for anything significantly larger than the mosquito. Bats, for example, get less than 1% of their diet from mosquitoes.
The larva are perhaps more important for the food chain. Fish food might be important, especially for the young,
But why Google?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google??? When did Google get involved in engineering the environment? How does this serve their corporate interests? Are they just doing this around their data centers?
Re: (Score:1)
It's in their mandate to Be Evil
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry, I am sure they are getting a nice tax write off and some good PR
Re: (Score:3)
They created Verily Health a long time ago, and Debug came out of that. It's one of their moonshot projects, hoping to develop the next big medical profit centre.
Governments and corporations will pay for this service if it works. Back when I was in an office, my employer would pay for flu vaccinations, because the cost was much lower than the lost productivity if I got sick.
Re: (Score:2)
You have to pay for flu vaccines? Wow
Re: (Score:2)
Climate change allows mosquitoes that carry diseases to survive further north than they did before.
This is not doing anything against the root cause, only mitigating a side-effect.
Re: (Score:2)
This concept of releasing sterilizing males to control insect population goes back to the 50's; it's not a new science. What failed before was the sorting process to find the correctly bred insects at sufficient volume to make a dent in the process. Verily, Google's life science entity, leveraged Google's expertise in robotics, computer vision, AI and industrial automation to build a system that could identify and sort the correctly bred mosquitos at scale so they could be bred at a high enough volume to
Re: (Score:2)
Even if this is somehow honest, it risks bad P/R and fuels conspiracy chatter. I can see Google donating to a general environmental fund, but they shouldn't run specific programs. Google should stay in its lane.
Raising an army of incels (Score:2, Funny)
No wonder it's on Slashdot
Re: (Score:3)
> No wonder it's on Slashdot
They won't be involuntarily celibate. In fact part of the point is that they - in sheer numbers - cuck the existing, fertile male population.
Now.. if you'd made a joke about there being so many of them running a train on the unsuspecting females and maybe mentioned your mom, that might've been funny, if only speculatively more accurate.
Re: (Score:1)
You gotta train them to not use their teeth.
What could possibly... (Score:2)
I am also concerned because every disaster is preceded by someone's confidence. I assume the mosquitos can't be "cured" of what they carry?
Re: (Score:2)
This has been done for years around the world. It's only new to the US because our government health protection programs are almost nonexistent.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not even really new to the US. Google was doing it a decade ago. The US army was dropping Aedes aegypti out of airplanes over Georgia, for rather different purposes, in the 50s.
Google? (Score:2)
When I think of sterile males, I always think of... Google.
Mosquitos as "animals" (Score:2)
Yes, scientifically speaking, mosquitos are classified within Kingdom animalia . But in everyday speech, do most people think of insects as animals? If you asked a thousand random people to list three animals they'd hate to be trapped in a room with, I expect you'd get things like crocodile, tiger, grizzly. I would not expect people to reply with wasps and roaches.
Is this something that is regional/cultural?
Re: (Score:2)
Education does vary regionally.
99 bugs in the code... (Score:3)
Sounds more like bug replacement, not debugging. At least short term. Sort of like with AI coding. You ask it to fix a bug and it does it by introducing another one.
Bug Zappers For Profit. (Score:2)
Putting aside all those zero-day "bug" jokes about Google being involved with literal pest control, can someone explain why the hell Google is involved? Does AI get even more delusional with the sound of mosquito buzzing within 3 acres of an AI data center or something? The hell is this Kraptonite story actually about anyway?
Perhaps mega-corps are wanting to suddenly provide what I would define as "social charity" in lieu of the damage they've done. A Prime example of this is Amazon graciously allowing t
Re: (Score:3)
As someone else described it (can't remember who), Google discovered a hose out of which money pours. Ever since they've been looking for another one.
Biotech is often seen as the next revolution after computing. Google started a life sciences research division around 2010. They bought a company that makes spoons for Parkinson's patients and another that makes clinical trial management software, and have dabbled in lots of stuff from robotic surgery, and climate change resistant crop modification, to contact
Re: (Score:1)
Don't worry, RFK Jr. will put a stop to this! That or tell people to drink whole milk and take ivermectin.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Holy shit new product idea, you've heard of chocolate milk...
IVERMECTIN RAW MILK
Make sure the cap on the bottle is red. You literally will not be able to keep it in stock.
Re: (Score:2)
> Don't worry, RFK Jr. will put a stop to this! That or tell people to drink whole milk and take ivermectin.
Whole milk isn't much of a problem - as long as it's pasteurized. The brain worm is hawking [1]raw milk [bbc.com].
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjdj7re9rr0o
Re: (Score:2)
cleraly their only reasoning is to stand by their long standing mission statement to do no evil... o wait
fuck google
Re: (Score:1)
Meanwhile, X.AI has asked the EPA for permission to release up to 100 million hyperfecund pesticide-resistant male mosquitoes in California and New York over two years to own the libs.
Re: (Score:3)
nah those are just Elons kids
Re: (Score:3)
The vaccines ... and they have killed millions of people
where is your proof of this millions of dead people?!
you know that there is a much dangerous product than vaccines, it kills millions of people, is spread all around us and even used in baby food...
go check, it is the [1]dhmo [dhmo.org], also known as [2]dihydrogen-monoxide [snopes.com]
check both sites and i hope that make you understand, people believe in everything, that is why AI is so loved by many!
[1] https://dhmo.org/facts.html
[2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dangers-dihydrogen-monoxide/
Re: (Score:2)
please notice that every single fact in the dhmo site is 100% true, is up to the user to understand them
Re: (Score:2)
Fucking dihydrogen monoxide. Terrifying stuff. Did you know that it can cause terrible burns and skin damage in liquid, solid *and* gaseous form?
Re: (Score:2)
Sir, this is a Wendys.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, I'm making a joke here and it's clear the mods never make it to the last sentence.