Google wants to “stop bad bugs with good bugs”, and it’s not talking about coding. The tech company has asked the US government for permission to release up to 32 million sterilized mosquitoes in California and Florida.
As part of its successful “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.
A notice 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.
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 blogpost: “the population gets smaller with each generation.”
While it may sound unusual for big tech to venture into labs and rear bacteria-infected mosquitoes, Google’s parent company – Alphabet – is no stranger to science. Verily Health, a health and AI company that began as a “moonshot” project at Google X, has been a key driver behind the Debug program for years. Verily, an Alphabet subsidiary until earlier this year, uses technology and data science to combat diseases and other global health problems. As of December 2024, Google fully acquired Debug – removing it from Verily’s portfolio, Verily said in an email to the Guardian.
A 2016 blogpost for the Debug project notes the program started exploring tech-driven solutions to combating deadly mosquitoes about a decade ago.
Google says other ways of attacking mosquitoes haven’t done the job: spraying them with pesticides can be toxic and less effective over time, and it’s difficult to find, and clear, all the water sources that have become breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
Google’s approach isn’t unique. The company is drawing on a scientific method called the sterile insect technique, which experts have used on a variety of problematic bugs for decades. Eric Caragata, an assistant professor at the University of Florida who specializes in mosquito-microbe interactions, told USA Today that using the wolbachia bacteria for sterilization had been done for about 15 years.
For now, Google is focusing their initial efforts on one species of mosquito known as Aedes aegypti, which is responsible for spreading most cases of dengue, Zika, yellow fever and chikungunya. Google’s engineers and scientists are using data analytics and sensors to build “automated rearing systems” for the fragile creatures, the company says. Part of the challenge entails using AI-powered computer vision to precisely separate males from females and releasing the males “in the right place and in the right numbers”.
The Debug project has made some progress in Singapore, the program’s first international research and development hub. The company said in an 11 May blogpost, citing the country’s national environment agency, that by releasing millions of male wolbachia mosquitoes in Singapore, the country has “achieved 80-90% suppression” of the Aedes aegypti mosquito population and more than 70% reduction in dengue incidents after 6 to 12 months of releases.” Google announced in May that it would be expanding the Singapore site.
“When we first launched Debug in Singapore, our goal was to advance mosquito production and releases through technology and bring Debug to more communities in Asia, where 70% of the global dengue burden occurs,” said Linus Upson, the head of Debug. “Our success in Singapore gives us the confidence to expand.”
