It sounds like the premise of a bad science-fiction film: Google’s parent company is flooding part of central California with millions of bacteria-infected mosquitoes incubated by robots.
The goal is the mass extermination of a local population, but this is no sinister plot to wipe out humans living in Fresno county. Instead, Alphabet’s Verily, an offshoot previously known as Google Life Sciences, is attempting to kill off an invasive species of mosquito that has the potential to transmit deadly viruses. The Debug Fresno test will be the largest experiment of its kind in the US.
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes arrived in the central San Joaquin Valley in 2013 and have been known to carry the zika virus, dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya, although none of those