Is Bill Gates genetically modifying mosquitoes to turn them into "flying, airborne vaccines?" No, that's not true: Oxitec and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are testing genetically-modified mosquitoes to reduce mosquito populations and prevent the spread of Zika and malaria, they are not creating "flying syringes."
The claim appeared in a video published on TikTok (archived here) on June 28, 2023. The video shows various news clips about scientists experimenting on mosquitoes. One of the clips shows a news report on Oxitec and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation testing genetically modified mosquitoes to help reduce malaria. The text overlay at the beginning of the video reads:
Is the process of creating flying syringes real?
(Translation from Japanese by Lead Stories staff).
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jul 5 00:05:15 2023 UTC)
The juxtaposed clips presented in this video are taken out of context. For instance, the first clip is from a Nippon TV coverage of new developments on mosquito repellents and describes scientists developing a spray that stops mosquitoes from moving without killing them. The clip mentioning Oxitec and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation releasing genetically-modified mosquitoes to the public is from Epoch Times Japan, the Japanese edition of The Epoch Times, a conservative news outlet known for violating ad policies on Facebook and YouTube and spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories. Lead Stories fact checks related to The Epoch Times can be found here.
An EPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency) statement released in March 2022 appears in the clip, detailing the approval and expansion of testing on genetically-modified mosquitoes to reduce mosquito populations. In both news clips, there is no mention of mosquitoes being experimented on to create "flying syringes" or to deliver vaccines.
There have been several attempts at engineering mosquitoes to turn them into vaccine carriers, but even researchers admit that there are ethical problems that make it very difficult to implement in real life.
