Gates Lets Mosquitoes Fly at Audience

Stunt underscores malaria threat shouldn't be for 'only poor people'
By Peter Fearon,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 5, 2009 8:49 AM CST
Gates Lets Mosquitoes Fly at Audience
A 4-year-old girl receives medical treatment for severe malaria as her mother keeps watch at a clinic in Goma, eastern Congo.   (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo)

Bill Gates had the audience buzzing yesterday as he released a jar of mosquitoes at the TED2009 conference in California during a presentation on eradicating malaria, reports MSNBC. The bugs were not carrying the disease. "Not only poor people should experience this," Gates explained, according to a witness who Twittered the news. Gates' foundation is contributing $170 million to develop a vaccine to fight the disease that infects some 500 million people a year, and kills 100 million.
(More Bill Gates stories.)

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