Bill Gates has allocated millions of dollars to create a mosquito killer

• Bill Gates has allocated millions of dollars to build a killer mosquito

Bill Gates, one of the founders of Microsoft, will invest four million dollars in the project to create a mosquito that would kill each other through mating. This is a bold step to defeating malaria, a deadly disease that mosquitoes carry through a bite.

Gates uses funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - the largest charitable foundation in the world. The project will create genetically modified male mosquitoes, which will mate with females in the wild and to transfer a gene that kills the next generation.

When the female offspring will then because fathers transmit the gene it will not live to adulthood. And the only adult mosquitoes bite humans individuals. This means that such a decision may have to stop the spread of malaria by mosquitoes.

The project will implement a British biotechnology company Oxitec, which has already created genetically modified mosquitoes to fight the virus Zika. In some areas, the population of mosquito zheltolihoradochnogo (a kind of insect that carries the virus) has decreased by 90 percent.

But for malarial mosquitoes need another breed of genetically modified male for mating, which will be ready for testing in 2020.

However, not everyone likes such a decision. Oxitec work criticizes Friends of the Earth ( "Friends of the Earth") - a charitable organization to protect the environment. "Testing of these mosquitoes do not need to be conducted in the absence of comprehensive and impartial audits on environmental and ethical risks, and the impact on human health."

In spite of this, Bill Gates is a longtime fan of the work Oxitec and for many years to support the company. Malaria annually kills about 440,000 people. The vast majority of HIV infections recorded in Africa, other hotbeds of mass disease - India, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Colombia, with most infected children under the age of 5 years.