Bill Gates Unleashes Mosquitos at TED2009

by Jordan Yerman | February 5, 2009 at 07:00 am

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Well, it's one way of making a point, I mean, I guess... in his opening-session speech at TED, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates unleased a swarm of mosquitos into the audience in order to make a point about the threat of malaria in the developing world.

Ending malaria is a particular passion of Gates's, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions fighting the disease. But he apparently didn't feel like TED attendees were taking the threat seriously. "Not only poor people should experience this," Gates said as he let the bugs loose on his audience, according to Facebook manager Dave Morin. (eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Twitter CEO Ev Williams confirm the report.)

The official TED Conference Twitter profile confirmed that the mosquitoes were real.

"No they were not malarial. An amazing TED moment." TED tweeted.

Did he actually have to release mosquitos, though? Surely any other winged insect would have sufficed, and then the crowd wouldn't have to deal with welts and itches.

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