Why Google wants to release 32,000,000 infected mosquitoes into the wild

It's not quite as crazy as it sounds

Yes, you heard that right, and while this may sound like the evil masterplan of a crazed villain, the project is actually one of goodwill for the betterment of humanity.

For thousands of years, humans have been at battle with the pesky mosquito.

At around one millions deaths caused each year, the mosquito is statistically the deadliest animal on the planet.

Millions more people each year fall ill from the the buzzing blood-suckers.

With this in mind, attempts have been made down the years to reduce the impact of the insect towards humans - to varying degrees of success

The 'Debug' project

The project, which was set up by Google's parent company Alphabet and is known as 'Debug', has the goal of releasing into the wild millions of mosquitoes infected with a disease which is harmless to humans.

As per the organisation's blog, only female mosquitoes transmit viruses, so Google wants to infect males with a parasitic bacteria which would effectively stop them being able to breed, causing local populations to plummet.

This would help prevent the spread of diseases such as West Nile virus, St Louis encephalitis, dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever.

The plan is to release 16 million of these mosquitoes into Florida in the first year with another 16 million released into the California in the second.

This technique has already been used to good effect by Debug in a number of places around the world to suppress blooming populations of mosquitoes.

The Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing Google’s Experimental Use Permit application and is accepting public feedback until Friday.