Laser Death Rays for Mosquitos

To prevent Malaria. [Link]

In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light.

The insects survived this particular test, which used a non-lethal laser. But if these researchers have their way, the Cold War missile-defense strategy will be reborn as a WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction.

"We'd be delighted if we destabilize the human-mosquito balance of power," says Jordin Kare, an astrophysicist who once worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the birthplace of some of the deadliest weapons known to man. More recently he worked on the mosquito laser, built from parts bought on eBay.

The scientists' actual target is malaria, which is caused by a parasite transmitted when certain mosquitoes bite people. Ended in the U.S. decades ago, malaria remains a major global public-health threat, killing about 1 million people annually.

Efforts to eradicate the disease languished for years until recently.

Big-money donors like Bill Gates, the United Nations, the U.K. and non-profit such as Malaria No More re-launched the war on malaria, devoting billions of dollars to vaccines, methods of prevention and novel ways to kill mosquitoes.

"You can say we are very lucky -- the right place at the right time," says astrophysicist Szabolcs Márka, a Columbia University specialist in black holes. He has a grant to develop a "mosquito flashlight" designed to knock out the bugs' eye-like sensors.

Scientists around the world are testing ways of thwarting mosquitoes with microwaves, rancid odors, poisoned blood and other weapons that disrupt the sense of sight, smell and heat mosquitoes use to find their prey.

There's work on genetically altering a bacterium to infect and kill a mosquito, and a project to build a malaria-free mosquito genetically enhanced to overtake the natural kind.

There's also a researcher in Japan who thinks mosquitoes can be a force for good. He is working on transforming them into "flying syringes" that deliver vaccines with every bite.

The mosquito laser is the brainchild of Lowell Wood, an astrophysicist who worked with Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and architect of the original plan to use lasers to shield America from the rain of Soviet nuclear arms.