Bite Me: Bill Gates Unleashes Mosquitos on Crowd

“There’s no reason only poor people should get malaria.”

Bill Gates wanted to be the show-stopper.  He wanted to “wow” the crowd.

But what was he thinking?

Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft and philanthropist, unleashed an angry swarm of mosquitoes on the crowd at a technology conference in California in an effort to highlight the dangers of malaria.

“Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,” Gates yelled out to the crowd.

“I brought some,” he added.

“Here, I’ll let them roam around – there is no reason only poor people should be infected.”

He let the stunned audience suffer for a moment or two before acknowledging that the mosquitoes in question were free of malaria.

That didn’t quite satisfy all the attendees, however.

“That’s it. I am not sitting up front anymore,” said eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

The chaotic moment was a stunt by Gates, who left Microsoft in 2008 to focus on charity work, to emphasize awareness on malaria prevention.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation focuses on malaria prevention as one of its core projects.  In 2008, the Foundation announced that it would donate $115 million to help develop a vaccine.

The organizers of the TED conference said it was an “amazing moment” and gave the attendees some “food for thought”.

Chris Anderson, curator of the show, quipped that the moment should be called, “Gates releases more bugs into the world”.