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cientists in China are reportedly experimenting with the use of mosquitoes that could spread vaccines like a virus, without the use of shots, or consent.
Researchers have already been running trials of the technique on animals and plan to soon release the genetically-modified mosquitoes into the wild.
However, the possibilities for human exposure are obvious and ominous.
The Chinese Communist Party’s state-controlled propaganda outlet The South China Morning Post (SCMP) celebrated the development on Wednesday.
In its reporting, the SCMP quotes a paper from the Chinese Academy of Sciences that details a plan to send genetically-modified mosquitoes into the wild to spread vaccines among animals.
The scientists explain that their mosquitoes would bite animals to trigger a “strong, long-lasting immune response.”
The authors of the paper said their trials had been successful at making animal subjects more resistant to viral infections, most notably Zika.
The Zika virus was the big viral panic in the late 2010s before a certain other organism emerged from Wuhan, China at the end of the decade.
Zika is spread primarily by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, a wide-ranging pest that breeds in swamps around the world, including the United States.
The Zika crisis was particularly acute in Brazil, where pregnant women feared a mosquito bite could lead to birth defects or miscarriage from the virus.
