Bill Gates Releases Mosquitoes at Ted2009 to Make the Rich Care About Malaria

At the TED2009 conference today, Bill Gates shocked attendees by releasing a jar of malaria-free mosquitoes into the audience, announcing, “Not only poor people should experience this.”

The ‘this’ to which Gates referred is malaria. It’s a cause he and his wife have fought against through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And apparently, Gates didn’t feel the audience took malaria seriously enough.

Now there’s an attention-grabbing icebreaker to wake up attendees who have been live-blogging TED2009 all afternoon! Valleywag was alerted to the bug infestation through a tweet from Facebook manager Dave Morin. Stay tuned for video of Bill Gates’ dramatic mosquito release.