Florida Drops 800,000 Irradiated Mosquitoes from Drones Over Citizens (Video)
Lee County Mosquito Control District says X-ray sterilized mosquitoes were released by drone over Fort Myers property, raising informed consent and public safety questions.
A Florida government mosquito-control agency has confirmed that approximately 800,000 Aedes aegypti mosquitoes were raised in a laboratory, said to be sterilized with X-rays, and released from drones over part of Fort Myers, Florida, in what officials describe as a mosquito population-control experiment.
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are known vectors of dengue, chikungunya, Zika, and yellow fever.
The mosquitoes are irradiated at 12 Gy per minute (12,000 mGy/min), while a human chest X-ray delivers only 0.1 mSv total—so the mosquito dose rate is 120,000 times higher than the dose a person receives in a chest X-ray.
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The Florida operation was conducted at the historic Edison and Ford Winter Estates tourist site, which includes gardens, museums, and public walkways visited by civilians and families throughout the year.
Local reporting stated the release was part of an ongoing partnership between the mosquito-control district and the estates property.
The Lee County Mosquito Control District was created by the Florida Legislature in 1958 as an independent special district funded primarily through local property taxes.
That means local Florida residents are effectively funding the development and expansion of drone-based mosquito release operations over populated areas.
The mosquitoes were released using drone technology as part of the so-called Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) program.
The program’s stated goal is to suppress mosquito populations by flooding an area with sterilized male mosquitoes that mate with wild females, producing eggs that allegedly do not hatch.
Officials claim only male mosquitoes were released because male mosquitoes do not bite humans.
However, studies show these techniques still end up producing both female mosquitoes (which do bite, potentially spreading disease) and eggs that do end up hatching.
A July 2024 Science Robotics paper confirms that the automated mosquito sex-sorting system tested in that study still produced approximately ~0.5% female contamination in the supposedly “male-only” output stream.
Moreover, 1% of eggs still hatch when Aedes aegypti pupae are irradiated at 50 Gy (the total sterilizing dose used in Florida), according to Chen et al. 2025 in Journal of Economic Entomology.
Those papers raise obvious questions about how many biting female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes may have actually been released over the public despite “male-only” claims—potentially involving a species known to spread dengue, chikungunya, Zika, and yellow fever—and how many eggs may still hatch despite assurances that the released mosquitoes are effectively sterilized.
The operation is already raising questions about informed consent, environmental safety, biological containment, and the increasing normalization of aerial biological-release programs over civilian populations.
You can contact the Lee County Mosquito Control District here, Lee County here, the governor’s office here, and Florida’s federal and state legislators here to voice your opposition to the aerial release of laboratory-bred mosquitoes over civilian populations without individualized informed consent and fully transparent independent safety verification.
Watch the local news report below:
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The frogs, birds, fish all rely on mosquitos as food. Why are they allowed to do this? I’m so fed up with these stupid people. Because you can do it you do? Have you stopped to think of all the other damage you’re doing? Idiots😡😡😡😡
Did they ask anybody first?