science

The thought of all these mosquitoes might make one's skin crawl. But Cabral thinks of them as her babies, and she says these insects deserve more praise than loathing. That's because they've been engineered to shut down the transmission of the very diseases they usually carry and spread.

And it's why the Brazilian government has made a massive investment to create and deploy this tiny winged armada across the country — to join their other national efforts to combat mosquito-borne diseases.

Cabral has every confidence in these mosquitoes. "They can help us," she says.