Bill Gates found a very good way to get the news reporters to pay attention to the malaria problem. In his talk at the TED conference, he released a few mosquitoes, stating that malaria should not be just for poor people to experience. People who did not see the whole performance may react shocked, because when placed out of context it sounds like an outrageous thing to do.
If you think that’s the case, you should maybe have a look at his talk, available (for free, without registering) at TED.com. You’ll see that the audience is actually laughing when he releases the mosquitoes, and at the end of the talk Bill gets a standing ovation.
In addition to the malaria problem, Bill also makes a very good case about how important good teachers are, and what we can do to help teachers become just that.
As some people have mentioned, the TED video could have been called “Bill Gates releases bugs”. That would have been funny, but distracts from the important message he’s trying to get attention for.
I also found out that even now that the video is available online, some journalists are still copying other people’s “old” texts without having found the actual TED video and checking it out themselves. Aparently journalists are payed for articles, not for research.