This Tiny Guillotine Decapitates Mosquitoes to Fight Malaria

The idea behind the guillotine is this: If you're going to execute someone, you may as well do it efficiently and humanely, at least by 18th-century standards. Decapitating the condemned with an ax or sword may take a few swings--unacceptable for carrying out justice in a "civilized" society. The guillotine, on the other hand, is downright surgical, a perversely methodical way to end a life. Now mosquitoes are getting the same treatment in the pursuit of a vaccine for malaria, a disease that killed 440,000 people in 2016. To produce a vaccine for mass deployment, biotech firm Sanaria has to decapitate and dissect out the salivary glands, which hold the malaria-causing parasite, for each individual mosquito--by hand.