Q: If mosquitoes can transmit malaria, why...

Q: If mosquitoes can transmit malaria, why can’t they transmit AIDS as well?

A: Extensive studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other institutions have all failed to provide any evidence that mosquitoes can transmit AIDS, according to Dr. Jeffrey Fricke of the UCLA Center for Clinical AIDS Research and Education.

In diseases that are transmitted by mosquitoes and other insects, such as malaria and Lyme disease, the parasite that causes the disease spends part or all of its life cycle in the insect. That is not the case with the AIDS virus, which cannot infect insects, Fricke notes. If a mosquito sucks blood from a person infected with HIV, the virus is destroyed in the insect’s stomach before it can bite another person.