The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has cleared the release of 2.4 billion genetically modified mosquitoes in California and Florida until 2024.
According to The Guardian, the US company Oxitec, says the plan will reduce numbers of the invasive Aedes aegypti, which can carry diseases like Zika, yellow fever and dengue.
Oxitec’s modified mosquitoes are male, and therefore don’t bite. They were developed with a special protein so that when they pair with a female mosquito the only viable offspring, they produce are also non-biting males. Female mosquitoes will die, while males will grow and reproduce, spreading the self-limiting gene to the next generation, eventually leading to population declines.
Opponents have raised questions about the modified mosquitoes’ interaction with Tetracycline, an antibiotic used in agriculture, which can be found in wastewater. Tetracycline works as an antidote to the GMO mosquitoes, enabling female mosquitoes to develop. They fear the complicated interplay could lead to hybrid mosquitoes that are even more difficult to control.
Oxitec has already introduced this particular strain of genetically modified mosquitoes in Brazil and is fresh from a first-year trial in the Florida Keys. The company claims to have encouraging results. “Every single larva that carried our gene emerged as an adult male,” Vaidyanathan said. “We didn’t have any female emergence.”
“Once released into the environment, genetically engineered mosquitoes cannot be recalled,” Dr. Robert Gould, president of San Francisco Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility, tells Mercury News. “Rather than forge ahead with an unregulated, open-air genetic experiment, we need precautionary action, transparent data and appropriate risk assessments.”
EDITOR: What could go wrong?
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