By: Damien Sanchez
A Mosquito control District in South Florida is set to release 5000 to 10000 male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, also known as yellow fever mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are being supplied by the British company Oxitec specializing in controlling insects that cause disease and damage crops. The plan is to release genetically engineered male mosquitoes into the local Andes aegypti population causing future offspring to die before maturing into adults and becoming yellow fever vectors.
Potentially this could save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year depending on how successful the operation is. According to the New York Times, there have been a few prior releases over the past couple of years that were reported as a success, in Malaysia Brazil and the Cayman Islands. Now there is controversy over the release of genetically engineered organisms into the environment, espessialy with little public input or warning.
Although these test will be open air please note Andes aegypti are not naturally occurring in this part of the world, they are native to Africa and only arrived to the new world during the period of colonization, they are therefore an invasive specie of serious public health concern and need to be dealt with. But even so, as this technology improves and it’s use increases, concern is justified.
Having spent the last few hours reading about Genetically Engineered mosquitoes it seems on the surface to be a safe trial in that they are designed to die quickly cannot reproduce past one generation. The same argument for their use can be made with a number of other creatures and plants that may have a greater potential impact on the environment due to unintended consequences so monitoring is essential. I will be following the news on the release and have a follow up post later in the summer on the results.
DS
What date is this scheduled to happen?
I heard that the release had been delayed, they are looking at a late spring release.