The U.S. government recently gave California approval to release millions of genetically engineered mosquitoes bred by British biotech company Oxitec, reports the Los Angeles Times:
Oxitec, a private company, says its genetically modified bugs could help save half the world's population from the invasive Aedes aegypti mosquito, which can spread diseases such as yellow fever, chikungunya and dengue to humans. Female offspring produced by these modified insects will die, according to Oxitec's plan, causing the population to collapse. "Precise. Environmentally sustainable. Non-toxic," the company says on its website of its product trademarked as the "Friendly" mosquito. Scientists independent from the company and critical of the proposal say not so fast. They say unleashing the experimental creatures into nature has risks that haven't yet been fully studied, including possible harm to other species or unexpectedly making the local mosquito population harder to control.... Nathan Rose, Oxitec's head of regulatory affairs, noted that the company found its mosquito reduced the population in a Brazilian neighborhood by 95% in just 13 weeks. So far, Oxitec has released little of its data from that experiment or from a more recent release in the Florida Keys. It hasn't yet published any of those results in a peer-reviewed scientific journal — publications that scientists expect when evaluating a new drug or technology.... Scientists are concerned that releasing genetically modified mosquitoes into neighborhoods could cause more harm than good. An EPA spokesman said regulators expected mosquitoes with the corporate genes to disappear from the environment within 10 generations because they are not able to reproduce as successfully as local populations.
One bioethicist at Harvard Medical School told the
Times that California has never had a case where this breed of mosquitos had actually transmitted disease, and argued that America's Environmental Protection Agency was "not a modern enough regulatory structure for a very modern and complicated technology."
After the U.S. government's approval, the genetically-engineered mosquitors still face several more months of scientific evaluation from California's Department of Pesticide Regulation.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the link
