Avant-garde chemists and geneticists facilely fiddle with Nature. Alas, like Gustav Mahler’s tongue-in-cheek opinion of fellow German composer Anton Bruckner’s symphonies, these reckless scientists are “half idiot, half God.”
After a decade of work, British biotech firm Oxitec released genetically modified mosquitos in Brazil in 2013, hoping to reduce mosquito-borne diseases via mosquitos whose 1st-generation offspring would be infertile. Oxitec claimed that the gene mod would not get into the general population because offspring would die.
The plan backfired. Oxitec instead created a resilient hybrid as the new gene suffused into the local mosquito population – the worst possible outcome. To celebrate the failure and heighten the hazard, the Trump administration is letting Oxitec release genetically modified mosquitos in Florida and Texas.
Sources:
Kelly Servick, “Study on DNA spread by genetically modified mosquitoes prompts backlash,” Science (17 September 2019).
Benjamin R. Evans et al, “Transgenic Aedes aegypti mosquitoes transfer genes into a natural population,” Scientific Reports (10 September 2019).
“Genetically modified mosquitoes breed in Brazil,” DW (13 September 2019).