Biotech company’s plan aims to eradicate California’s invasive, disease-carrying mosquitoes — and manipulate evolution.
A biotech firm is seeking permission to release genetically modified mosquitoes into the open air of California for the first time later this year, aiming to reduce the expanding populations of invasive mosquitoes and prevent deadly disease.
Approved by federal regulators this week and now under review by the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation, the research project is welcomed by Tulare County’s Delta Vector Control District. “Instead of using a human being to apply a pesticide to kill these mosquitoes, we’re using male mosquitoes to do the job for us,” he said. “It’s nature against nature.”mosquitoes, which arrived in the region five years ago, are a growing nuisance. At a meeting of Visalia’s City Council, Councilman Brian Poochigian said that he and his family were bitten six or seven times every time they left home.
According to critics, there’s no publicly available data to support Oxitec’s claims that the introduced mosquitoes will reduce incidence of mosquito-borne diseases. According to an independent peer-reviewed study from Yale University scientists, two years of continual releases of the mosquitoes at a test site in Brazil failed to reduce populations ofFurthermore, none of the worrisome viruses have been transmitted within California, opponents say.
It is part of a growing effort to explore the use of genetic engineering as an alternative to pesticides. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is seeking to enlist such techniques to eradicate an invasive diamondback moth in New York, which eats vegetable crops, and a cotton-munching pink bollworm in Arizona.
The pilot project will take place in residential neighborhoods of Visalia, the gateway to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley. The precise locations and start date will be announced if the project receives state approval.
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