Millions of genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in the Florida Keys if British researchers win approval to use the bugs against two extremely painful viral diseases. Never before have insects with modified DNA come so close to being set loose in a residential U.S. neighborhood. "This is essentially using a mosquito as a drug to cure disease," said Michael Doyle, executive director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, which is waiting to hear if the Food and Drug Administration will allow the experiment.
Dengue and chikungunya are growing threats in the U.S., but some people are more frightened at the thought of being bitten by a genetically modified organism. More than 130,000 signed a Change.org petition against the experiment.
Even potential boosters say those responsible must do more to show that benefits outweigh the risks. "I think the science is fine, they definitely can kill mosquitoes, but the GMO [Genetically Modified Organism] issue still sticks as something of a thorny issue for the general public," said Phil Lounibos, who studies mosquito control at the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory. "It's not even so much about the science—you can't go ahead with something like this if public opinion is negative."
[More after the break.]
The article goes on to report that the disease is carried by Aedes aegypti, a tiger-striped invader whose biting females spread these viruses. This mosquito is working its way north and Key West is particularly vulnerable. All it would take for an outbreak is for a few visitors to the area to get bit by these mosquitoes which would then become hosts and spread the disease through out the area.
There are no vaccines or cures for dengue, ... or chikungunya, which causes painful contortions. ... dengue sickens 50 million people annually worldwide and kills 2.5 percent of the half-million who get severe cases, according to the World Health Organization. Chikungunya has already overwhelmed hospitals and harmed economies across the Caribbean after infecting a million people in the region last year.
Key West is under continual spraying to try and suppress this species, but the cost is high and the pesticides are becoming less and less effective. The hope is that these GMO mosquitoes would breed with the locals and kill off the offspring and lead to their eradication. Problematically, the males (which do not bite) are selected by hand for release and the potential exists for females to be released as well.
Enter Oxitec, a British biotech firm launched by Oxford University researchers. They patented a method of breeding Aedes aegypti with fragments of proteins from the herpes simplex virus and E. coli bacteria as well as genes from coral and cabbage. This synthetic DNA has been used in thousands of experiments without harming lab animals, but it is fatal to the bugs, killing mosquito larvae before they can fly or bite.
[...] FDA spokeswoman Theresa Eisenman said no field tests will be allowed until the agency has "thoroughly reviewed all the necessary information."
[...]"What Oxitec is trying to spin is that it's highly improbable that there will be negative consequences of this foreign DNA entering someone that's bitten by an Oxitec mosquito," said Lounibos, "I'm on their side, in that consequences are highly unlikely. But to say that there's no genetically modified DNA that might get into a human, that's kind of a gray matter."
http://phys.org/news/2015-01-millions-gmo-insects-loose-florida.html
Related Stories
Recently touted as a solution for mosquito borne illnesses like zika, dengue and chikayunga - gene driving mosquito populations to infertility isn't working out so great in the wild.
In late 2015, researchers reported a CRISPR gene drive that caused an infertility mutation in female mosquitoes to be passed on to all their offspring1. Lab experiments showed that the mutation increased in frequency as expected over several generations, but resistance to the gene drive also emerged, preventing some mosquitoes from inheriting the modified genome.
This is hardly surprising, says Philipp Messer, a population geneticist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Just as antibiotics enable the rise of drug-resistant bacteria, population-suppressing gene drives create the ideal conditions for resistant organisms to flourish.
One source of this resistance is the CRISPR system itself, which uses an enzyme to cut a specific DNA sequence and insert whatever genetic code a researcher wants. Occasionally, however, cells sew the incision back together after adding or deleting random DNA letters. This can result in a sequence that the CRISPR gene-drive system no longer recognizes, halting the spread of the modified code.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday January 25 2015, @10:07PM
IS LEGEND.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Sunday January 25 2015, @11:08PM
So, GMO is a jabberwocky and not for entirely incorrect reasons. Public anger against Monsanto is entirely warranted. But this is entirely different, and for once this corp is entirely in the right. I've read and learned about these diseases. These vanishingly unlikely "what ifs" are hilariously misguided. I'd rather get bitten by thousands of these GMO females than risk getting either disease. There are some good parallels here to the anti-vaxxer "debate."
Missing from the summary is this slightly relevant tidbit from TFA:
Yeah. So, they've released 70 million of these worldwide, and despite oversight there have been zero documented issues. Zero. Despite this, "Key West resident Marilyn Smith" (why the fuck is some random person quoted in this piece again?) is wringing her hands about being the "guinea pigs." Also, the released mosquitoes are inherently self-limiting because they exclusively release males, and oh that's right male mosquitoes do not even bite!
Despite all of this, we've got actual scientists who aren't helping. These guys are saying stuff like "Oxitec should still do more to show that the synthetic DNA causes no harm when transferred into humans by its mosquitoes" which is sort of impossible to do, when there is no mechanism proposed or speculated for this transfer to ever happen. Propose an actual falsifiable experiment, Guy Reeves, or cease your pointless pontification.
Then we've got this gem from Phil Lounibos:
I'm not sure it is, Phil. Because genetically modified in this circumstance just means snipping stuff out wholesale from terrifying organisms like cabbage and bacteria we're eating all the time (E. coli). This is mix and match in the DNA of the bugs themselves. They aren't carrying it; it doesn't get injected; it's part of them but just happens to kill off all their larvae. Any human immune system is going to destroy this stuff immediately as "not self" in the unlikely instance any cells were released into your bloodstream from an also extremely unlikely female bite.
Release the bugs.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @12:25AM
Man you sure are confident for someone who is relying on proof by absence.
How long did take for thalidomide to go from A-OK to banned? Four years. And that was with side-effects that were so glaringly obvious that they simply could not be ignored.
Now look at something like BPA, the CDC found BPA in the urine of 95% of sampled adults going back as far as 1988 and while it's banned in some other countries, it is still A-OK in the USA. That's at least 25 years of experience and it is still used as a standard component in containers like the lining on nearly all canned food and in thermal receipts where it can be absorbed through the skin in significantly greater quantities than if ingested.
As for Oxitec, best I can make out from the article, they started wide-scale testing in 2012. And, contrary to your claim about encouraging reports of problems, the first big test in 2012 occurred without the informed consent of the local population. That's barely 3 years of testing, Thalidomide had that many years of testing before it went on the market too.
I have to say your snarky over-confidence is precisely the kind of thing that makes people distrustful. I'm sure there were people saying exactly the same thing about DDT and asbestos when they were brand new too. Those regular joes interviewed in the article aren't experts, but given the history of collosal fuckups that ruined peoples lives, they've got lots of reasons to be distrustful. All you've got is lack of evidence from a company that stands to gain everything from a lack of evidence.
If Oxitec really wants to convince the regular joes, make them eat their own dogfood. Sign up every employee to work in a building infested with these mosquitos for five years. No tricks where the CEO spends his day on the golf-course instead, fill his house(s) with them too. If they do that for five years and there are no adverse reactions, then they will have earned the trust of the regular joes. Still won't be 100% proof of safety, but it will go a long way to earning the trust because at least everybody's interests will be aligned rather than opposed.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by physicsmajor on Monday January 26 2015, @01:00AM
I'm not relying on proof by absence. I'm also relying on the entirety of known science behind our immune systems.
BPA and thalidomide are small molecule pharmaceuticals, which are much more difficult to test robustly. By design, they work by evading our usual immune responses in hopes they'll be able to get where they need to go and do some good. They are why we have an FDA in the first place, along with rigorous testing of new drugs.
In contrast, the human immune system attacks and destroys external cells and external DNA by various potent mechanisms. The immune system is really, really good at it, and the "not self" substances don't even have to be other species. This is why organ transplant matching is hard, and even with all the known factors matched people still go on immunosuppressants for life. Now release cells from another animal in there - they light up literally all of the red flags. No contest.
This is why normal mosquito bites never result in any problems. And the changes to the genome in these mosquitoes - being from bacteria we're all colonized with and cabbage for Pete's sake - don't matter. It's all getting destroyed. Nobody can even design an experiment to show this, because the mosquito-borne material would get destroyed too fast.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @01:22AM
> I'm also relying on the entirety of known science behind our immune systems.
While I disagree that you are in fact doing that (one example is lateral gene transfer), lets assume that really does accurately describe the situation.
How is that different from what was known about thalidomide at the time?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday January 26 2015, @02:32AM
How is this different from all the 'foreign' DNA we're exposed to every single day, from every living thing (and every formerly-living thing) we touch, eat, sniff, or are bitten by?? How about all the bacteria that both you and the world are loaded with, which mutate all the time and are constantly producing hitherto-unknown DNA??
Your immune system doesn't know or care if the DNA came from a natural mosquito or out of a test tube or from outer space -- it'll react and destroy it all the same, much as it does the thousands of 'harmless' viruses (that's why they're harmless) you're exposed to every day -- and a virus is basically a mutation-prone chunk of DNA.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @04:29AM
> How is this different from all the 'foreign' DNA we're exposed to every single day
One short answer is that by transplanting it into a new organism that opens up new pathways for transmission. For example a virus that the mosquito hosts might pick up the transgenic coral DNA and transmit it to a human or some other organism while that would never have happened before because no such virus exists in the original coral organism. Just because we are exposed to some 'foreign' DNA on a regular basis doesn't mean we are exposed to all foreign DNA on a regular basis.
But the long answer is that your entire argument is based on the idea that there is no such thing as unknown unknowns, that our knowledge of nature is complete and since we haven't figured out a problem with this yet that there are no problems. As previously cited, history is littered with examples of why that hubris is a loser's game.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Monday January 26 2015, @05:46AM
Your skepticism is cute and all, but while you preach caution people are dying from terrible diseases. Diseases we could have prevented, if we'd acted instead of staring at our navels, stuck in an unsatisfiable condition that boils down to "we don't know everything, so we can't do anything."
Vaccines like the one for yellow fever have some terrible, rare side effects. Including death. Guess what: we give them out anyway, because the disease is worse. From what we do, definitely, know, right now, I guarantee you the 70 million to zero side effect ratio (even if that second number is small but nonzero) vastly outweighs allowing these diseases a potential foothold in our country.
The rubber meets the road here. It seems you're a theorist, and I can usually respect that, but it's time for the experimentalists to take over.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 26 2015, @09:25AM
The rubber meets the road here. It seems you're a theorist, and I can usually respect that, but it's time for the experimentalists to take over.
I agree here. This is not a frivolous "let's cross mosquitoes and cabbage for Science!" The goal is the elimination of considerable suffering. And when you have stakes, a vague "It could be bad", especially when combined with ridiculously tenuous scenarios, just isn't good enough a reason to not do something.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday January 26 2015, @01:04AM
Unfortunately, anytime the information you are getting comes to you through the hands of people who have a direct or indirect interest in selling you, that information is probably a lie. For someone who does not have the time and background to evaluate an issue like this properly, just assuming the suits are lying is actually a pretty reasonable proxy, even if it may lead to the wrong conclusions in some cases (such as, apparently, this one) it's still going to be right more often than not.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @02:24AM
Agreed. I'd be fine with the government or some agency that's acting in the public interest to do this, but I'd never trust the company with patents on the stuff being used. It's in their financial interests to distort the facts to their benefit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 26 2015, @09:33AM
I'd be fine with the government or some agency that's acting in the public interest to do this
Let us keep in mind who the actual customers will be: governments or agencies. And need I point out that governments and agencies are notorious for not acting in the public interest too?
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 26 2015, @05:44PM
Man you sure are confident for someone who is relying on proof by absence.
Absence is at least data. Proof by absence is better than proof by Jurassic Park.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @01:58AM
Ironically they are objecting to doing this to prevent viruses: those things in mosquitoes that actually inject DNA into your cells and make you sick.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @11:17PM
What are the possible consequences of releasing a genetically modified mosquito into an ecosystem?
I think the science is fine, they definitely can kill mosquitoes
If you kill all mosquitoes in the Florida Keys, are you then going to starve other animals that eat the mosquito? then what about the animals that eat those?
What about if you starve an animal that eats mosquitoes that also happens to eat other pests that might be harmful to humans or crops?
http://www.endangeredspeciesinternational.org/insects4.html [endangeredspeciesinternational.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mrchew1982 on Monday January 26 2015, @12:13AM
Not even remotely likely to happen because this is an *invasive species* that is not native to the area. The normal mosquitoes will still be there to feed the fish and the birds and bite you, don't worry!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @12:36AM
How long have they been invading? Have they damaged the local species beyond the point of recovery? Given enough time an invasive species becomes a critical component of the invaded ecosystem because it has overrun the previous inhabitant of the same niche. How do we know that another invasive species that carries the same disease won't fill the void instead? [plos.org]
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Monday January 26 2015, @01:05AM
In the case of Florida, since 1986. However, while they are found fairly widespread today, they have not displaced native species. If you've ever visited Florida, it's pretty clear there's enough room for basically all of the mosquitoes.
If we eliminated the species entirely, the native species would simply fill in the gap. And they don't carry terrible diseases with significant mortality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @01:24AM
> If you've ever visited Florida, it's pretty clear there's enough room for basically all of the mosquitoes.
You did not just say that.
Also, seems clear you didn't read the linked study about asian tiger mosquitos.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday January 26 2015, @02:38AM
Something I noticed when I lived where there were few mosquitoes (so the population was easy to observe) -- the net total of crane flies and mosquitoes was constant. So when there were few mosquitoes, there were lots of crane flies, and v.v. (Guess which one I preferred.) We also got more swallows and other birds when the crane flies were dominant.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Monday January 26 2015, @12:16AM
The mosquito species targeted here is a non-native mosquito. The released mosquitoes are of that same species. There is zero chance you could kill all mosquitoes in the Keys. The goal is to kill the invaders, which are vectors for terrible diseases.
(Score: 1) by gnuman on Monday January 26 2015, @04:38AM
What are the possible consequences of releasing a genetically modified mosquito into an ecosystem?
I think the problem could be more apparent with using pesticides than trying to eradicate one mosquito species. There are dozens and dozens of different mosquito species. They do not interbreed. Some don't carry diseases, other are pathogenic heavens. Like the TseTse fly, some subspecies could be eradicated without affecting the foodchain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsetse_fly [wikipedia.org]
An alternative is to develop a vaccine for the diseases these things carry.
Now, if they were trying to exterminate all mosquitoes, like with pesticide campaigns, that would indeed have a large impact on the ecosystem. But single species, it's almost always insignificant. The other mosquitoes will quickly fill in the void.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @07:13PM
I'm in Florida. We don't use pesticides to control the mosquito population: we build municipal bat houses. I'm not even kidding. In the aggregate, our town's bats eat tons (literally) of insects every night.
I've lived here in the middle of the swamp for six years and have never been bitten by a mosquito. The bats are effective little predators.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @11:51PM
Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue_fever [wikipedia.org] and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chikungunya [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @04:18AM
Yeah, after my dad (in FL) got dengue and my grandma (in Trinidad) got chikungunya, I'm a bit more for this than I'd be otherwise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @12:32AM
New Study Pokes Hole in GMO Mosquito Plan [commondreams.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Monday January 26 2015, @01:10AM
Yes, there are two particularly bad species. In Florida there's only really one invader of note, so this isn't relevant.
However, that study doesn't so much poke a hole in the plan as it does encourage simultaneous efforts to kill off both species. And conveniently, the same company has a genetically modified mosquito of the second species as well.
The way I read it, that just means a combined effort is needed against both species to massively reduce their population burden and allow the native species to fill the void. After that point, lower level interference should be able to control the majority of the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @05:15AM
Australia is addressing the same issue by infecting mosquito populations with the Wolbachia bacteria that stops the insects from carrying viruses like Dengue. The bacteria is sexually transmitted among insects and so is self-sustaining. I think that this approach is more like vaccinating the wild populations (cue hand-wringing about autistic mosquitos!) and far more powerful than the GMO species eradication method espoused by the article.
http://www.eliminatedengue.com/australia/faqs/type/wolbachia/ [eliminatedengue.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @09:22AM
srsly .. mosquitoes are just flying "cough droplets".
it means a mosquito is not born infected but rather has to bite a infected person first.
if the mosquito becomes a carrier for dengue it doesn't die.
now the question: maybe modify the dengue virus so it kills the mosquito too?
point is to try and not get bite WHEN YOU ALREADY HAVE DENGUE (or malaria).
-
genetically modifying tiny (hardy) organism that multiple like crazy is always a bad idea : (
genetically modifying a whale that needs 20 years to go from 2 to 10 is saver then bug/bacteria that can go from 2 to 10'000 in 36 hours ...maybe?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @04:52PM
... perhaps she'll die. Song [youtube.com]
No vector for non-biting male mosquito GMO DNA entering a human? Indeed. Surf, jet-ski, water ski, etc... ever do those and open your mouth? Ever see the AFV video with an old woman singing and get choked up by a bug? There's plenty of entry orifices without a mosquito biting and creating one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @06:59PM
We can never know the full consequences of our actions. Based on what we DO know, these GMO mosquitoes will be a blessing. I believe they will be anyways. You know what I also believe? One day, they will be curse. There will be a negative consequence of this action. That is the human condition. We aren't gods. We deal with problems as best we can WHEN they become problems...and everything we do eventually becomes a problem. Until then, it's all good.