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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
(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.