Wednesday, September 2, 2015

THESE MOSQUITOES ARE DESIGNED TO SELF-DESTRUCT

Mosquitoes infect 400 million people with dengue fever, are very resistant to insecticide, and primary bite humans. A company called Oxitec, has come up with a way to genetically modify them. By putting a certain synthetic DNA in them, the mosquitoes offspring will be unable to reach adulthood and therefore, unable to reproduce. It has been implemented in a few areas so far and showed great success (90% were wiped out). Oxitec is now waiting for approval to try it in the Florida Keys.

For the most part, I think this is a good idea. Dengue fever is spreading to more and more places, which is very dangerous. It is a good idea for scientists to start finding ways to prevent further spread of them. In the past, using insecticide was effective at first, but ended up resulting in super bugs that were resistant to it. This approach does not have that problem, and it has been very effective- 3x more effective than insecticide. On the other side, I am not sure if it is very ethical to genetically modify organisms and send them back into nature. We also do not know the long-term effects of it, so it is possible that negative effects could result later on. Mosquitoes have an ecological niche in nature, so if we get rid of them almost entirely, what effect would that have on the ecosystem?

Original Article

Related Article

1 comment:

  1. I hope it is approved and they are able to genetically modify them. They suck to say the least! I am extremely allergic to them and if they are gone that is one last worry in my life for sure! But to think about the ecosystem as whole, I think there would be a big imbalance in the ecosystem. No matter how awful and annoying a specific bug or animal might be, they all have a certain function in the world.

    ReplyDelete