In an effort to fight insect-borne viruses such as Zika, dengue fever and malaria, genetically modified mosquitoes are being released in the Florida Keys.
UK-based biotechnology company Oxitec has partnered with the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District in an effort to control the invasive and disease-spreading female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in the region.
Oxitec’s male mosquitoes – which do not bite, unlike the recently discovered Aedes scapularis mosquitoes with yellow fever – will be introduced in small areas in a select number of neighborhoods between milestones 10 and 93 in the Keys.
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Oxitec hopes that the project will be successful in bringing dr. Nathan Rose, head of regulatory affairs, of Oxitec to name a “self-limiting” gene from his genetically engineered husbands after their wild mates, to ensure that future offspring do not mature and the population.
Rose told Fox News on Friday that this project will be critical as the mosquito-borne disease becomes more and more a ‘problem’, citing locally transmitted Dengue fever outbreaks in the keys and the Zika virus crisis in the summer of 2016 that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) said that 29 people were infected in an area of six blocks, which forced them to control mosquitoes after aerial spraying.
While more than 7,300 Dengue cases were reported in the U.S. between 2010 and 2020 – cases are largely contracted outside the U.S. – there were 71 cases reported locally in the Sunshine States, according to the CDC.
“So, mosquito-borne diseases are something in the US, and they are likely to get worse in the future due to climate change. [and] “as these mosquitoes move further and further north from the Gulf Coast into more and more of the continental U.S.,” Rose told Fox News. The diseases are therefore a big problem because these specific diseases have no effective vaccines or medicines to treat them [and] the only way to control them is to control the mosquitoes they spread … “
Although the final deal and approval was announced just last year, this is not Oxitec’s first rodeo.
The company claims that a trial of Oxedes’ Aedes aegypti technology in Brazil and a 2016 test in the Cayman Islands were successful and did not ‘persist in the environment or cause damage to beneficial insects’, according to its website.
‘Recent similar demonstration projects in the Brazilian city of Indaiatuba have found that Oxitec’s mosquito Aedes aegypti suppresses up to 95% in urban, Dengue-prone environments with only 13 weeks of treatment, compared to untreated checkpoints in the same city. , “wrote it.
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Rose said their goal in the U.S. is to show that their male mosquitoes perform just as well on U.S. soil as they do “only on a small scale” in “other countries.”
“And then, once we have done that – once we have the data out there – then we have to go to the US regulatory agencies to actually get a commercial registration to release these mosquitoes wider in the United States,” he said. explain.
Rose said while the company plans to launch its effort – using what they call ‘just-add-water’ technology – ‘fairly soon’ using a ‘phase roll’, it is currently monitoring the mosquito population in the area.
“So, what we do first: the first phase of the project is to release mosquitoes from a few places. And what we want to look at is how far they fly and how long they live in the area are the keys?” he asked. “And then, if we have the information out there, we’ll move on to small neighborhood releases where we’ll release the mosquitoes over an area of maybe 15 acres or something. And then, what we’re looking at is the impact of those mosquitoes around the wild. effectively report mosquitoes in that area. ‘
Regulatory approvals for the first phase have already been granted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and several state agencies in Florida, including the Department of Health and the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
In August 2020, the board of commissioners of the Keys Mosquito Control District approved the agreement for the 2021 release. Oxitec says an independent evaluation of the project will be provided by the CDC, the Medical Entomology Laboratory of the University of Florida, the Monroe County Department of Health and local leaders.
The EPA, which completed a risk assessment and opened the discussion to the public, approved an experimental use permit and, after reviewing relevant information regarding the manufacturing, production, quality assurance processes and standard operating procedures, determined that the agency had a finding of no unreasonable adverse effects on humans and the environment during the proposed EUP. “
“So the EPA took a really good look at it. It took more than a year to review a lot of the data that was submitted. And they looked at the safety of the mosquito for humans and the environment. And the conclusion was that there was no risk to humans or the environment as a result of the release of these mosquitoes, “Rose said, assuring that” there is no danger to anyone in the community “.
He said he believed the ‘real risk’ was a mosquito-borne disease, in addition to the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, while viruses continue to spread, so does the skepticism of Floridians.
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The Associated Press in particular reported that the Cayman Islands project had been delayed by opponents of the project who ‘argued that the government had not provided sufficient information on potential risks or had adequately studied other alternatives’.
In the recent report by Undark, the non-profit journal Digital Science notes that Oxitec has been proposing an experimental release in the Keys for years and that it has previously been rejected in Key Haven and Key West – although some residents in surrounding areas have voted . in support of the release.
According to Undark, critics want more evidence that the release is needed, further information on the process and monitoring of diseases and more public involvement.
Another concern presented in their article concerns the antibiotic tetracycline – without which the female mosquitoes will die in the early larval stages and are usually used to treat bacteria in sewage plants and in agriculture – and the EPA’s risk assessment.
While the assessment notes that the releases will not occur within 500 m of commercial citrus growth areas or wastewater treatment sites due to considerations regarding the impact of environmental sources of tetracyclines on OX5034 mosquito survival, “said North Carolina State University’s genetic engineering and society.Center told Undark that the investigation does not include testing of standing water for tetracycline.
Rose told Fox News that the EPA had “very carefully” investigated the concern about tetracycline and “assessed whether there was potential to have tetracycline in the water in the environments in the areas where these mosquitoes would be released.”
“And the conclusion was that there was no risk to it and that they limited the emissions to areas that would not have tetracycline in nature. So I do not consider it a problem,” he said. ‘This is something [that] was really thoroughly reviewed by the EPA. ‘
But the questions do not stop there. Residents and environmentalists wondered about the unintended consequences of the project, noting that a controversial Yale University study analyzing Oxitec’s release in Brazil claims that some of the offspring of the genetically modified mosquitoes survived to adulthood.
Oxitec vehemently denied the findings and told Gizmodo in 2019 that the study “includes numerous false, speculative and unfounded allegations and statements”.
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“You have no idea what this is going to do,” Barry Wray, director of the Florida Keys Environmental Coalition, told the FKMCD during a meeting last summer.
The digital magazine says Wray and others argue that the community was not given the chance to vote before the EPA approval, while the EPA says it has reviewed thousands of public comments and Oxitec a 2016 non-binding referendum that they declare, suggest, show that residents of Monroe County overwhelmingly support Oxitec’s technology. ‘
The EPA has approved the pilot projects in Florida through the spring of 2022 and Oxitec has undertaken to continue its public engagement efforts, such as the webinars posted on the Oxitec project website.
Phil Goodman, chairman of the Keys Mosquito District, told Undark that many do not understand Oxitec’s technology and that they are ‘scary’.
District spokesman Chad Huff wrote in an email to Fox News on Friday that, given the success of the technique in other countries, “the pilot project” is expected to work without consequences, but “to what extent remains to be seen” ‘.
Rose said the mosquitoes that transmit diseases are not only in the Keys or Gulf region, but are also found in California and migrate north to places like Texas and Tennessee.
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“And if we can actually use it as another tool to help mosquito control authorities get on top of these mosquitoes, it’s very important to us,” he said.
In the 2020 announcement of the pilot project for pilot approval, Gray Frandsen, CEO of Oxitec, said: “We look forward to working hand in hand with the Keys community to increase the effectiveness of our safe, sustainable demonstrate technology in the face of the growing challenges of controlling this mosquito-spreading mosquito. ‘