Get the latest BPR news delivered free to your inbox daily. SIGN UP HERE.
Local authorities have signed off on a plan to release 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes into the Florida Keys in 2021 and 2022 after state and federal authorities previously approved.
In May, the Environmental Protection Agency gave it’s seal of approval to the pilot project which aims to introduce the modified mosquitos as a way to avoid having to spray insecticides to control the Aedes aegypti, the species of mosquito that carries Zika virus as well as dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever, CNN reported Thursday.
Called OX5034, the altered mosquito produces females that die in the larvae stage instead of maturing to adulthood so they can bite and spread disease. Only female mosquitos bite to ingest blood, which is needed for her eggs to mature. Male mosquitos, by comparison, only feed on nectar and as such, do not carry diseases.
Oxitec, the Britain-based company developing the pilot project and producing the mosquitos, has also won approval to release a batch of the insects in Harris County, Texas, beginning next year.
But the plan is not without controversy.
“With all the urgent crises facing our nation and the State of Florida — the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, climate change — the administration has used tax dollars and government resources for a Jurassic Park experiment,” Jaydee Hanson, policy director for the International Center for Technology Assessment and Center for Food Safety, said in a statement.
“Now the Monroe County Mosquito Control District has given the final permission needed. What could possibly go wrong? We don’t know, because EPA unlawfully refused to seriously analyze environmental risks, now without further review of the risks, the experiment can proceed,” she added.
In fact, the program is not new to the Trump administration; it actually began under President Donald Trump’s predecessor and has been studied for more than a decade.
Reports circulated in 2011 that experimental trials involving Oxitec’s genetically modified mosquitos had been done in the Cayman Islands in 2009 and 2010.
And the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District has been seeking approval for the current plan since at least 2012.
As such, the EPA’s approval has been years in the making, CNN noted, after the federal entity studied the impact of genetically modified mosquitos on humans and the environment.
“This is an exciting development because it represents the ground-breaking work of hundreds of passionate people over more than a decade in multiple countries, all of whom want to protect communities from dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and other vector-borne diseases,” said Oxitec CEO Grey Frandsen in May.
Sam Bissett, a communications specialist with Harris County Public Health, said permission for the Texas trial has not yet been received.
“Local health officials confirm that there is no agreement in place or plans to move forward with the project at this time,” Bissett said. “Our focus is on our efforts with the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Houston officials, where Harris County is located, have been considering the mutant mosquito plan since 2017, according to the Houston Chronicle.
The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District definitely has a financial interest in eradicating the Aedes aegypti in some way other than spraying. The agency spends about $1 million annually — one-tenth of its budget — on insecticide spraying, though that species of mosquito only amounts to about 1 percent of the total population.
DONATE TO BIZPAC REVIEW
Please help us! If you are fed up with letting radical big tech execs, phony fact-checkers, tyrannical liberals and a lying mainstream media have unprecedented power over your news please consider making a donation to BPR to help us fight them. Now is the time. Truth has never been more critical!
Jon@bizpacreview.com
Jon is a staff writer for BizPac Review with 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.
- Jan. 6 committee chair Benny Thompson offers a stunning take on potential Trump criminal actions - January 2, 2022
- Life-long New Yorker posts ‘sad’ Twitter ode on post-pandemic Big Apple being ‘shadow of its former self’ - January 2, 2022
- NYPD officer shot in head in police lot as he slept in vehicle between shifts - January 2, 2022
Comment
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.
