With world preoccupied with the economy and pandemic Genetically modified mosquitoes flutter closer to release
BY TERRY SCHMIDA
KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER
In an article in the July 9, 2012 issue of the New Yorker, Key West artist Rick Worth, then speaking at a public meeting, called a proposal to release GMO mosquitoes in Key Haven in an effort to “cram something down my throat that I don’t want.
“I am no guinea pig,” he added.
Nearly eight years later, the Frankenfuture folks like Worth were warning about is one step closer to becoming reality. This is thanks to a June 16 decision by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to green-light the mass release of hundreds of millions of female Aedes aegypti skeeters by the secretive British biotechnology firm, Oxitec.
Tuesday’s victory for Oxitec in Tallahassee follows on the heels of a similar slam-dunk for the firm at the federal level, when the Environmental Protection Agency signaled its assent to the Florida plan last month.
Oxitec has for years promoted the Key Haven “test,” and a similar operation in Texas, as bumps on the road to a mosquito-borne disease-free future. The company’s female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes contain a protein intended to reduce the chances of survival of female offspring, when passed down to female offspring.
This, in turn, may prevent the insects from spreading diseases such as Zika and dengue fever.
“Now that [the Oxitec test proposal] has cleared the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, most people are interested in knowing what’s coming next from the perspective of our organization,” said Chad Huff, Public Information Officer for the Florida Keys Mosquito Control, on Big Coppitt Key. “The next thing is, we’ll have an educational workshop for the Mosquito Control board members, at 1 p.m. on Tuesday [June 23.] And then at some point in the next couple of weeks there will be a public educational workshop. And then, at some point after that, I don’t know when, the Mosquito Control board will bring the matter up for consideration.”
Huff couldn’t say when the final tally would take place, but some locals may be keeping their powder dry for the occasion.
“We physicians petition to have the GM mosquito adults tested for resistant bacteria prior to the release, and any resistance factored into that release,” said Internal Medicine specialist Dr. John Norris, who also lives in Key Haven, Ground Zero for the release. “This, rather than finding out after the fact whether patients become ill with resistant bacteria to tetracycline in a new way.”
Another anti-GMO person Joel Biddle was even more direct:
“Oxitec should NOT be allowed to release its GM mosquitoes in the Florida Keys (or anywhere else for that matter) based on its past and present history for their ongoing lack of honesty and transparency,” Biddle said. “Oxitec has consistently misled locals, not only about the number of mosquitoes released, and where they would be released. Oxitec has also deceived local populations about the efficacy of results from their “testing areas” and they have a distressing habit of dismissing out of hand possibilities of adverse mutation side effects that GM Mosquitoes released in the wild. And this is a cause of greatest concern.”
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