GMO Debate Could Be Upended by Engineered Mosquitoes

But you know who hates mosquitos even more than I do. The British biotech company ox Attach. They've developed a way to genetically engineer mosquitos to make them essentially unable to produce fertile offspring, which in theory reduces their numbers across entire populations. It's pretty cutting edge stuff that's already been deployed in other countries, and now the EPA just gave them the go ahead to test these mosquitos here in the US and with us today to talk about all

the implications of this is environmental reporter Adam Allington. Adam, how are you doing pretty good? David? As good as could be expected these days? Yeah? Yeah, really? Before we get into what's going on with these specific mosquitos. Let's remind people what genetic modification is and how it's been used in the past in agriculture. You know, we we hear GMOs and we think we know what that is,

but do we know what a GMO actually is. Yeah, genetic engineering has actually been around for a while and it's quite common in a number of basic food crops, everything from soybeans to corn, to canola and even you know, even salmon have been genetically engineered to grow larger and

mature faster. But your typical genetic engineering case in in you know, your in your grocery basket would be some of those some of those food items that I mentioned that have been genetically engineered for things like herbicide resistance, insect resistance, drought tolerance, things that help the plant either resist the pesticide so you can spray and knock down the weeds, or the plant will be resistant to you know,

these other pests or stresses in the environment. Right, So it's mainly just sort of an agricultural benefit where you go into a crop and you tweak some of the parts of the genome and make it, you know, a better crop for farmers. That's right, that's exactly right. But this is not that, like, this is something that's totally different,

Like what's going on with these mosquitoes. Well, so here instead of you know, tweaking the genome on a corn variety, So what Oxytec is doing here is they're genetically engineering male mosquitoes from a species called eighties a gypty. This is a very common mosquito found in many places in

the world. But they're genetically engineering the males. When they release these genetically engineered males into the wild, they mate with wild female mosquitoes, but only the male mosquitoes are able to survive, so the population then decreases as the number of females is reduced. Wow, so okay, let me

just make sure I understand. So the mosquitoes are engineered so that only their male offspring survives, and that means you have a whole generation where it's just male mosquitos and obviously they're not breeding with each other, and then you have populations that go down. Is that the general idea, that's the general idea. These mosquitos are genetically engineered so

that only male offspring survive. In fact, Oxtec's first field test of its second generation mosquitoes were released in Brazil a few years back, and the company says they achieved a ninety six percent suppression of the target the target species, the mosquitoes that they're trying to reduce the population, So that's quite significant. Yeah, and we should say here, you know why they're doing this. I mean, obviously, as I mentioned at the top, I don't like mosquitoes. I find

them really annoying. But they're a little more than annoying for a lot of people in the world. They spread lots of really, really bad diseases. I've actually heard some people say the mosquitoes are the deadliest animal in the world,

at least for humans. So tamping down mosquito populations could have huge public health impacts, right right, I mean, that's the whole reason for this entire this entire project is to reduce mosquito populations and thereby provide a tool for public health workers to fight these infectious diseases that are transferred through mosquito bites. And you're right, I mean, mosquitoes are commonly referred to as the most dangerous animal in

the world. You know, they transmit diseases like zecavirus, yellow fever, dengay fever, I mean deng gave fever alone. You know, it impacts hundreds of thousands of people per year and you know, causes somewhere between twenty five thousand and thirty thousand deaths. So oh, and also, by the way, let's let's not let's not forget malaria. That's that's kind of

a big one. Yeah, no, don't don't forget malaria. I mean, uh, you know, it's just a really in a lot of countries where people don't have access to uh ready, access to medicine or healthcare, these mosquito born illnesses are are quite deadly, and finding a way to limit mosquito populations would would be a significant tool that public health experts could could use. And that's why this there's so much

interest in this mosquito project specifically. But your story talked about how the EPA gave this company the go ahead to start doing field tests in the Florida Keys and also later on in the Houston area. So if the EPA is involved, that must mean there are some environmental issues here, and I think it's pretty obvious to see what they might be. I mean, basically, driving a particular species of animal to near extinction on purpose. I mean,

just that alone would be something that would raise some eyebrows. Right. Well, that's the you know, that's you're kind of hitting on. The key concern here is that anytime you release you know, man made genetic material into the environment, and and you know in a way that wasn't it wasn't designed to be introduced naturally, there are significant concerns of unintended consequences.

I mean mosquitoes and I know you hate him, David, but like you know, they are part of a big part of the food chain and a lot of these

ecosystems as well. They're food for birds, lots of other mammals. Yeah, okay, okay, But I mean also that there's a you know, a not completely unfounded concerned that you know, once once you start cross mixing genes between these genetically between genetically engineered species and wild species, that there could be some unintended hybridization cause, you know, causing potential, you know, properties that we didn't want that would actually make insects or weeds

more resistant to pesticides, or that some of these mosquitoes could conversely end up being better vectors for spreading disease, if they are resistant to insecticides, or ways we would have of controlling the population. You hear about, you know, hybrid monster mosquitoes, things like that. And to be clear,

EPA has looked into this. They haven't said exactly how they're you know, what they've done, but they have said they've looked into this issue and they say it's it's not not likely to be a factor, it wouldn't be a factor in this case. They've deemed it to be safe and that's why they've agreed to give oxs Attach this experimental use permit. All right, well, we're going to get a little bit more into what the EPA is doing to make sure there's no sort of Trassic Park

scenario on our hands here. But we're going to take a quick break, so stay with us and we'll get

more into this in just a bit. We are back and we're with Adam Allenton, an environmental reporter who covers agriculture and GMOs, and we're talking about GMO mosquitoes and the EPA's recent granting to a biotech company to start conducting field tests of a new GMO mosquito and one of the things I got from your story, Adam is that the field tests initially will be taking place on the Florida Keys, which are a you know, of course, an isolated set of islands. That makes me think that

they're is still some concern. The fact that this is taking place on an island makes me think there's some concern that there will be some unintentional I guess, GMO mosquito, who could you know, fly out of the range and mate with you know, wild mosquitos unintentionally. Is that a possibility? Is that something that people are worried about and that

the EPA is taking precautions for. Well, clearly, I think anytime you try something like this that hasn't been done before, you want to do it in a way that's controlled, as controlled as possible, with as little with as few risks. I can't say exactly why they chose the Florida Keys as one of their main test sites. I believe it has something to do with the presence of the mosquitos

in that population. Yeah, that may also, I'm sure want to have a system that they can easily study the the you know, the the impacts in the controlled way. So an island is a good way to do that. But it should be noted they're also planning to do this, you know, the next year in Houston, so that's uh, you know, and with the ultimate goal to release these mosquitoes into the wild and lots of other places. So that is the final goal here, is to use these mosquitos as as a as a tool to cross breed

with wild populations. I think that at the start, though, they want to do it in a way that's as controlled as possible where they can clearly study the cause and effect impacts. Yeah, I mean that's a good point, though.

I just I can't imagine that after they release these in Houston that there's no I have to imagine that there will be some that will mate with other mosquitos outside of the Houston area, and those you know, well, they they are trying to cross breed these, They are trying to get these genetically engineered mosquitos to mate with the with the native population. Yeah, that's true. I guess that's that's the whole point of this, uh, the whole

point of this task, right. I mean, they want to they want to see what the they want to get a number on what the population is before they release, and then what it is after and then they'll measure the total amount of the population after that and determine what the effect was of introducing those species. So, you know, it does have the potential to really alter the you know how these you know, how many of these species

are able to exist in a certain area. So the last thing I wanted to ask you about is a potential backlash here because you know, we've had GMO's crops, as we mentioned earlier, on the market for twenty or probably more years. You know, some people still aren't comfortable with that, but I feel like GMO animals is like another a whole other level, and there could be you know,

a big stigma against this. Yeah, the Oxetech has actually been trying to get this field test approved in Florida for for you know, several years now, and people in those communities have spoken out quite strongly that they don't want these genetically engineered species released into their environment. They're concerned that, you know, anytime you're talking about releasing these

new traits, you could something could go sideways. In fact, it's actually this this phenomenon is called horizontal gene transfer, where a genetically engineered spec species transfers its traits into other species, and this could be something like antibiotic resistance that puts humans at risk or animals at risk. There could be ecological imbalances allowing certain plants to grow uncontrolled while others die out. And so there's just a lot

of moving parts to this issue. And you know, environmental groups have spoken out quite strongly against this in some cases. Obviously, in terms of the food in our grocery carts, genetically engineered food crop have been had a stigma attached to them for a long time now. So I mean, this is just a very you know, this is the definition of a hot button issue where the science is a factor in the debate, but a lot of people have

just a feeling that this is too risky. And so that's what the company is trying to do, what EPA is stuck in the middle of and you know, we're just going to see how it plays out at this point. Yeah, that's a great point, and that's one of the main reasons why I'm so interested in this is because you know, this isn't the situation where the the you know, the benefit of the genetic modification goes to the farmer mainly,

and the potential risks could be you know unknown. This is a situation where the benefit of you know, genetically engineering these mosquitos would go to everyone. And so I think that really kind of scrambles the politics here because you know, these you know, if these GMO mosquitos really work as advertised, this could be a game changer for public health. And so I wonder how much that's going to change the debate around these mosquitos compared to you know,

let's say GMO corn or GMO soy or things like that. Right, yeah, I mean, a public health application is another is a completely different species, if you will, versus say a you know, a better tasting potato. I mean, obviously with food crops.

Another one of the concerns that anti gmo activists point to is the fact that you know, companies, once they've genetically engineered a trait into a seed, they can claim ownership of that organism, and that kind of creates that gives them extreme leverage on farmers to you know, to switch over to their their product and drives up costs. It promotes monocultures, but in a public health setting, it's

kind of unknown. Territory here, you know, and what the public reaction would be if all of a sudden we see dramatic reduce reductions in some of these mosquito borne illnesses. I don't think anyone would say that's a bad thing obviously. Well, I guess we'll have to wait and see if there if there are drawbacks, But at this point, I think that's that's something a lot of people would be would welcome with open arms. Yeah, all right, Well that will

do it for today's episode of Parts Rebellion. If you want more environmental news, check out our website news doot Bloomberg environment dot com. And also, if you like hearing Adam Allington talking about insects, check out his podcast The Business of Bees, which is him talking about another insect bees. Of course, it is fantastic. I definitely recommend it. Today's episode of Parts Rebellion was produced by myself along with Josh Block and Marisa Horn. Parts Rebillion was created by

Jessica Coombs and Rachel Dagel. For today's episode is a Message by Jazarre and buzz Sting by Dave Houston, Jamie Fakette, Brian Lester and Samuel Slater. They were used under a Creative Commons license, and thank you everyone for listening. Hey there, I'm Kyle Trigstad, Politics editor for Bloomberg Government, and I'm Greg Gurou, Senior Elections reporter for Bloomberg Government. Check out

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