Mosquitoes are the worst.
They’re a complete waste of biomass and they’re annoying.
And now, private companies want to decimate the mosquito population by releasing millions
of modified mosquitoes into the wild.
True story.
Mosquitoes are one of the deadliest animals on earth.
The World Health Organization’s 1996 World Health Report said 2.7 million deaths annually
could be pegged to these suckers.
It’s since dropped, but solid numbers are hard to find, with some saying it’s now
only several hundred thousand -- which is still a lot.
Of course, mosquitoes don’t kill people directly.
Nobody's ever been sucked bone dry by a swarm of mosquitoes outside of the B-movie horror
script I’m writing.
Mosquitoes kill so many people, because they’re carriers of diseases like malaria, dengue,
and zika.
They’re also really hard to control.
We can’t just pesticide them into oblivion because we’ll kill a lot of other bugs indiscriminately
and damage the ecosystem.
And we can't just eliminate where they breed because they breed in standing water.
We can't just drain every puddle, everywhere.
It's totally impractical.
So we need a different approach.
A couple different companies have come up with basically the same idea.
Verily, is owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and Oxitec is owned by a biotech
firm in Virginia, Intrexon.
6.
Verily had the idea to breed their own mosquitoes of the species Aedes aegypti, the ones that
carry several diseases that infect humans.
Their mosquitoes aren’t like wild mosquitoes… because they carry Wolbachia, a naturally
occurring bacteria found in up to 60% of insect species, but, interestingly, not usually in
Aedes aegypti.
Verily’s plan is to condition the bacteria to live in the mosquitos and then infect a
bunch of males with it.
Then, they want to release these male Wolbachia-mosquitoes by the millions.
Don’t freak out.
Hang on a sec.
When these wolba-squitoes are released into the wild they still go out and try and get
busy, but the bacteria renders their sperm incompatible with the non-infected female
eggs.
Get enough males who are firing blanks and you can nearly wipe out the next generation,
reducing mosquito populations -- and thereby infection rates!
BOOM.
Ok, so here's why you shouldn't freak out at the release of millions of mosquitoes...
it doesn’t mean more itchy-time…
Little mosquito-101: Males don’t bite, only females do.
So, the other biotech company Oxitec, has also created male mosquitoes.
Their mosquitos do hatch, but don’t live long enough to breed for themselves.
Causing populations to drop.
Oxitec has released their brand of mosquito in areas of Brazil, Panama, and the Cayman
islands, which caused the local mosquito populations to nosedive, sometimes by as much as 90%.
However, when Oxitec tried to release their mosquitoes in Florida in 2016, they hit a
stumbling block.
Some local residents didn’t want them, and campaigned vehemently against them, because
unlike Verily’s mosquitoes, which again, are infected with bacteria, Oxitec’s are
genetically modified.
One commonly cited fear was that a person bitten by a GMO mosquito would be harmed by
the added DNA, which is not how any of this works.
The genetically modified mosquitoes are male, so they don’t bite, and the offspring they
make don’t reach an age where they can bite and reproduce themselves.
But even if they did bite you, there’s never been a case of a mosquito gene by itself harming
a human.
Oxitec eventually did release their mosquitoes in Florida, but because of public mistrust
of the words “genetically” and ”modified,” Verily’s Wolbachia infected buzzers may
be the method that wins the public over.
But both these methods aren’t long term solutions.
They’ll temporarily cause the population to drop a lot, but over time the mosquitoes
will come back.
Interestingly, once scientists infected mosquitoes with Wolbachia -- not something that would
normally happen, remember -- they found a beneficial side-effect…
The wolba-squitoes are a bad hosts for the dengue virus!
For some reason, if a wolba-squito was also infected with dengue -- the virus didn’t
replicate very well, scientists are still trying to figure out why…
This means if scientists infect whole species with wolbachia they can knock back dengue!
But then… the male wolba-squitoes can breed with the female wolba-squitoes and we’re
back to square one with everything that’s not dengue.
Even still, all these solutions are being explored to try and stop this stupid deadly
insect from killing people all over the world.
Maybe someday they’ll all have wolbachia, stopping dengue, but we’ll have another
way to make some of them sterile!
Mosquitoes suck.
Mosquitoes are such pests it’s tempting to wipe all of them out, but what kind of
impact would that have on the environment.
Natalia Reagan and I talk about that right here.
So how do you feel about this?
Would you be cool if a company decided to release millions of mosquitos in your neighborhood?
Let us know down in the comments, like this video, and don’t forget to subscribe so
you never miss an episode of Seeker.