At long last, though, mankind may be on the verge of a mosquito-busting panacea…[F]aced with the Zika crisis, the Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to Oxitec…The idea is to flood the local mosquito population with genetic mutants, until the wild population eventually dies out.
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Such innovations offer a dream of a world free from many of the ailments that plague it. What crushes that dream may be us.
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Encouragingly, though, the Pew survey found that people were more willing to embrace a technology if they had more knowledge of it…The fear isn’t of science; it’s of the unknown.
Related on the SLP
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[W]hen Oxitec’s proposal first came up, [former protester Bill Irwin] was dubious. Genetically altered mosquitoes inherently just sound like an awful idea. [But after] he spent hours digging into the science…he felt that using altered insects was more environmentally friendly than pesticides. He feared what increased spraying to guard against Zika would do to the treasured habitat he wanted to protect.The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Genetically modified mosquitoes could wipe out the world’s most deadly viruses. If we let them.
