There’s a recent, balanced article in The Atlantic which discusses advantages and potential disadvantages of releasing genetically modified Aedes egyptii mosquitoes.
Some noteworthy points:
*“My opinion on how we should proceed is we should aggressively pursue Aedes aegypti control—but we haven’t started that yet, and I’m not sure there’s been the political will to do it,” said Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “It’s very labor intensive. It requires getting rid of standing bodies of water, putting up window screens, and doing house-to-house insecticidal spray.” The coordinated effort that’s necessary, Hotez says, goes beyond anything the U.S. has ever done to control mosquitoes in the past. As temperatures warm and mosquitoes emerge, it may already be too late for at-risk cities in the states to take the precautions Hotez describes…(According to) Ravi Durvasula, a professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at University of New Mexico School of Medicine…“Think about how people control mosquitoes now”. “Dumping pesticides over hundreds of square miles … driving through the city with canisters on motorbikes, spraying willy-nilly. That’s an incredibly toxic approach. As people better understand the side effects of pesticides, they may say, ‘Well, this other way, there’s nothing toxic about it, and no one’s dying from mosquitoes that are sterile.’ The more these of these kinds of diseases show up—the more big, big outbreaks around the world—I think there will be a time when people say, ‘We need to try something new.’” “Oxitec’s [approach] itself is fine, scientifically, but there are always the what-if scenarios. What if, for some reason, it doesn’t work—and reverts back to a wild-type state?”
"…what if the desired gene mutation doesn’t take, and people end up releasing mass quantities of new mosquitoes that end up making the Zika problem worse? Durvasula calls this the “most obvious concern,” but he also says it’s improbable.
“It’s also unlikely that this mutant is going to somehow mutate again and give you something undesirable,” he added. “Certainly there have been small-scale field releases where it’s been stable, it’s done what it’s supposed to do, and they didn’t wind up with bird-sized mosquitoes or something else weird. Oxitec has gone through a lot of rigorous testing, but these what-if scenarios—one can’t be 100 percent certain that this is foolproof.”
"What if, for example, the gene modification ends up altering a mosquito’s behavior—making it more aggressive, or changing its host preference. (In the case of Aedes aegypti, which already prefers humans, a change in host preference might not be so bad.) Or what if the mosquitoes end up transferring their altered genes horizontally—to other non-target species, rather than just to their own offspring? This is more of a problem with genetically modified bacteria, which has also been proposed to fight Zika, but Durvasula says unplanned horizontal gene transfer is unlikely to create any issues among Aedes aegypti that are genetically modified to be sterile.
“You can start to fantasize about every possible fate of that gene, but it’s impossible to test all of that in a lab,” he said. “And once you’ve released a trait into a population, there cannot be a recall. This is what scares people. People get creeped out by these things.”*
Based on our decades of GM crop experience, I think it’s extremely unlikely that a new Super Mosquito will be generated by Oxitec’s GM skeeter. One could make a semi-reasonable argument for a larger-scale test release in another country plagued by deadly mosquito-borne illness before going ahead in (say) south Florida. Or one could point to what one thinks is a specific flaw in preexisting research or economic viability models. But the fears/complaints I’ve seen to date have heavily centered on traditional anti-GMO bogeymen - the Frankencritter argument, Monsanto Bad! (though Monsanto is not involved here, and might lose money if we spray fewer chemicals) etc.
Lastly, I’d appreciate hearing from Mtgman why employing GM mosquitoes means we can’t utilize other control methods like eliminating standing water and providing screening for doors and windows. The limiting factor for these approaches is labor, cost, and (in the case of sparing) environmental damage, but intelligent use of all viable resources makes sense to me. You choose what works best.
The argument has been made that genetic modification of crops is unnecessary because “traditional” hybridization accomplishes similar goals. Which is true in some instances, but why not use both in a complementary way to get the best results?
Regarding another technology feared by some: antivaxers frequently tell us that vaccine programs are unnecessary because all we need to do is improve diet and sanitation and voila!, no more disease. Aside from their misunderstandings (deliberate or not) about disease transmission, it is horribly difficult and expensive to drastically fix diet and sanitation problems in a Third World country where these factors influence disease transmission and survival. Vaccines offer a much cheaper and more effective alternative, though obviously improving diet and providing clean water are goals too.
And so it goes (or should go) with genetic modification technology. It’s not a one-or-the-other situation - do whatever is feasible and provides the optimal outcome.