Zika Battle Could Bring Genetically Modified Mosquitos to Houston

HOUSTON, TX — The Zika virus can have devastating effects on a fetus's development, and health agencies in Texas, along with their counterparts in other parts of the world, are concerned about a new outbreak of the virus that could be spawned by the return of warmer weather.

Harris County officials are considering an approach that's been developed by a British biotech firm that would introduce genetically modified mosquitos to the Houston area whose offspring would die soon after birth.

"Oxitec uses advanced genetics to insert a self-limiting gene into its mosquitoes," the company's web site states. "The gene is passed on to the insect’s offspring, so when male Oxitec engineered mosquitoes are released into the wild and mate with wild females, their offspring inherit the self-limiting trait. The resulting offspring will die before reaching adulthood, and the local mosquito population will decline."

The method is controversial, and some residents in other areas that have proposed using genetically modified mosquitos against Zika, such as in the Florida Keys, have protested against the practice, warning that it could change the ecosystem in detrimental ways.

Not so, say most scientists.

“The anti-GM mosquito, sterile-insect people have become a lunatic fringe,” Tom Miller, a retired professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside, told Yale Environment 360. “They have no argument that makes any sense.”

Houston has not had a recorded case of Zika thus far, the Houston Chronicle reported.

— Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons/CDC

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