Genetically Modified Mosquitoes!

[HellaD]

Hi all, I just was reading this article about these mosquitoes and couldn't believe it...what next...

This is just a couple excerpts...

"Millions of transgenic mosquitoes are to be released into the fishing village of Pulau Ketam off Selangor, Malaysia, as part of an international series of field trials to fight dengue fever [1].

The technique, which has won Oxitec the Technology Pioneers 2008 award at the World Economic Forum, involves releasing transgenic male Aedes mosquitoes carrying a ‘killer' gene to mate with wild female mosquitoes, which causes (nearly) all their progeny to die. This is a variant of the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) that has been successfully used in wiping out other insect vectors in the past [2], though the sterile males were created by X-irradiation, and not by transgenesis."

For the full article click here

I had no idea that this was going on in our world...so nutty what we are doing I must say...
The rest of the article is interesting too.

Sounds good on one level, but when you know how unpredictable this whole genetic modification business is it starts to seem pretty scary.

[Nikki - Web Mums]

Hmmm....yes it does sound like it could be a good thing but who knows for sure what kinda thing it might mutate into after that? *shudders*

[HellaD]

Yeah, I keep hearing about this thing they call "jumping genes" which makes the GM oraganisms not conform to the mathematical models that are expected to follow. Makes me think of that book...oh gosh I can't think of the name of it right now...the science fiction one about the special food that makes everything grow so huge...the rats end up eating it and it gets fed to some babies...I will have to try to remember what it is called.