Over the past few years , people have beenfreaking outabout a design to relinquish genetically modified mosquito in the Florida Keys , concern that in addition to combatting the spread of Zika computer virus and other mosquito - borne illnesses the mosquitoes would show in some sort of sci - fi catastrophe . Now , the British biotech company behind those mosquitoes is in negotiations with Houston domain officials to free the mosquito in Harris County , The Houston Chronicle report .
If a batch proceed through , Houston could be the first position in the United States to release genetically modified mosquitoes .
In August , the Food and Drug Administrationgave the green lightto a proposed theatre trial of the Oxitec mosquitoes in the Florida Keys , findingthat it would “ not have significant impacts on the environment . ” But after years of pushback from the minor chamber community out of doors of Key West where the trial was aim , the labor has stall after residents of the area voted against release them there .
Oxitec must submit an extra environmental assessment to the FDA so as to move forward at a new web site it Florida . It would also be required to complete such an assessment in Houston in social club to move forward with any design there . That process can be slow — in Florida it took years .
Oxitec ’s mosquitoes are mastermind to let in two written matter of babe - mosquito killing genes , override natural survival to make it almost sealed that their offspring have the killer cistron from dad . This , in turn , would easy make the local mosquito universe dwindle . The companyclaimsthat trials in Brazil , Panama and the Cayman Islands have reduce mosquito population by 90 % , call in the success “ an unprecedented level ” of human control over nature . ( The World Health Organization , for it ’s part , hasstatedthat while the technology “ has demonstrated the power to reduce the [ mosquito ] populations in belittled - scale field test ” there is still “ an absence of data on epidemiological impact . ” )
Zika panic has largely receded from headlines , but in Texas it has just begun . The Houston area has had no document cases of topically transmit Zika , but in December the state had its first local transmission a few hundred miles away in in Cameron County , near the Mexican border . According to the Centers for Disease Control , there is not yet any evidence of a far-flung local epidemic . But as Houston ’s hot , humid summer approaches , it seems officials are seeking out every peter potential to oppose the cattle ranch of the disease .
[ Houston Chronicle ]
MosquitoesScienceZika
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