First GMO mosquitoes to be released in the Florida Keys - Salon

This spring, the biotechnology company Oxitec plans to release genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in the Florida Keys.

Oxitec says its technology will combat dengue fever, a potentially life-threatening disease, and other mosquito-borne viruses — such as Zika — mainly transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

But Oxitec has been proposing to experimentally release GM mosquitos in the Keys since 2011, and the plan has long been met with suspicion among locals and debate among scientists.

In 2012, the Key West City Commission objected to Oxitec's plan; in a non-binding referendum four years later, residents of Key Haven — where the mosquitoes would have been released — rejected it, while residents in the surrounding county voted in support of the release.

With the decision left up to the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, officials approved the trial to be conducted elsewhere in the Keys.

The company reapplied for approval to release a new version of the mosquitoes, called OX5034, in the Keys.

The company has already conducted a trial with the OX5034 mosquitoes in Brazil and released more than a billion of a previous version, called OX513A, there and in other locations over the years — including the Cayman Islands.

But some scientists want to hit pause on Oxitec's Florida trial, to find what they say is a fairer process in deciding to release the mosquitoes.

Critics also say that Oxitec failed to engage with local communities in Florida and get their consent to release the mosquitoes.

Oxitec — which is U.S.-owned and based in the United Kingdom — describes their mosquitoes as "friendly" because they will only release males, which, unlike females, do not bite humans or transmit disease.

Kevin Gorman, the company's chief development officer, says the local female mosquito population will be increasingly reduced — which will also reduce the number of wild male mosquitoes in the treatment areas.

While the company does not plan to release the mosquitos near areas where the antibiotic is used, Kuzma says the EPA's risk assessment did not include testing of any standing water for tetracycline — something, she adds, "would have been easy enough to do for good due diligence.".

The list includes Oxitec's lack of disease monitoring in the countries where it has released mosquitoes; the unknown price of its technology; and complaints that the company has overstated the success of some of it its trials.

Phil Goodman, chairman of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD), an independently-elected commission carrying out mosquito control within Monroe County, says that many of those who discredit Oxitec's evidence do not understand the technology.

Kofler and Kuzma say they offered to provide their expertise, along with other outside experts, to the mosquito control district to allow more discussion about the GM mosquitoes with the Keys community.

Without public trust and enthusiasm, it doesn't matter whether Oxitec's mosquito technique works, says Guy Reeves, a genetic researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, who stresses that he doesn't think the company's approach is unsafe.

"If the population in Florida Keys becomes so sensitized to this issue — that they can no longer cooperate with each other — that's good for the mosquitoes, not good for the people," he adds.

Based on their first generation mosquito OX513A, Oxitec says it has shown that the approach reduces a targeted mosquito population in trials in both Brazil and the Cayman Islands.

But there's no evidence that this new OX5034 mosquito release will actually be worth it for mosquito suppression, says Reeves.

These municipalities have shown that Oxitec mosquitoes have reduced dengue cases in areas of release, Gorman says.

When asked about the cost of the Florida Keys project, Oxitec responded to Undark by email: "Oxitec is a pre-commercial, pre-profit company.

Oxitec told Gizmodo that Yale's study includes "numerous false, speculative, and unsubstantiated claims and statements about Oxitec's mosquito technology." And when Kofler and three other scientists wrote about Oxitec's Brazil trial in The Conversation, Oxitec pushed to have the article retracted, says Kofler.

Daly, for instance, says that if the mosquitoes are deployed in her neighborhood, she'll try to put insecticide in any box she finds or send it to an expert to test — even if it means getting in trouble with the federal authorities.