The new US cases come after more than two million genetically modified mosquitoes were released in Florida and California last year by UK-based but US-owned firm Oxitec. In March 2022, the firm said its genetically modified male – and therefore non-biting, mosquitoes – “find and mate with invasive female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, mediating a reduction of the target population as the female offspring of these encounters cannot survive,” thus reducing the overall population.
The malaria cases in Florida and Texas have not been officially linked to the release of genetically modified mosquitoes. Nonetheless, Reuters fact checkers have said it is “true” that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated a total of $75 million for the Target Malaria project, which aims to use gene editing to add instructions to the DNA of mosquitos that can transmit malaria to make them sterile.
However, the same fact check article rated claims that a video showed genetically modified mosquitoes with barcodes that had been released by Bill Gates as ‘false’ – because the video actually showed aphids with natural markings that look a bit like barcodes or numbers.
Matthew DeGennaro, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida International University, told Reuters in March this year (2023) that the “Modified mosquitoes that are being used or proposed to be used are Aedes aegypti or Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes”, and not the aphids seen in the videos.
While Aedes aegypti mosquitoes account for the vast majority of mosquito-transmitted disease – such as Zika, dengue fever and canine heartworm – malaria is only spread by the anopheles mosquitoes.
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