In hopes of suppressing the disease-carrying insect's population, federal officials finally approved the plan to release millions of mutant mosquitoes as the Zika virus continues to spread in Florida.
The Food and Drug Administration has issued its final environmental assessment of the plan, saying that the proposal field trial of Key Haven, a suburb of Key West, "will not have significant impacts on the environment."
The project was proposed by the British biotech company Oxitec and has been under review since 2011, before Zika virus spread throughout South America, up through Mexico and Puerto Rico and into Florida.
The decision came just days after the first local transmission by mosquitoes were confirmed in the U.S., in Miami-Dade and Broward countries.
The CEO of Oxitec, Hadyn Parry, and his company has been genetically modifying millions of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in a lab with a synthetic protein that kills their offspring before they can emerge from larvae as adults and transmit Zika virus or other diseases such as Dengue.
If wild female mosquitoes mate with sterile males, the population dies off rapidly.
Oxitec has already released millions of them in Brazil, Panama and the Cayman islands. The results so far are significant and have reduced some local mosquito populations by more than 90 percent.
Sadie Ryan, a medical geographer at the University of Florida who is not affiliated with Oxitec, acknowledge the fact that people are scared of these new method because the mosquitoes are genetically modified, but also considers it as a good idea. Ryan also thought that an island is ideal for the trail since Aedes aegypti mosquitoes do not travel very far during their lifetimes.
According to Ryan, even though Floridans do vote to allow Oxitec to release the genetically modified mosquitoes in the area, it would be more difficult to try in a bigger metropolitan area like Miami because there are no clear boundaries.
Zika is also a sexually transmitted disease, and people from all over the world travel through Miami, so it may be difficult to contain the species or the virus.
Source: PBS BBC
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