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Faced with a losing battle against (1) malaria, scientists are increasingly exploring new avenues that might have seemed far-fetched just a few years ago. Scientists now have genetically modified hundreds of mosquitoes, hoping to stop them from spreading malaria.
"We don't have things we can rely on," said Andrea Crisanti, the malaria expert in charge of genetically modifying mosquitoes at London's Imperial College. "It's time to try something else."
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has found the work so promising it has invested nearly $38 million into genetic strategies to stop mosquitoes from transmitting diseases like malaria and dengue fever.
"This is one of those high-tech, high risk innovations that would fundamentally change the struggle between humans and mosquitoes," said Dr. Regina Rabinovich, director of infectious diseases development at the Gates Foundation.
Mosquitoes bred to be immune to malaria could break the disease's transmission cycle. "That is the nirvana of malaria control," said Rabinovich.
But not everyone thinks these super mosquitoes are such a good idea. Some scientists think there are too many genetic puzzles to be solved for modified mosquitoes to work.
The malaria-causing parasite is simply too good at evading anything scientists might devise to protect the mosquito. Whenever mosquitoes have developed genes resistant to the malaria-causing parasite, the parasite has always found a way around it, argued to Jo Lines, a malaria expert at London's School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Quantity might also be a problem. "You are going to need to produce billions of these mosquitoes if this is ever going to work,"Lines said. Some environmentalists worried that genetically modified mosquitoes might wreak havoc in the ecosystem.
Rabinovich said rigorous testing would be done before releasing any genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild. ■AP
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