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Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-10/four-in-five-dengue-mosquitoes-died-in-cayman-trial.html
Genetically modified mosquitoes released by U.K. biotechnology start-up Oxitec Ltd. wiped out 80 percent of the bugs that carry dengue in a Cayman Islands study, according to a report today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
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Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-10/four-in-five-dengue-mosquitoes-died-in-cayman-trial.html
Four in Five Dengue Mosquitoes Died in Cayman Trial
By Andrea Gerlin - Sep 10, 2012 2:00 PM ET
Genetically modified mosquitoes released by U.K. biotechnology start-up Oxitec Ltd. wiped out 80 percent of the bugs that carry dengue in a Cayman Islands study, according to a report today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
More than 3 million of the male mosquitoes, members of the Aedes aegypti species that carries dengue, were released in a trial that closely held Oxitec and the Mosquito Research and Control Unit on Grand Cayman conducted in a 16-hectare (39.5- acre) area in 2010. At the end of 23 weeks, mosquito numbers had dwindled by four-fifths in the treated area of the site, compared with the untreated area, the researchers reported.
“This mosquito is really hard to control,” Luke Alphey, chief scientific officer of Abingdon, England-based Oxitec, said in a telephone interview. “There are plenty of toxins you can use, but that only works if you can find every single breeding site. This shows there is another mosquito control method and it’s incredibly effective.”
Dengue, which is caused by a virus carried by the insects, afflicts as many as 100 million people a year globally, about 20 times the number of serious influenza cases, according to the World Health Organization. In its worst form, the virus can cause severe flu-like symptoms and fatal bleeding. About 2.5 percent of the 500,000 people who develop the severe form die.
Oxitec has released genetically modified mosquitoes in other experiments in Malaysia and Brazil. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reviewing Oxitec’s proposal to release the mosquitoes in a trial in Key West, Florida.
The company’s technology alters the DNA of the dengue- carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito by inserting one copy of an altered gene into the mosquito. The modification causes the insects to produce excessive amounts of a protein that disrupts their cell machinery -- unless they’re given the antibiotic tetracycline. When modified male mosquitoes with this gene are released and reproduce with wild females, their offspring inherit the trait and, without the antibiotic, die before adulthood, reducing their overall numbers.
To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Gerlin in London at agerlin@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at pserafino@bloomberg.net
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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