Genetically modified mosquitoes released in Florida

750 million genetically modified mosquitoes have been released in Florida ... to combat their disease-spreading cousins already there.

Transcript

00:00♪ music playing ♪

00:28We make male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes which cannot bite,

00:32but what they do is they carry a gene that kills all of their female offspring.

00:36And not a lot of people realize that it's only female mosquitoes that can

00:39actually bite and transmit diseases. So we make these male mosquitoes, we

00:43release them in the wild, and they go out and they fly and they

00:46find the wild females to mate with, and all of their female offspring die.

00:51♪ music playing ♪

01:20We can produce them in the laboratory, we can produce eggs in the laboratory,

01:24and then we take these eggs, we ship them to Florida,

01:26and then we go into the field, we put the eggs in a box, we add some water, we add

01:30some diet, and then after a few days the male

01:33non-biting mosquitoes will start to emerge from that box,

01:37and then they can go and mate with the wild females.

01:39♪ music playing ♪

01:59We do not believe that the Environmental Protection Agency

02:03has done a full review of the trial that is being proposed.

02:09Can wild mosquitoes breed with these genetically engineered mosquitoes

02:16over time, and will they change the wild population?

02:20♪ music playing ♪

02:27When we've done this in the past in Brazil, we've had 95% reduction in the

02:31wild mosquito population. We've never seen any adverse effects at

02:35all to human health or to the environment.

02:37And when the regulators assessed this for release in Florida, they looked at a

02:41very wide range of different aspects of this when they were looking at risk.

02:45So they looked at lots of different ways that this could affect human health,

02:49they looked at many different ways that this might impact the environment, and

02:52after doing very extensive study, they concluded that there was no risk to

02:56humans or to the environment.

02:57♪ music playing ♪

03:11This particular species is an invasive species in this ecosystem in Florida or

03:16in Brazil. And it's not just an invasive species,

03:19but it's an invasive species that brings dangerous diseases to humans.

03:24And so from that perspective, we need to be doing everything that we can,

03:27whether it's through the releases of our mosquitoes or whether it's through

03:31other approaches to get rid of these mosquitoes, but we need to be making sure

03:34that we can protect humans from these diseases.

03:36♪ music playing ♪