Michael Specter reports on efforts to eliminate mosquito-bourne diseases:
After a successful pilot project, (which I wrote about in this week’s issue, and discussed on NPR’s "The Takeaway" this morning) Brazil has opened a new factory where scientists will manufacture millions of male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes each month. The project is an attempt to wipe out dengue, which infects at least fifty million people a year—and for which there is neither a treatment or a cure. The insects are engineered with a gene that makes it impossible for their progeny to survive. Released outside the facility, the mutants mate with wild females, which lay eggs, none of which will live to become adults.
Specter goes on to tongue-lash residents of Key West for resisting the new approach. Earlier Dish on modified mosquitoes here.
The Dish 