![\"Biotech-Company-Officially-Unleashes-Gene-Hacked-Mosquitoes-in-Florida-rapidnews\"](\"https:\/\/dailyrapidnews.com\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Biotech-Company-Officially-Unleashes-Gene-Hacked-Mosquitoes-in-Florida-rapidnews-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe biotech company Oxitec has, after a decade of pushing through regulatory hurdles, unleashed its genetically-engineered mosquitoes on the Florida Keys.<\/p>\n
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The experiment, which is the first release of experimental gene-hacked organisms at an ecological scale in the United States, is now underway,\u00a0Live Science\u00a0<\/em>reports. As it continues, Oxitec and the local mosquito control board will monitor the mosquito population both to see if the bugs help kill off disease-spreading mosquitoes in the wild and to make sure that the experimental bugs don\u2019t proliferate out of control themselves. If it works \u2014 and that\u2019s a pretty big \u201cif\u201d \u2014 the experiment could result in a new, highly-targeted way of killing off local pests without spraying chemicals.<\/p>\n As\u00a0it was previously reported, the experiment was fairly unpopular among local residents, environmental activists, and scientific experts, many of whom shared that they felt strong-armed or misled into an experiment that it was impossible to opt out of without packing up and leaving town.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want more information,\u201d Florida Keys resident and environmental advocate Meagan Hull told Futurism. \u201cWe\u2019ve been demanding and asking and begging for more information for ten years. We still don\u2019t have it. That\u2019s why it\u2019s an experiment. They\u2019re using us for their bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n The new-fangled mosquitoes contain a proprietary gene that should, according to Oxitec, prevent any females from surviving past the larval stage and leave only non-biting males. As those males mate with wild females, they pass on the gene in an attempt to curb the wild population and also gradually dilute the engineered gene out of existence.<\/p>\n The current form of the experiment is meant to not only test that self-limiting mechanism but also to see whether replacing the wild mosquitoes with gene-hacked versions actually reduces the prevalence of mosquito-borne diseases. But residents say questions about spotty science and missing data cast doubt over whether it will work.<\/p>\n \u201cOxitec is giving us all the information, and they\u2019re the vendor,\u201d Hull told Futurism. \u201cThere\u2019s no third-party independent reviewed science, there are no safety studies, there\u2019s no environmental impact study.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The biotech company Oxitec has, after a decade of pushing through regulatory hurdles, unleashed its<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"yoast_head":"\n