Genetically Engineering Our Way To Pest Control

Lest you think I was kidding about the future policy problem of genetically engineered super-sprinters, check out Andrew Pollack’s article about “the first release into the environment of mosquitoes engineered to pass a lethal gene to their offspring, killing them before they reach adulthood.” This is promising in many ways. You release the engineered bugs into a population, they interbreed with the existing stock, and the next generation suffers massive die-offs. This, it seems, is likely to be more ecologically sound that spraying toxins everywhere though as with anything new it’s “arousing concern about possible unintended effects on public health and the environment, because once genetically modified insects are released, they cannot be recalled.”

My only point is that the technical mechanisms that make this kind of thing possible are only going to spread up the food chain. Genetically engineered mosquitos pose a lot of practical quandaries, but no real political or ethical questions that go beyond the technical issue of whether this is safer or less safe than other methods of mosquito control. But the super-sprinters aren’t far behind.