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Saturday, November 11, 2017

The US Just Approved ‘Killer’ Lab-Grown Mosquitoes to Help Fight Disease

The Environmental Protection Agency has given the green light to biotech startup MosquitoMate.

The US government has approved the release of lab-grown killer mosquitoes into the wild to help stop the spread of disease. The specially-designed insects will carry a natural bacteria that infects and kills wild mosquitoes, which can carry viruses including Zika and dengue.

"First we're going to prove our business model here in Lexington, Kentucky, but we have approval in 20 states," Karen Dobson, the production manager at MosquitoMate, a biotech company that developed the mosquitoes, told Motherboard over the phone.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Will the bats now starve to death? You'd better be careful messing with Mother Nature!

Anonymous said...

While bats do eat mosquitos this will not cause a significant disruption to their diets

lmclain said...

They disregard, in their arrogance, the Law of Unintended Consequences.
In theory, great idea (like socialism). In practice, nature mutates the mutation and adapts. Maybe into something that is a lot scarier than a mosquito.
Go ahead and do it anyway.
The money is too good to ignore. Which is the beginning of a WHOLE LOT of bad ideas.
Keep cheering.