Zika killing Mosquitos Approved by FDA

August 6, 2016 Culinary Medicine, Health News Comments Off on Zika killing Mosquitos Approved by FDA

Genetically Modified Mosquitos have been approved by the FDA for a trial in Florida.

 

The mosquitoes, produced by Oxitec, have two copies of a gene that has reduced mosquito populations by 90% in Brazil, Panama, and the Cayman Islands. The mosquitos that carry Zika, have been found in Phoenix and Maricopa County.

The approval by the FDA is one step that Oxitec needs to approve its field trial in the Florida Keys. Currently the Florida Keys Mosquito Countrol District spends one million dollars a year to fight the Aedes aegypti, with the ability to reduce 30-60 per cent of the population with insecticide.  These mosquitos adapt very quickly to insecticide, and the genetically modified mosquitos provide the best hope.

While there are bound to be some who will object, by modifying the mosquito with two copies of the killer gene, this provides the best solution for control of this type of mosquito. Once again GMO will probably save us – provided the anti-science crowd doesn’t get too upset.  Somehow I don’t see Greenpeace objecting to this.

About the Author
You probably first saw Dr. Simpson on TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. Dr. Terry Simpson received his undergraduate, graduate, and medical degrees from the University of Chicago, where he spent several years in the Kovler Viral Oncology laboratories doing genetic engineering. Until he found he liked people more than Petri dishes. After a career in surgery, his focus is to make sense of the madness, and bust myths. Dr. Simpson, an advocate of culinary medicine, believes in teaching people to improve their health through their food and in their kitchen. On the other side of the world, he has been a leading advocate of changing health care to make it more "relationship based," and his efforts awarded his team the Malcolm Baldrige award for healthcare in 2018 and 2011 for the NUKA system of care in Alaska and in 2013 Dr Simpson won the National Indian Health Board Area Impact Award. A frequent contributor to media outlets discussing health related topics and advances in medicine, he is also a proud dad, author, cook, and doctor “in that order.” For media inquiries, please visit www.terrysimpson.com.