Mutant mosquitoes may help combat malaria
Posted on June 23rd, 2008Greenwire: After conventional measures to prevent the spread of malaria have failed, scientists are researching genetically altered mosquitoes and other high-tech initiatives.
Researchers at London’s Imperial College are breeding malaria-immune mosquitoes to release in the wild, hoping the new genes will spread throughout the mosquito population and reduce the rate of transmission for a disease that kills nearly 3 million people annually, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
“We don’t have things we can rely on,” said lead researcher Andrea Crisanti. “It’s time to try something else.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested $38 billion into genetic strategies to combat malaria. “This is one of those high-tech, high-risk innovations that would fundamentally change the struggle between humans and mosquitoes,” said Regina Rabinovich, director of infectious diseases development at the Gates Foundation. “It would potentially transform what the field looks like.”
Progress has been made. Last year, American researchers created mosquitoes immune to a type of malaria that infects mice.
But not everyone thinks the research will yield results. Jo Hines, a malaria expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says that even in the unlikely event that malaria resistance takes hold in wild populations, the malaria parasite will adapt. “It’s a series of arms races that the parasite has consistently won.”
And some worry about potential effects on the ecosystem. “Can’t we just give mosquito nets to people instead of looking at these really complex technological fixes that mess with the very delicate balance of nature and evolutionary history?” asked Gillian Madill, a genetic technologies engineer at Friends of the Earth in Washington.
The U.N. recently announced a campaign to provide malaria nets to anyone who needs them by 2010 (Maria Cheng, AP/Discovery Channel, June 19). – PR