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The Atlantic April 2016

Genetically Modified Mosquitoes: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

History is filthy with stories of pest control gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Consider, for example, the infamous tale of how the mongoose got to the Hawaiian Islands. The sleek carnivore was imported in the 1880s as part of a plan by the sugar

industry to subdue the rats that wouldn’t stop gnawing through stalks of sugar cane.

Mongooses do enjoy a tasty rat supper, when the opportunity presents itself, but there was a problem: Rats are active at night, while mongooses are active during the day. So instead of decimating the rat population, the mongooses came to Hawaii and feasted on native birds and their eggs. The rat scourge continued unabated.

Australia implemented a similarly ill-conceived plan when it introduced poisonous toads to its sugar-cane fields in the 1930s as a way to control crop-damaging beetles. The toads thrived and wreaked havoc on native species, while the beetles continued chomping away on the roots

and leaves of sugar cane, just as they had before.

When a plague of tree-climbing aphids afflicted pecan orchards in the United States in the 1970s, federal biologists released a tree-climbing ladybug from Asia to devour them. The multicolored Asian lady beetle did a superb job. Unfortunately, it has a large appetite. The insect has eaten so many aphids so fast that many native ladybugs have been left with too little to eat. To make matters worse, the newcomers are apt to eat the hometown ladybugs, too. Possibly due to this onslaught and the spread of the ladybugs, even New York’s official state insect, the nine-spotted lady beetle (Coccinella novemnotata), is now extinct in the state.

Read the first part of the article and check your ideas.B

History is filthy with stories of pest control gone terribly, terribly wrong. Do you know any?What do you think went wrong when...a) mongooses were imported to the Hawaiian Islands to subdue the rats that ate the sugar cane.b) poisonous toads were introduced to Australia to control beetles that ate the roots and leaves of sugar cane.c) a tree-climbing ladybug from Asia was introduced to the United States to eat aphids afflicting pecan orchards.

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Today, scientists don’t need mongooses or toads for pest control. In some cases, they can just tweak the genes of the animal or insect they’re trying to vanquish. There’s good evidence to support the idea that genetic modification of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, for example, could help dramatically reduce its population.

Aedes aegypti is the main vector of the Zika virus, a mosquito-borne illness that has public-health officials around the world on edge. In Brazil, hundreds of babies born to Zika-infected mothers have suffered severe birth defects since last year. Public-health officials, who are calling Zika a global emergency, estimate that number will climb well into the thousands in Brazil alone.

In a small Florida community near Key West, the Food and Drug Administration is accepting public comments on a proposal from the biotechnology firm Oxitec to

introduce genetically modified Aedes aegypti males into the local mosquito population. If Oxitec is successful, its technology could help wipe out Aedes aegypti in the region — and protect people from Zika transmission there.

Oxitec’s plan is to inject mosquito eggs with DNA that contains lethal genes, then release the genetically modified males from that batch of eggs so they can mate with wild females. (Males don’t bite; so releasing only males is a way to make sure the release of these insects doesn’t contribute to the spread of disease.) The offspring of these lab-tweaked males and wild females, having inherited the altered DNA, cannot survive to adulthood. If all goes as planned, the mosquito population should shrink as a result. There’s already good evidence that shows Oxitec’s

approach can work. Field tests in Piracicaba, Brazil, resulted in an 82 percent decline to the mosquito population over an eight-month period, Oxitec says.

And there’s a compelling need for trying to control the mosquito population this way. Aedes aegypti don’t just spread Zika, but also dengue fever, yellow fever, and the chikungunya virus. “About 40 percent of the global population is at risk from this species,” said Andrew McKemey, an entomologist and the head of field operations for Oxitec.

Besides all that, existing mosquito controls clearly aren’t enough. It’s very labor intensive. It requires getting rid of standing bodies of water, putting up window screens, and doing house-to-house insecticidal spray.

What options do we have for controlling mosquitoes? What new method of pest control could the Zika virus open the door for? Read the next part of the article and check your ideas.B

The Zika virus could open the door for a new era of gene-tweaking.

Today, the outcome of these and similar pest-control experiments remain parables for the folly of human

intervention into complex ecosystems. People have since become better primed to stop and ask, “what if?” before

attempting an environmental response that can’t be undone. But, “what if” is never an easy question to answer.

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Whose opinions do you agree with? Do you think now is the time to do something new?b

But the question of genetic modification remains fraught.

“The public fears genetic engineering. Nearly all politicians don’t understand it,” said Arthur Caplan, the founding director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU School of Medicine. “I don’t think the issue is economic. It is ignorance, distrust, fear of the unknown, fear of prior efforts to use biology to combat pests which went sour.”

“Chemical spray may be familiar, but it is a blunderbuss,” Caplan added. “Old technology is hard to aim, often misfires, and is hard to maintain. Genetic engineering of nasty insect-pests is a rifle — very precise, low risk to the user.”

Genetically modified mosquitoes may be “our best hope” for fighting Zika virus, according to Nina Fedoroff, a molecular geneticist, and John Block, the former U.S. secretary of agriculture, who made their case in The New

York Times earlier this month. Beyond Zika, mosquitoes pose such an enormous threat to human health, many scientists have argued, that the most sensible thing to do would be to wipe them out — even if the ecological impact is unknowable.

“Several facts are worth bearing in mind,” the evolutionary biologist Oliva Judson wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times in 2003. “First, our current methods of mosquito control are crude and kill more than just mosquitoes. An extinction gene at least has the benefit of being precise and clean. Second, there’s nothing sinister about extinction; species go extinct all the time. The disappearance of a few species, while a pity, does not bring a whole ecosystem crashing down: We’re not left with a wasteland every time a species vanishes. Removing one species sometimes causes shifts in the populations of other species — but different need not mean worse.”

Something unforeseen isn’t out of the question for Oxitec’s approach, either, though.

“You need to be concerned about what you don’t know,” said Ravi Durvasula,

a professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at University of New Mexico School of Medicine.

“And once you’ve released a trait into a population, there cannot be a recall. This is what scares people. People get creeped out by these things.”

That fear is standing in the way of engineering Aedes aegypti into “well-deserved oblivion,” says Caplan, the bioethicist from NYU. But fear may also be a boon to the effort to genetically modify mosquitoes.

“Think about how people control mosquitoes now,” says Durvasula. “Dumping pesticides over hundreds of square miles ... driving through the city with canisters on motorbikes, spraying willy-nilly. That’s an incredibly toxic approach. As people better understand the side effects of pesticides, they may say, well, this other way, there’s nothing toxic about it, and no one’s dying from mosquitoes that are sterile.”

Read the final part of the article and summarise in your own words the opinions of Arthur Caplan; Nina Fedoroff; John Block; Oliva Judson and Ravi Durvasula.

BWhy do you think the question of genetic modification is fraught?

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1 Australia implemented a similarly ill-conceived plan when it introduced poisonous toads to its sugar-cane fields…2 In some cases, they can just tweak the genes of the animal or insect they’re trying to vanquish.3 It requires getting rid of standing bodies of water, putting up window screens, and doing house-to-house insecticidal spray. 4 It is ignorance, distrust, fear of the unknown, fear of prior efforts to use biology to combat pests which went sour.5 …the most sensible thing to do would be to wipe them out — even if the ecological impact is unknowable.6 The disappearance of a few species, while a pity, does not bring a whole ecosystem crashing down…7 …driving through the city with canisters on motorbikes, spraying willy-nilly. 8 As people better understand the side effects of pesticides…

Explain the meaning of the highlighted words and expressions in these extracts from the article:

V

1 The report is fine, you just need to _________________ a couple of things to make it perfect.2 The ___________________________ of the medication are nausea and drowsiness.3 The ________________________ design meant the telephone was very hard to use.4 The native Indians were _________________________ by settlers from Europe.5 You need to be careful who you give your personal details to. Don’t give them out ________________________.6 I don’t have enough room in my house. I need to ____________________ some things.7 Their friendship _________________________ after an argument over money.8 It’s ____________________ you can’t come to the party. Maybe next time.

Complete these sentences with the correct form of the words and expressions above:V

e.g. I never take medication which has side effects.

Write sentences of your own with the words and expressions:V

The Atlantic April 2016

“Chemical spray may be familiar, but it is a blunderbuss,” Caplan added. “Old technology is hard to aim, often misfires, and is hard to maintain. Genetic engineering of nasty insect-pests is a rifle — very precise, low risk to the user.”

E What do the highlighted words in this extract from the article mean both literally and in this context?

There are other idioms connected to firearms. What do you think these mean?

1 bite the bullet2 a big gun3 set one’s sights on4 a flash in the pan5 go great guns6 hold your fire7 a long shot8 lower one’s sights

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___ do very well___ an important or powerful person in a group or organization___ decide to achieve something___ have to accept or face something unpleasant because it cannot be avoided___ something that happened only once or for a short time and was not repeated___ delay a decision; postpone one’s criticism or commentary___ accept something that is less than you were hoping for___ something that only has a small chance of succeeding

Now match the expressions to the explanations below.V

1 Now, now, ____________________________ and give me a chance to explain. 2 We’re hoping that this is a long-term opportunity, and not just ____________________.3 With so much unemployment, she had to __________________________ and accept a lower-paid job than she had expected.4 I know it’s _______________________ but I’m going to ask my boss if I can have Friday off to go to the match.5 The company is ___________________________ and making a huge profit.6 He _________________________ going to university and hasn’t stopped studying since.

Complete these sentences with the idioms:V

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?mid-intermediate+ (B2+)

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student pages 5Teacher’s notes 1

1 tweak 2 side effects 3 ill-conceived 4 wiped out5 willy-nilly 6 get rid of 7 went sour 8 a pity

Complete these sentences with the correct form of the words and expressions above:V

E What do the highlighted words in this extract from the article mean?

blunderbussliterally: a short-barreled large-bored gun with a flared muzzle, used at short range and which is not precise but covers a large areain this context: an action or way of doing something regarded as lacking in subtlety and precisionaimliterally: point or direct (a weapon or camera) at a targetin this context: apply in the right placemisfireliterally: (of a gun or missile) fail to discharge or fire properlyin this context: function incorrectlyrifleliterally: a gun, especially one fired from shoulder level, having a long spirally grooved barrel intended to make a bullet spin and thereby have greater accuracy over a long distancein this context: a very accurate tool

5 do very well2 an important or powerful person in a group or organization3 decide to achieve something1 have to accept or face something unpleasant because it cannot be avoided4 something that happened only once or for a short time and was not repeated6 delay a decision; postpone one’s criticism or commentary8 accept something that is less than you were hoping for7 something that only has a small chance of succeeding

Now match the expressions to the explanations below.V

1 hold your fire2 a flash in the pan3 lower her sights4 a long shot5 going great guns6 set his sights on

Complete these sentences with the idioms:V