With the arrival of summer months, mosquitoes, which are the nightmares of many of us, started to appear gradually. Although there are sprays and drugs to protect against the bites of these very annoying creatures, a company has developed an interesting method to solve this problem radically.
The insect engineering company Oxitec often comes up with ‘strange’ news. The project that the company signed this time was to develop a new type of insect that can kill female mosquitoes. Let’s take a look at the details of this controversial project together.
They kill female mosquitoes in nature and leave the males
You know that only female mosquitoes bite humans. For this reason, Oxitec has produced a gene that will destroy female mosquitoes with a newly developed insect species. A new strain called OX5034 was obtained by adding a specific gene to mosquitoes from mosquitoes caught in Mexico. This new species of male mosquitoes, when mated with a female in the wild, greatly restricts fertility and kills the next generation of female mosquitoes. The company said that only female mosquitoes bite, and its biggest goal is to prevent the transmission of yellow fever and other serious diseases to humans through Aedes mosquitoes.
Still, there are too many people who disagree with the company and say that it is seriously damaging the environment. According to the LA Times report, it was claimed that the mosquito population was reduced by 95 percent for this purpose in a neighborhood in Brazil. It was said that most of the data on this application, which was made under the name of the Keys project, was not published. While people in the region said that they were not adequately informed about the issue and that “This experiment was a bullying”, he claimed that everyone involved in the project was equally guilty.
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