Jimmy Buffet and the Mosquitoes that Ate Key West

In Part 1 of this piece, here we looked at the growing efforts to keep genetic engineering research out of the public view until genetically modified organisms are ready to hit our plates. Worse, some of this research seems to be conducted without regards to any outcome beyond pure profit. In even more parallels to the genetically-engineered human/animal hybrids in H.G. Wells’ “The Island of Dr. Moreau” we now have the GE mosquito in Florida, aka Jimmy Buffet land (maybe he’ll score a song about the Franken-squito visiting Margarita-ville). UK-based Oxitec is going to release genetically-engineered mosquitoes in the Florida Keys this month, the first-ever U.S. release of these engineered bugs. Aedes aegypti are produced by this private biotechnology company in hopes that their offspring will die at a young age in an effort to lower mosquito populations and limit the spread of dengue fever. Genetically-engineered mosquitoes were released by Oxitec in the Cayman Islands, Malaysia and Brazil. Eradicating dengue fever is laudable (I had a case of it in Guatemala, and I never deviate from calling it Break Bone Fever to this day), but the company’s claims that their GE mosquitoes are sterile and they have eradicated the fever are wrong: their mosquitoes are fertile, and no one has successfully eradicated dengue fever from any population. So, this corporation from overseas gets to use 36-square acres near the Key West Cemetery as a testing plot (undisclosed location) for up to 10,000 genetically engineered mosquitoes. Many questions about genetically-engineered mosquitoes remain unanswered, and since Friends of the Earth exposed this GE mosquito release story, here’s what that group has to say about the real questions behind the release: * Who’s regulating this release and who more importantly, who will be legally and financially liable if something goes wrong? * Shoot, what about the unintended consequences of decreasing in Aedes aegypti population have on the local food chain and ecosystem? Could other more dangerous bugs take its place, such as the Asian Tiger mosquito which is one of the most invasive species on the planet? * Informed consent? Will Oxitec be required to obtain the free and informed consent of Key West residents (unlike in the Cayman Islands where “no public consultation was undertaken on potential risks and informed consent was not sought from local people”)? * The super-mosquito next generation? What happens when Oxitec’s mosquitoes survive into adulthood (since 3–4 percent have been found to do just that despite the flaw engineered into their genome)? * It’s not just a male thing! Although Oxitec plans to only release male genetically engineered mosquitoes, what are the risks if female genetically engineered mosquitoes are released (since the company sorts them by hand and up to 0.5 percent of the released insects are in fact female)? Since females bite humans, how could this impact human health? Will it hamper efforts to limit the spread of dengue fever? * Do we need more corporate marketing of things like mosquitoes? Since Oxitec cannot completely eliminate a mosquito population will countries and communities become dependent on Oxitec for the indefinite future? What economic impacts will such dependence have on communities? This entire GMO debate has to be framed by community power over corporate power. The Occupy movement speaks to some of that, and the Move to Amend (reversing or nullifying a Jan. 2010 Supreme Court case, Citizens United) also touches upon some of corporate malfeasance and misdeeds. But it takes a real in-the-trenches person like Richard Grossman, who died November at age 70, to cut through the bedrock of why these corporations or foundations like Gates have way too much control and power. He started off 40 years ago talking about how corporations had taken control of our environment. He has since looked at the systemic failure of the United States federal government which has since day one been in cahoots with the oligarchy and land-holding elite: “One simple way of comparing then and now is that I don’t talk much about corporations anymore. We live under minority rule. And the class of people who do the governing generally could be called a corporate class. “But 180 years ago, they were the slave master class. One hundred years before that they were the propertied nobility in England. In the USA, a minority designed our structure of governance, has been making the laws, using the power and violence of the nation to deny the many, to accumulate property and wealth, to replicate their designs across generations, to groom leaders of the next generation to continue their supremacy, to create the educational systems, mythologies and celebrations to camouflage and deceive, to channel people who would be activists into realms where even if they stop or slow down a particular corporate state assault, they don’t lay a hand on systemic reality, don’t touch the structure of governance and law, don’t question the country’s great myths. For the past century or so, one such realm has been regulatory and administrative law and agencies, those vast energy sinks and diversions that eat activists for breakfast.” So what’s for breakfast? Cassava? Friends of the Earth Nigeria is showing why even non-GMO messed-with hybrids pose problems with biodiversity. Using hybridization and selective breeding, three new yellow varieties of cassava with loads of vitamin A will supposedly help with malnutrition, blindness and death. Can anyone in the Gates’ Foundations AGRA project understand why this supposed research breakthrough gets dismissed by groups like Friends of the Earth Nigeria (FoEN). The argument is around why the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) research team in Ibadan would be messing around with one of Nigeria’s key food crops It’s about biodiversity, something corporations scoff at when it comes to finding ways to “beat or speed up mother nature.” Here’s the irony with all of this agronomic meddling: two carrots can easily provide the daily vitamin A requirement. Plain old carrots for breakfast. Easy to plant, easy to eat, and not one iota of that process is tied up in Dow, Monsanto, General Mills, or Bill Gates, or any stockholders’ greedy interests.