Gene Drive Mosquitoes: Ethics, Environment and Efficacy

Gene Drive Mosquitoes: Ethics, Environment and Efficacy

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L. Wilburn,  ScienceInnovationUnion,  2019.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has recently donated over $75 million to fund gene drive mosquito research by Target Malaria , a consortium that aims to develop technology for malaria control. The first planned release of gene drive mosquitoes is set to happen over the next two years in Burkina Faso, West Africa. But what exactly is gene drive, why do we need it and what are the wider implications of the technology? Malaria is a parasitic disease spread by the bite of the female Anopheles mosquito. Malaria can present as a range of symptoms including, mild fever, muscle pains (which can progress to severe malaria where the patient can experience severe anaemia and bleeding), renal failure, neurological disorders and death. In 2017, there were an estimated 219 million cases and 435,000 deaths attributed to malaria (1). Over 91% of these cases occurred in the Africa region, and children under the age of 5 were at the highest risk of contracting severe malaria. Fortunately, due to interventions such as insecticide-treated bed nets, indoor spraying of insecticides and improved medical infrastructure, from 2010-2017 malaria deaths were reduced by an estimated 28% (1). However, these control efforts may be severely jeopardised due to the rapid emergence of resistance to all insecticide classes and the most effective anti-malarial drugs (2, 3). Currently, there are only five classes of insecticides approved for public health use. In areas such as West Africa, there are multi-resistant mosquitoes which show resistance to all insecticide classes (4). Therefore, if the World Health Organisation (WHO) is to meet its goal of reducing global malaria by 90% by 2030, novel and effective strategies for malaria control must be identified (5). One such proposed strategy is gene drive mosquitoes.