A US-owned (purchased by US-based Third Security in early 2020), UK-based biotechnology company founded in 2002 by Luke Alphey and David Kelly working with Oxford University’s Isis Innovation technology transfer company, that received over $7-million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to breed genetically modified insects. CEO Grey Frandsen was appointed in 2017 and is also the chairman of the board of directors for Pilgrim Africa, an NGO implementing malaria control programs in Uganda funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Fund and private donors.
A 27-month long experiment in 2013 Jacobina, Brazil, aimed at reducing the local mosquito population by 90 percent through the deliberate release of 450,000 genetically modified mosquitoes every week for 27 months failed miserably and may have even created a genetic hybrid super species. The overall goal was to curb the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, such as yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and Zika, by releasing half a million OX513A mosquitoes. The insects are a genetically-modified version of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which combined a breed from Mexico with a breed from Cuba. The engineered male mosquitoes are theoretically sterile, but there are studies from Brazil that the lab-created insects bred with native mosquitoes.
The original Oxitec research suggested that just three to four percent of the “infertile” offspring would survive into adulthood and would be too weak to reproduce anyway. These predictions were wrong. Very wrong. Anywhere from 10 to 60 percent of the mosquitoes analyzed by Powell and his team featured genomes tainted by OX513A. While the scheme apparently worked initially, with a dramatic reduction in the population, it would later completely backfire around the 18-month mark, returning the number of mosquitoes in the area to pre-release levels.
The female population, it turns out, opted not to mate with the weaker, genetically-modified mosquitoes anyway, in a phenomenon known as “mating discrimination,” according to Powell and his team. Some genetically-modified mosquitoes even showed signs of “hybrid vigor” in which the artificially-introduced genetic diversity actually made the mosquitoes stronger and more resilient, with the possibility of increased resistance to insecticides, Powell and his co-authors warned.
However, an Oxitec spokesperson claims the research contains “numerous false, speculative and unsubstantiated claims and statements about Oxitec’s mosquito technology” claiming instead, in a three-page document, that the paper did not identify any “negative, deleterious or unanticipated effect to people or the environment from the release of OX513A mosquitoes.” Oxitec also disputes the claim about “mating discrimination” saying it has never occurred in any release of an estimated total of one billion Oxitec male mosquitoes released worldwide.
The Netherlands agreed to release Oxitec’s genetically modified mosquitoes to fight dengue fever, chikungunya and zika in Saba, a Dutch Caribbean island, after a report by The National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) examined the effects that these mosquitoes could have in the local ecosystem and concluded the release of the mosquitoes would not pose risks to human health or the environment. The French High Council for Biology supported Oxitec mosquito releases.
Oxitec also released genetically engineered (GE) diamondback moths at Cornell’s agricultural experiment station in Geneva, New York as part of an outdoor trial, and New Yorkers were more than miffed. Organic farmers, environmental groups, and New York citizens sent a letter to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Agriculture Commissioner Richard Ball along with Cornell University President David Skorton and Agricultural School Associate Dean Susan Brown demanding that field trials stop and to provide information to the public about the release of these GM moths. Oxitec proposed field trials of their GE diamondback moth in September of 2014 to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
While Oxitec claims they had a genetic engineering breakthrough with their GM moth, since the diamondback is indeed a huge agricultural nuisance which damages thousands of acres annually, costing farmers more than $1 billion, they had no idea if their GM moths would cause even more damage or not.
Oxitec received a permit from the EPA to release millions of the insects from 2020-22 in spite of public outcry against it. The US hasn’t seen but a handful of mosquito-born disease cases in the past several decades, so why are we allowing this experiment? Oxitec has ties to Syngenta, so it is likely that they aren’t trying to breed out a nuisance moth or mosquito, but create a super-pest that will make it easier to sell even more pesticides and herbicides.
Jaydee Hanson, Senior Policy Analyst at Center for Food Safety said:
“The first use of GE insects in an agricultural setting should have required public consultations with potentially affected parties, as well as, trials in physically enclosed spaces before even considering open field trials. This violates one of the basic principles of biosafety for genetically engineered organisms—that they should be physically constrained in trials, not openly released.”
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