Scientists say Key Haven is the ‘perfect’ island for releasing the genetically modified insects – but locals refuse to be ‘lab rats’ in FDA-cleared experiment

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The Florida Keys are three months away from a straw poll vote on whether to release millions of genetically modified mosquitoes on an island just east of Key West, and the tourist destination is awash in lawn signs.

Alongside the typical signs to vote for court clerk, judge, sheriff or school board are signs that showcase the overhead view of a mosquito and read: “NO CONSENT to release of genetically modified mosquitoes”.

For the last five years, the biotechnology company Oxitec has been developing a plan to experimentally release the GMO mosquitoes in the Keys, which scientists hope could eventually impede the spread of the Zika virus.

“It is the perfect scientific trial site,” said Derric Nimmo, a spokesman for Oxitec and a molecular biologist, about Key Haven. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Keys mosquito control district could say, ‘We don’t have Aedes aegypti here – you can’t get dengue or Zika?’”

Each male mosquito released by Oxitec will carry a gene to prevent his offspring from reaching adulthood. Scientists hope that the genetically modified males will mate with wild females to undercut the population of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the type that spread Zika through Brazil.

But the prospect of ridding the neighborhood of a disease-carrying pest hasn’t quelled public dissatisfaction.

The GM mosquitoes dominate local news in Key West. Mosquito control commissioners up for reelection face multiple opponents. The city of Key West formally opposed the mosquitoes’ introduction in 2012.

“Why are you pushing [sic] down our throats?” asked Mila de Mier, a Spanish transplant to Key West and a real estate agent. She has led the charge against the mosquitoes’ release, collecting nearly 170,000 signatures in an online petition against the experiment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Oxitec mosquito larvae are shown. Each male mosquito released by Oxitec will carry a gene to prevent his offspring from reaching adulthood. Photograph: Alexandre Carvalho/Oxitec

“It’s about human rights – this can’t be pushed down our throats without consent,” said De Mier, who views her mission as helping mold policy on genetically modified animals for the country.

If the trial goes well, the technology would be on track to commercial approval in the United States, opening a slice of the nation’s $14bn pest control market to the company. Globally, analysts predict Oxitec’s mosquito could bring in up to $400m in annual sales for its parent company, Intrexon.

With millions in potential sales at stake, the experiment in the environmentally sensitive, populous area hinges on the fundamental question proposed by opponents: do the people who live where an experiment is to be conducted have a right to decide whether to go forward?

‘No consent’

Signs saying “No consent” are scattered across what looks like about half the front yards in Key Haven, a neighborhood of neat, high-end homes where the streets stretch out into the Gulf of Mexico like fingers.

The neighborhood is distinctly, extravagantly Floridian. Corinthian columns stand astride stucco doorways, balancing arches of hurricane-shuttered homes. Large boats park in driveways. Glass front doors reveal infinity pools and Gulf vistas.

For some in the neighborhood, the question of Oxitec’s trial is one of convenience.

“It would be so buggy,” said Andrea Spottswood, 62, a prim woman who wears a pressed button-up, pink lipstick and large diamond earrings. The trial “may be worth a try”, but “we don’t want to be the lab rats, and they were all going to be dumped down this street.”

She, like others in the neighborhood, is skeptical of the company’s basic claims.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Meagan Hull, left, and real estate agent Mila de Mier both oppose genetically modified mosquitoes, and say they’re willing to take the fight all the way. Photograph: Jessica Glenza/The Guardian

“They say this mosquito doesn’t bite, but I don’t know if I’m buying it,” Spottswood said. Oxitec’s plan is to mostly release male mosquitoes, which don’t bite. Its application with the FDA says that only one out of every 1,000 mosquitoes would be female. Asked whether the trial could advance science, Spottswood said, “Right. They’re also going to make a lot of money.”

Intrexon appears keenly aware of this.

Though Nimmo has said Oxitec is running a mainly door-to-door public education-style campaign aimed at Monroe county’s 52,000 voters, Intrexon has intensely lobbied Congress.

By April, the large international law firm Sidley Austin LLP estimated Intrexon paid at least $400,000 for the firm to advocate for Oxitec’s mosquitoes, hoping to hurry along approval and secure government funding.

Behind another “No consent” sign lives Joan Lord-Papy, 85, a native islander. Inside her home, daytime TV rambles. For Lord-Papy, memories of mosquito swarms are vivid.

An island divided

Lord-Papy recalls a time, in the 1950s, when mosquitoes were so bad that drivers “picked up anybody who broke down” on “the 18-mile stretch” between Florida City to Key Largo out of sympathy for the hundreds of bites they would endure.

Florida cleared to release genetically modified mosquitoes in Zika fight Read more

Others recounted the lore of motorists who preferred sleeping in their vehicle to changing a flat at dusk, when ambush by bloodsuckers was certain. Lord-Papy herself served on the Florida Keys Mosquito Control Board for 20 years beginning in 1962.

Mosquito populations on the island have declined significantly over the decades, with the institution of a robust mosquito control program.

“I’m local. I was born and raised here, so I’ve always known mosquitoes and what they do to the community,” she said. But, she admits, “I really don’t know that much about the spray they want to use. I don’t know how it will affect children, really.”

Phil Goodman views this sort of opposition as an uninformed electorate standing in the way of science.

Goodman is one of the two holdouts on the Keys mosquito control board, and also its chairman, who has refused to abide by the public opinion. A former chemist and chemical company owner, Goodman complains that people call Oxitec’s OX513A patented insects “franken-skeeters”.

“We’re in the public health business, not the public opinion business,” he said. The board, he believes, “will make a better decision than the majority of uninformed people.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest How Oxitec mosquitoes work to control Aedes aegypti to help prevent the spread of virus. Photograph: Oxitec

Oxitec was, in fact, invited to the island by the county’s mosquito control commissioners, a group once in favor of the experiment, but who are now divided after years of public outcry. The vote on the mosquito release is non-binding, and three of five mosquito control board members have agreed to abide by the outcome.

“Let’s have a scientific debate and come to some kind of conclusion,” Goodman said. Goodman fears a slippery slope, where every new insecticide will require public approval.

The district has already invested in the experiment. It donated space to Oxitec to build a laboratory in Marathon, in the middle Keys, and expects to donate up to $200,000 in free labor each year the experiment goes forward.

Certainly, the current methods employed by mosquito control districts against the Aedes are imperfect.

The notoriously difficult-to-control bug was nearly eradicated in the 1950s by governments in Latin America, who undertook a military-style campaign to spray DDT inside homes. Aedes aegypti mosquitoes also spread dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya, diseases with potentially life-threatening symptoms.

Miami-Dade County began spraying Naled in August, after the first mainland cases of Zika transmitted by local mosquitoes were found in the Wynwood neighborhood. About 6m Floridian acres are sprayed each year. But Naled’s effectiveness in Aedes control is widely debated, both for its effectiveness and its adverse impacts.

“I got a complaint the other day – someone found 30 dead bees on the side of the road,” Goodman said. Naled kills just about any flying insect the size of a mosquito aloft when planes spray overhead.

Public education can also only go so far.

In the Keys, ubiquitous door hangers remind residents to empty standing pools of water. Aedes mosquitoes can breed in pools as tiny as a bottle cap, making every wrinkle of a tarp potential habitat. Goodman suspects some Aedes mosquitoes are breeding in abandoned cisterns on the islands, which used to supply residents’ water.

Oxitec’s trial wouldn’t be the first one the company conducts, nor the last. The company has released GMO mosquitoes in Brazil, Panama, Malaysia and recently the Cayman Islands. And it has submitted applications to begin trials in Sri Lanka and India. The longest such trial has been approximately two years, increasing Keys residents’ concerns about unknown long-term consequences.

Opening this Pandora’s box, sometimes you don’t see the impact until five, 10, 15 years down the road Mila de Mier

Most trials have resulted in reduced Aedes populations, Oxitec has said. Nimmo cites a 90% or better rate of reduction in most populations. But the same rate of effectiveness is likely to be significantly lower in locations with more complex geography.

Opponents have raised other concerns as well: for every 1,000 mosquitoes released, one will be female, the sort that bite.

De Mier and other opponents ask: what happens if a female Oxitec mosquito bites a woman? What if it passes the “kill gene”, as opponents call it, to people? Oxitec scientists analyzed the saliva of roughly six mosquitoes, the gene was not detected, and scientists concluded that humans were unlikely to be exposed. But that hasn’t soothed critics.

“Opening this Pandora’s box, sometimes you don’t see the impact until five, 10, 15 years down the road,” De Mier said.

“I’m not against genetically modified at all,” she said. “Sometimes, I don’t know what I put on my table, but that’s the difference – it’s about choice,” she said, referencing the GMO food supply. “Permission has not been asked or given … This is only for Oxitec’s benefit.”

What about the impact on tourism, de Mier asked? The Keys depend almost solely on visitors to the warm teal waters for income, with the hotel occupancy rates near 100% in February and March, and tens of thousands of visitors arriving from around the world in winter months.

Meagan Hull, 45, another local opponent, said she decided against a vacation after learning Oxitec would release the mosquitoes on the Cayman Islands. “Now, I don’t want to go to the Caymans. I mean, come on, they’re ruining the world for us!”

De Mier said: “You see how pretty is this place. If you’re not going to fight for here, where are you going to fight for? I’m going all the way.”