Public healthFloridians uncomfortable with use of genetically modified mosquitoes to limit spread of disease

A small survey of residents of a Florida Keys neighborhood where officials hope to release genetically modified mosquitos to potentially reduce the threat of mosquito-borne illnesses such as Zika finds a lack of support for the control method, according to new research from former and current students at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The findings, published last month in PLOS Currents Outbreaks, suggest that people’s attitudes toward this new mosquito control method may be tied to pre-existing beliefs about risks of contracting diseases including dengue, chikungunya, and Zika from the insects. The researchers say that people who do not feel that they are at risk from mosquito-borne diseases or who don’t believe that mosquitoes are a nuisance express greater discomfort with the idea of introducing male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes which are bred to mate with wild females and produce offspring with a defective gene that kills them, thereby reducing the population of disease-carrying mosquitoes.

The novel mosquito control method has been tried in Brazil and Panama with some success, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering a trial in Key Haven, a community in the Florida Keys. Aedes aegypti carry all three diseases, though no local mosquito-borne cases of Zika virus have been reported in the United States. Zika has been linked to brain-related birth defects in babies born to pregnant mothers who contract the virus.

Johns Hopkins reports that the scientists, current students and recent graduates of the Bloomberg School, say the research could help public health and community leaders address head-on the objections of residents where such control measures are being contemplated, as the fight against mosquito-borne illnesses heats up. The survey was conducted in the second half of 2015, after locally transmitted dengue and chikungunya cases had been discovered in Florida, but before the Zika epidemic in South and Central America became big news. There is concern that Zika could spread north into the continental United States. The band from southern Florida, including the Keys, to southern Texas, as well as Hawaii, are believed to be part of the region of the United States most at risk.

A British company, Oxitec, has been trying for years to get approval to test their genetically modified mosquitoes in the Keys. Some local residents have tried to kill the field trial, concerned about unanticipated consequences of introducing these lab-grown insects into the wild.