GMO mosquitoes

 Fighting infectious diseases is hard. Our toolkit includes drugs and vaccines. But there's an arms race between the bugs and the drugs (and with COVID-19 and flu, the vaccines).

In some diseases, the transmission requires an insect or mammalian vector. Recent advances in genome editing have enabled so-called "gene drives" that are, in principle, capable of driving to extinction a host species, at least in a region of the planet.
Gene drives to extinguish the anopheles and aedes mosquito vectors for malaria, yellow fever, zika and others have been in development for years, and now one has been released in Florida. From the link:
"The genetically engineered males carry a gene
that passes to their offspring and kills female
progeny in early larval stages. Male offspring
won’t die, but instead will become carriers of
the gene and pass it to future generations. As
more females die, the A. aegypti population
should dwindle."
The decision to release a GMO animal is certainly fraught with ethical complications. Unlike plants, mosquitoes aren't sessile organisms and can cross international borders. https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-021-01186-6/d41586-021-01186-6.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2kayHheoVvGhRBdqxohPC0OzQTkOmTAJUvklbYbz85tm1rQrAs5tz6ehw

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