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Promise of the GM mosquito

Ian Sample

The global effort to eradicate a deadly disease has received a significant but controversial boost: scientists have announced the creation of genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes that cannot pass on malaria.

Trials revealed that the GM mosquitoes could quickly establish themselves in the wild and drive out natural malaria-carrying insects, thereby breaking the route through which humans are infected.

The strategy is likely to prove contentious as it will require the unprecedented release of tens of thousands of GM organisms into the wild. But it has raised hopes among scientists, some of whom believe it may be powerful enough to finally bring under control a disease which strikes 300 million people a year and causes more than a million deaths. .

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University created GM mosquitoes by giving them a gene that made it impossible for them to pass on the plasmodium that causes malaria.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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