To knock out a mocking mosquito: What Florida thinks today, India can swat tomorrow

Here’s the latest buzz from America: they’re releasing mosquitoes to disarm mosquitoes. And just in case you didn’t know that the US, too, suffers the bane of the blighters, well, now you know — the largest democracy and the oldest democracy share the same bloodsucking enemy.

But what’s this about releasing the creature that gives us in the tropics and subtropics sleepless nights? It turns out that the Florida Keys region off the southern coast of southeastern-most America gets its fair share of the winged critters.

Now, authorities, with the help of British biotic firm Oxitec, will let out 12,000-odd Aedes aegypti mosquitoes over the next three weeks. These may form only 4% of the mosquito population in the area, but they are the most khatarnaak, being the kind that transmits almost all (not malaria, which is the domain disease of the dreaded Anopheles) mosquito-borne diseases like dengue and Zika to humans.


The mosquitoes being released are genetically modified, non-biting males. The plan is to have enough of these Trojan mosquitoes mate with the local biting female Aedes and control the population.

For those of us who can take our eyes off a blasted virus — which, too, has undergone natural and deadly genetic modification — perhaps Oxitec’s disarming male mosquitoes can be put into action in India too.