Oxitec, which is short for Oxford Insect Technologies, has essentially transformed Moscamed into an entomological assembly line. Together, the eggs weighed ten grams, about the same as a couple of nickels. A plastic container about the size of an espresso cup sat on a bench in front of me, and it was filled with what looked like black tapioca: a granular, glutinous mass containing a million eggs from Oxitec’s engineered mosquito. A few weeks ago, I found myself standing in a dank, fetid laboratory at Moscamed, an insect-research facility in the Brazilian city of Juazeiro, which has one of the highest dengue rates in the world. Now there is another approach, promising but experimental: a British biotechnology company called Oxitec has developed a method to modify the genetic structure of the male Aedes mosquito, essentially transforming it into a mutant capable of destroying its own species. That means bathing yards, roads, and public parks in a fog of insecticide. The only way to fight the disease has been to poison the insects that carry it. There is no vaccine or cure for dengue, or even a useful treatment. The pain can be so excruciating that the virus has a commonly invoked nickname: breakbone fever. Many develop dengue shock syndrome or a hemorrhagic fever that leaves them vomiting and, often, bleeding from the nose, mouth, or skin. But more than half a million people become seriously ill from the disease. For the fortunate, a case of dengue resembles a mild form of influenza. According to the World Health Organization, dengue infects at least fifty million people a year. The mosquito also carries dengue, one of the most rapidly spreading viral diseases in the world. troops suffered more casualties from yellow fever than from enemy fire. Before a vaccine was discovered in the nineteen-thirties, the mosquito transmitted the yellow-fever virus to millions of people, with devastating efficiency. Yet Aedes are among the deadliest creatures on earth. More than any other place, perhaps, Aedes aegypti thrive in the moist, hidden gullies of used automobile tires.Īs adults, the mosquitoes are eerily beautiful: jet black, with white spots on the thorax and white rings on their legs. They mate in the dew of spider lilies, ape plants, guava trees, palm fronds, in the holes of rocks formed from lava, and in coral reefs. Aedes can breed in a teaspoon of water, and their eggs have been found in tin cans, beer bottles, barrels, jugs, flower vases, cups, tanks, tubs, storm drains, cisterns, cesspools, catch basins, and fishponds. But the insects follow us nearly everywhere we go.
Photograph by Bartholomew Cookeįew people, unless they travel with an electron microscope, would ever notice the egg of an Aedes aegypti mosquito.
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