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Indian public health experts are not at all excited by the news that
American scientists have created genetically modified mosquitoes to help
fight malaria, saying it had been tried here before and abandoned as a
failure, March 2007.

'We tried genetic control in the 1970s and abandoned it,' P.L. Joshi,
director of the National Vector Borne Diseases Control Program in New Delhi,
told IANS. 'It seemed to work in the lab but failed at field level.'

Scientists at John Hopkins University in the US announced this week that
their GM mosquito is resistant to the malaria parasite, meaning that it
cannot pass on malaria to humans via a bite.

Their 'cage' experiments also showed that the GM mosquitoes-because they
were free of the malaria parasite-lived longer than the wild ones and laid
more eggs.

Based on this finding, the scientists concluded that their GM mosquitoes
released into the wild in large numbers would-over a period of time-displace
the natural mosquitoes that transmit malaria.

While reports said that a field trial with GM mosquitoes could start in five
years in Africa, Joshi said he is sceptical about genetic control approach
after India's experience some 30 years ago.

In 1975 the Indian government called off the planned release of millions of
altered mosquitoes in Sonepat in Haryana and closed down the US financed
genetic control project in New Delhi. The authorities wanted to be sure that
the modified mosquitoes did not become carriers of a disease that did not
exist in India.

'We take up only safe, well tested, and proven methods in our control
program,' Joshi said, adding that the best way to control malaria is
reduction at the source.

'The recent epidemics of dengue and chickungunea have convinced us that
mosquito population cannot be reduced unless there is concerted by the
community as a whole,' he said. 'Genetic control is not the answer.'

'The biggest problem with genetic control is separating the male mosquitoes
from the females,' P.K. Rajagopalan, a scientist who was associated with the
abortive Indo-US project and who later headed the Vector Control Research
Centre in Pondicherry, told IANS.

Female mosquitoes - and not males - are responsible for spreading the
disease, he pointed out. 'Releasing only males is a difficult task as sexing
is never 100 per cent accurate even with improved methods.'

Although the GM mosquitoes do not carry the malaria parasite, the presence
of even one per cent females in millions of released mosquitoes adds to
nuisance value because they can still bite,' Rajagopalan said.

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