Malaysia’s Dengue Fever Secret Weapon: 6,000 Genetically Modified Mosquitoes

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A girl covers her nose as health workers fumigate with anti-mosquito spray in Mumbai. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

A government-run institute in Malaysia has announced it released 6,000 genetically modified mosquitoes into an uninhabited patch of forest in December to combat dengue fever. (via Ecocentric)

The experiment, which is now over, was aimed at controlling the local mosquito population by having altered male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes mate with wild female mosquitoes, which carry the disease.

The males were engineered so that the females they impregnated would either not have offspring, or have offspring with shorter lives. The science gurus at Ecocentric have the full story.