The Johns Hopkins Malaria Minute asks if genetic approaches could be a sharper tool in the ‘malaria toolkit’ to go with old standbys like bed nets and indoor residual spraying. Its quotes Dr Damaris Matoka-Muhia of the Kenya Medical Research Institute who considers gene drives a potentially sustainable, long-term, and cost-effective solution for malaria – especially as resistance dulls other tools. And in Kenya, there are regulations in place to support gene drive implementation.
But as I stated in ‘Malaria is Spread by Mosquitos?’, these advanced bio-weapon methods are interesting topics to fund dubious scientific research. However, the likelihood that they could be of benefit even if mosquitos spread malaria is highly dubious. And because it seems unlikely that the conventionally accepted malaria transmission narrative is real, these research topics are doubly useless.
And to strengthen this point there was an article in Malaria World this week ‘Talking About Gene Drive in Uganda: The Need for Science Communication to Underpin Engagement’ by Hartley et al funded by the Wellcome Trust. The researchers found a paucity of information available and political sensitivities to genetic technologies. Gene drive organisms are designed to spread in wild populations, which means they could cross regional and national boundaries. The idea of gene drive is that the modified organisms are biased to ‘drive’ selected genetic characteristics higher than the typical 50% chance of inheriting a particular trait. One approach is biasing toward male offspring to reduce number of breeding females in future generations.
The study itself is a popular type in malaria academia, a communication analysis with focus groups and other methods, to try and understand why the general public do not understand this great plan. The details can be found in the linked paper.
But in reality, one does not need a very sensitive BS detector to work out that gene drive is not a sharp tool and no amount of explaining will change that. In the 19th century Charles Darwin developed a theory that confounds this idea. Mosquito numbers are limited by food availability especially at the larval stage. If there are fewer larvae, each that is will have a greater chance of survival. The offspring of the fewer females in the first generation will be more likely to survive. As time goes by the effect of the modified organisms will disappear and unadulterated mosquitos will predominate. Elementary statistical analysis of genetic evolution over time clearly demonstrates that in most cases 50% male female ratio is stable. I recommend works by Richard Dawkins and others on this topic (The Selfish Gene is good on this).