By Uzo Ahn ’18
Each year, more than one million people die from malaria. Most are children under five years of age in Sub-Saharan Africa. It kills a child every 30 seconds, and 3000 children each day. The cost of eradicating the disease is predicted at $100 billion over 15 years. To do this, you would need mosquito nets for each household, tens of thousands of crates of antimalarial drugs, and a million gallons of insecticide. Sadly, all this is still not enough. Some of the poorest countries in tropical Africa require a stable, functioning government, public health service systems, and strong purchasing power. Without any of this, malaria keeps killing.
But what if, instead, they only needed a bucket full of mosquitos?
Scientists at Imperial College London have finally idealized a genetic technology that has the potential to wipe out the mosquito species. The nucleus of the project circles around a unique gene drive—an artificial “selfish” gene that forces itself into 99% of the organism’s offspring, rather than the usual expected half. Researchers at London have inserted gene drives into mosquitos that cause sterility. In this way, the gene will rocket through the population and dramatically decrease the population. Rapid-fire technical advances are occurring thanks to CRISPR, (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) a new gene-editing technique that inserts desired genes into the DNA of a targeted organism. In theory, two lab partners, with the use of CRISPR, could change an entire species. We now have the potential to initiate the onslaught of mosquitos and force them to extinction from the face of the Earth.
Why aren’t we using it?
This life-changing technology appeared so abruptly into a world where diseases have, and will continue to, tear down society in both prosperous and developing countries. It creates risks, however, that we’ve never before had to consider. Would removing an entire species harm the ecosystem? What if the DNA were to jump to another species? What then? And most importantly, what country, individual, or agency has the right to artificially change nature in a way that could affect the entire plant? Ethical values and morals are holding back the full initiation of the project.
The Gates Foundation funded $18 million for this project, considering gene drives “necessary” to end malaria, and believes that the technology will be ready years before an effective vaccine. The 18 million is the largest amount funded to the development of a genetic technology in science, but barely comparable to the $36.7 billion funded to education, public health, and vaccines. “If it works, it will be incredibly cheap, easy to distribute, and egalitarian, benefiting everyone, rich or poor,” says Fil Randazzo, a deputy director at the Gates Foundation. The foundation has every intention and support of pushing this project forward. It’s just a matter of carrying the project out ethically.