The Mosquito, Revised

Malaria, though, remains a formidable foe. There are signs of a developing resistance to the drugs, including artemisinin. Malaria is reemerging in parts of Southeast Asia, and many countries are struggling to meet their target of reversing the spread of malaria by 2015, one of the Millennium Development Goals set by the U.N. Progress toward a vaccine has been slow. "We know today that we won't be able to control or eradicate the parasite unless we tackle the vector [the mosquito]," says George Christophides of Imperial College in London.

Environmental groups are being forced to take the morally precarious path of arguing against technology that could save the lives of millions of poor people. The population of sub-Saharan Africa accounts for more than 85 percent of all the world's malaria cases, and loses at least 750,000 people a year to the disease. Africans can't afford the same anxieties as people in North America have shown over GM crops. "Malaria is different because we in the West don't have it," says Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "If you are sitting with your pregnant wife in a hospital in Tanzania or Malawi, then you are not going to be so worried about the escape of a few mosquitoes."

The scientific establishment is not taking public acceptance for granted. The WHO is devising rules for testing GM mosquitoes to ensure that a foreign gene could not find its way into other organisms. Three new biosafety-training centers are planned in Africa, Asia and Latin America. "As a community, we are trying to take an extraordinarily cautious approach," says Paul Eggleston of Keele University in England. Modifying the mosquito may be a risk worth taking, but it won't be taken without public support.

© 2009