In the week before Christmas, some 6,000 genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes were deliberately introduced to an uninhabited forest in Malaysia. The move took many local people and international observers by surprise. They had thought that the trial, which aims to investigate how long the modified insects live and how far they can fly, had been postponed. The mix-up was down to the media confusing the trial with a second planned experiment, due to take place in a populated area later this year. But it adds to a growing sense of unease among some in the field about the way in which the public are consulted and notified about such experiments. The Malaysian trial, developed as an approach to controlling dengue fever by the British biotech company Oxitec, based in Oxford, followed the release of 3.3 million of the firm's GM insects in separate tests in the Cayman Islands in 2009 and 2010.
展开▼
