Friday, April 11, 2014

Blog 9- The Dengue Killer

In Brazil there has been an outbreak of the dengue fever and this is terrible problem because the world cup for soccer is being held in Brazil this summer. This article has brought up an idea that doctors are thinking about using to try and it is to genetically modify mosquitoes. The dengue fever is spread from mosquitoes and the idea of genetically modifying the mosquitoes is that the male mosquitoes they modify will go out and mate with the normal female mosquitoes which bite humans. When they mate with the females they will produce a larva that cannot survive so it will kill off most mosquitoes. The reason this may be a problem is because it would maybe kill off all mosquitoes and that is never good to kill off a species. The way it kills off the species is when the scientist modify the mosquitoes, the only environment they can grow up in is the lab, but once they are past the larva stage they can survive. They would only allow out male mosquitoes because they do not bite and then they would mate. Once they mated the larva could not survive. It seems logical, but they do not know if the modification they make could effect humans if any females were released.

This is a global social problem because dengue fever is a deadly disease. If this disease is not controlled it could cause an outbreak and kill people all over the world. Doctors are still trying to figure out the modification because if the world cup is held in Brazil and people catch dengue fever they could take it back to there many countries and it would spread like a wild fire.

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