The UK biotech company Oxitec has recently released 3 million genetically-modified
(GM) male mosquitoes as part of an open release field experiment in the Cayman
Islands.
The GM mosquitoes produced by Oxitec mate with wild female mosquitoes but are
genetically engineered so that most of their offspring die before adulthood. This is
intended to reduce the population of the released mosquito species, which is a carrier of
the dengue virus, and hence to reduce the incidence of this tropical disease. However,
there are many unanswered questions about the impacts of this technology and
concerns about the process for approving these experiments.
Further open releases of Oxitec’s GM mosquitoes are planned for Malaysia in December
2010.
This briefing provides background information about the company, its technology, and its
recent and proposed experimental releases of GM mosquitoes.
Key findings are:
• Oxitec is losing approximately £1.7 million a year and owes £2.25 million to a
Boston multi-millionaire investor which it is due to repay by 2013;
• Oxitec’s business model assumes its developing country customers will be
locked in to ongoing payments for repeated releases of millions of GM
mosquitoes, allowing it to repay this loan and pay dividends to its investors,
including Oxford University;
• The company’s first open field trials of 3 million GM mosquitoes have been
undertaken in the Cayman Islands (a British Overseas Territory) - funded by UK
charity the Wellcome Trust - without any consultation, public risk assessment,
ethical oversight, or the consent of local people;
• Former UK science minister Lord Drayson and former President of the Royal
Society Bob May have both acted as advisors to investors in the company
(Oxford University Challenge Seed Fund and East Hill Management LLC
respectively);
• The company has also received significant public subsidy, including more than
£2.5 million in grants from the UK government-funded Biotechnology and
Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), mostly for joint projects with
Oxford University;
•
Oxitec has made misleading statements repeatedly in the media that its GM
mosquitoes are sterile;
Oxitec has played a key role in developing risk assessment processes for its own
products and has omitted or downplayed some serious potential adverse effects
of its technology in these risk assessment processes;
•
Oxitec is developing a GM version of a second species of dengue-carrying
mosquito (the Asian Tiger mosquito) because it is aware that this mosquito could
occupy the ecological niche vacated by reductions in numbers of the first species
it is targeting. This second species is more invasive and can carry more
diseases;
•
Decisions to invest in mass-production facilities for GM mosquitoes in
Oxfordshire, speed Oxitec’s products through regulatory processes, and begin
experimental releases in open field trials have been taken by Oxitec’s venture
capital investors and grant funders in London, Oxford and Boston, rather than by
the company’s potential customers or people living in dengue-infected areas.