The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

For all the ethical objections that have been raised against genetic engineering since its first use in animal cloning, here’s one that’s more likely to have ‘yays’ than ‘nays’: Mosquitoes fighting mosquitoes.

Yes, you heard that right. Well at least, you’ll definitely be hearing them in both ears soon.

Family Wars

The stage takes place in Djibouti, where the government has introduced a strain of non-biting male Anopheles mosquitoes that have been genetically modified.

In what sense? Well, these mosquitoes now contain self-limiting genes that ensure that only the male offspring survive, while the female offspring (known for being the malaria parasite vector) dies shortly after being released.

According to Oxitec, the biotech company responsible for engineering the GMO mosquitoes, once the male mosquitoes are produced, they are released into the population where they mate with wild females, producing only male mosquitoes capable of surviving and in the process, gradually suppressing the target female anopheles population.

Safe to say here that the patriarchy is never beating those allegations.

First foray?

This won’t be Djibouti’s first attempt to eliminate the disease.

• In 2012, Djibouti was on the brink of wiping out malaria with only 27 cases reported.

• In the following years, there was a dramatic rise in cases, hitting 73,000 by 2020.

• With this initiative, Djibouti hopes to be only the 4th country on the continent to be declared malaria-free; following in the footsteps of Mauritius, Algeria, and more recently, Cabo Verde.

  That being said, while you wait for either vaccines or friendly mosquitoes to come to a location near you, we hear mosquito smoothies are now a thing and you won’t be needing a straw for it…