Cayman Islands Abandons Failed GM Mosquito Project

 THIRD WORLD NETWORK BIOSAFETY INFORMATION SERVICE

Dear Friends and Colleagues

Cayman Islands Abandons Failed GM Mosquito Project

The Environmental Health Minister of the Cayman Islands,who has responsibility for the Mosquito Research and Control Unit (MRCU), has said the release of Oxitec’s genetically modified (GM) Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in the Caymans has not worked and has confirmed that the Oxitec contract will formally end on 31 December (Item 1). The Minister said that the project was not effective and it was only because of the arrival of a new director at MRCU that the ministry learned that it was not working. Other legislators applauded the decision to terminate the programme (Item 2). The government has invested $588,000 in the project and there are no plans for any further investment in the technology.

MRCU’s original partnerships with Oxitec began in 2010, when the company conducted an experimental release. This caused considerable controversy because, although it was not done secretly, the government failed to publicise the pilot widely and attempted to play down the experimental nature of the GM technology. The firm’s return to Cayman in 2016 to launch a full-scale release in West Bay caused considerable public concern and legal action was taken by local people. Although this failed to stop the release, it did cause a delay. The project also faced a number of glitches including issues regarding import licences and allegations that the number of GM female mosquitoes, which can bite and hence potentially transmit disease, was far higher than expected (Item 3).

Oxitec breeds male mosquitoes with a genetic modification that causes their offspring to die before reaching adulthood. The technique involves releasing millions of them into the wild so that, through weight of numbers, they will out-compete resident males for mates and purportedly lead to population collapse.

With best wishes,

Item 1

MINISTER CLAIMS GM MOSQUITOES DIDN’T WORK

Cayman News
23 November 2018
https://caymannewsservice.com/2018/11/gm-mosquitoes-didnt-work/

(CNS): The environmental health minister, who has responsibility for the Mosquito Research and Control Unit (MRCU) has said the release of genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in West Bay did not work and has confirmed that when the Oxitec contract formally ends on 31 December, that will be “the last you hear about Oxitec being paid by government”. Answering questions in Finance Committee on Thursday night, Dwayne Seymour said that the project “wasn’t getting the results that we thought we could get”, and if not for the “good MRCU director, Dr Jim, we would have never have known about it”.

Following an ambiguous press release from the MRCU and Oxitec ten days ago that danced around the situation and implied that work with the controversial bio-engineered insects might continue in the future, the minister said that the project was not effective and it was only because of the arrival of a new director at MRCU, Dr Jim McNelly, that the ministry learned that it was not working.

Seymour said the bio-engineering firm had wanted to try a different method after the one involving the release of sterile male mosquitoes had not really worked but. However, the minister said he was uncomfortable with that as he had never been happy about the project in the first place.

He said that using another method would have been using Caymanians as guinea pigs and putting people at risk when “we don’t know what was going on”.

Seymour confirmed that government spent a total of CI$580,000 for the work done during this budget cycle, which he said was a lot of money, but he was not clear when asked by opposition member Chris Saunders (BTW) if the department had learned anything from the failed project.

The minister told the committee that he wished he could say more about what had happened, but said he would “leave it at that”, in a further cryptic reference to the project, which over the last two years has seen millions of the GM mosquitoes released in a location in West Bay.

The project had originally been heavily championed by all of the district MLAs and the premier when he was in control of the unit. Government even spent tens of thousands of dollars successfully fighting local activists who had object to it because of their concerns over the experimental nature of the project, the environmental and public health risks it posed, as well as the lack of proven efficacy.

The previous MRCU director, Dr Bill Petrie, who headed up the unit for decades before he recently moved to Florida to take over the Miami-Dade Mosquito Control Division, had been a staunch advocate of the trials. He had warned that battling the invasive and dangerous Aedes aegypti was becoming increasingly problematic as it was evermore resistant to larvacides.

Unlike Cayman’s various native mosquitoes that live largely in the swap and are controlled through aerial pellet drops, the Aedes aegypti breeds in and around urban areas, close to humans, already making it harder to tackle. But with a dwindling number of effective insecticides, Petrie had warned that the MRCU would soon run out of options unless it tried something new.

Having watched the development of the science of GM bugs by the original Oxitec company, a spin-off from the research work done at Oxford University, Petrie invited the researchers to conduct a pilot study in Cayman as far back as 2010, which appeared to be very successful.

Cayman Compass
25 November 2018
https://www.caymancompass.com/2018/11/25/minister-no-more-funds-for-genetically-modified-mosquito-program/

Cayman’s genetically modified mosquito project has not worked as effectively as government hoped and will be abandoned, Health Minister Dwayne Seymour said Thursday.

He told legislators that there were no plans for any further investment in the technology, pioneered by British biotech firm Oxitec, which had partnered with Cayman’s Mosquito Research and Control Unit over the past few years.

Mr. Seymour said, “Their tenure comes to an end Dec. 31 and that will be, I think, the final time you will hear about Oxitec, at least being paid by the government.

“I have always had my concerns about the method, although I always want to try new methods and be a trailblazer too. It needs to work and it wasn’t getting the results we thought we could get.”

Mr. Seymour’s statement during a Finance Committee hearing Thursday was far more definitive than any earlier public statements on the future of the program. Oxitec and MRCU released a joint statement earlier this month indicating that they were winding down this year’s trial deployment, but both parties insisted they were open to future collaboration.

Asked for comment Saturday, Oxitec said in a statement that it was still discussing the details of future partnership with the MRCU and refuted suggestions that the technology had not worked.

Oxitec breeds male mosquitoes with a genetic modification that ensures their offspring die before reaching adulthood. The technique involves releasing millions of them into the wild so that, through weight of numbers, they will out-compete the resident males for mates and the population will collapse.

The latest trial deployment, held in West Bay this year, was designed to test how they could be used alongside more traditional methods to control the population of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which can carry and spread diseases like dengue and Zika.

Oxitec said in a statement Saturday, “The results of this research collaboration are currently being analyzed by scientists on the program’s joint MRCU-Oxitec steering committee. While the steering committee has yet to finalize its evaluation of the data, the early indications are that the joint intervention achieved positive suppression results.

“This project was not designed to be an intervention, but rather a scientific evaluation of a new, integrated approach to combat Aedes aegypti using a scientific protocol that was jointly developed by MRCU and Oxitec.”

According to the statement, “both parties remain jointly committed to evaluating how best to integrate traditional vector control and Friendly Mosquitoes using scientific rigor.”

During Thursday’s debate, legislators expressed concern about public funds being spent on the project, which they claimed was not working.

Mr. Seymour said he had never been comfortable with the method. Other legislators applauded the decision to terminate the program.

Anthony Eden, an independent legislator for Savannah, said, “I’m glad to hear the minister is intending to take this action … It is not effective. In the district of West Bay, it was a 105 percent failure feeding these foreign mosquitoes to our Caymanians.”

Chris Saunders, MLA for Bodden Town West, questioned how much money had been spent on the project over the last several years.

He said, “Can the minister give this committee the undertaking to go look and see the money we have spent on this program? We can’t be spending money like this, it fails, and we walk away without learning from it.”

The Cayman Compass understands the $588,000 invested in this year’s trial is the only direct financial contribution government has made to the project. Previous test deployments have been funded by Oxitec, though they have involved the use of some government resources.

Item 3

MRCU TO STOP RELEASING GM MOSQUITOES

Cayman News
12 November 2018
https://caymannewsservice.com/2018/11/mrcu-gm-mosquitoes/

(CNS): The Mosquito Research and Control Unit has admitted that it has stopped the release of Oxitec’s genetically modified male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Grand Cayman, claiming that it is moving into a monitoring phase just a few months after it entered a deal with the bio-engineering firm in May. 

The admission came in a press release from Government Information Services that failed to detail the reasons for stopping the GM project, which government had originally promoted as a potential silver bullet for tackling the invasive but entrenched species, which can carry a host of unpleasant and dangerous diseases.

The project appears to have fallen short and officials confirmed that the release of insects has already stopped, which is earlier than originally intended.

Last week, Cayman Marl Road published an unverified and unsourced blog post indicating that Oxitec was leaving the Cayman Islands, shutting down its operations and laying off all its staff because the technology did not work and that there had been a significant increase in the mosquitoes in West Bay,

Cayman News Service contacted both the MRCU and Oxitec about the allegations, but despite brief denials by both regarding the accusations and an acknowledgement of the CNS enquiry and questions, it was not until Saturday that an official release was issued. That release indicated that the project was coming to end but suggested some staff would remain at the unit “interpreting and assessing the data” from the last five-month pilot.

The MRCU said the overall populations of all mosquitoes in the West Bay area “have remained unexpectedly low this season”, but did not say whether that related to the MRCU’s traditional eradication work or because of the Oxitec bio-bugs.

In a release that was very unclear about the conclusions of the project, MRCU Director James McNelly said the design was sound and the collaboration positive.

“As intended, this programme provided both Government and Oxitec with valuable information that we can use going forward,” Dr McNelly said. “The project has given us valuable insight into how Oxitec’s approach might be integrated with our conventional tools. It also allowed us to monitor the population dynamics of another container-inhabiting mosquito that is a secondary vector of the diseases transmitted by Aedes aegypti. This is the Asian Tiger mosquito also known as Aedes albopictus.”

The project cost government $588,000 and the MRCU said it was now considering a no-cost collaboration in 2019.

Oxitec CEO Grey Frandsen thanked the government for the opportunity to assess how the company’s technology might best be used alongside MRCU’s integrated control programme in the Cayman Islands environment.

“This project will help shape how we can build new interventions in the future,” he said. “We applaud MRCU’s willingness to pilot new, innovative tools that can play a role in combating this disease-spreading mosquito. It is efforts like this that will help to eliminate this dangerous public health threat, and we look forward to future collaborations.”

Nevertheless, it remains unclear how effective the project, which involved the release of millions of genetically modified insects into the environment, really was and whether the reason to curtail the programme related to a cost or efficacy issue.

For some time now, the MRCU has been battling with the increasing resistance of the Aedes aegypti to conventional larvicides and so began looking at experimental alternatives. The original partnerships with Oxitec began more than eight years ago in 2010, when the company conducted an experimental release in East End. This caused considerable controversy because, although it was not done secretly, government failed to publicise the pilot widely and attempted to play down the experimental nature.

The firm’s return to Cayman in 2016 to launch a full-scale release in West Bay caused considerable public concern and legal action was taken by local people. Although this failed to stop the release, it did cause a delay.

While there has been evidence of some limited success in suppressing the mosquito, the project appeared to have fallen short and has also faced a number of glitches including issues regarding import licences and allegations that the number of bio-modified female insects, which can bite, was far higher than expected.