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Newsmagazines
Spring 2012
On a Thursday evening in March 2012, Florida residents filled a room at the Harvey Government Center in Key West. This popular, sunny tourist destination off the coast has recently found itself at the center of a buggy controversy: a British biotechnology company called Oxitec wants to use their island as a test lab for the first-ever release of genetically engineered mosquitoes in the U.S.
The town hall meeting was packed with concerned citizens who listened as the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District and executives at Oxitec made their case for the experiment. Then, residents seized their turn to speak. As the local paper reported, Oxitec’s plan “faced strong opposition and tough questions.”
Keys residents have good reason to be concerned. For the past year, Friends of the Earth has tracked the release of these genetically engineered mosquitoes, first in the Cayman Islands, then in Malaysia and most recently in Brazil. Oxitec has proven neither the safety nor the effectiveness of their engineered bugs, which have the potential to harm local ecosystems and human health.
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