The author provides a very well-balanced report on the introduction of GMO mosquitoes to control dengue fever.
...a...controversial potential solution is splitting communities in the Sunshine State.It's clear that the public, understandably, does not in many places trust private companies to engage in radical experiments with their environment. The basic problem is trusting corporations whose legal purpose is to serve the economic interests of their shareholders, or even trusting regulatory agencies, who are often staffed by people who serve corporate interests, to do the right thing for the public interest.
Michael Doyle is director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD). His job is to keep the 44 inhabited islands of the total 1,200 that spread across the Florida Straits free from Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. He wants to release genetically modified (GM) male mosquitoes, specifically designed to pass down a suicide gene that kills their own offspring, into the wild in hopes of bringing down the dangerous dengue-carrying mosquito population and preventing new outbreaks.
Thus, it is private interests versus public interests which is the core problem with capitalism. It wasn't so much of a problem in the early stages of capitalism when you had many small enterprises competing with each other, but it is today with these huge trans-national corporations whose command of a broad range of resources can thoroughly corrupt and intimidate governments. (For a current illustration here in Washington state, read here and here about the intimidation of Boeing threats to move operations elsewhere on state government and unions.)
It seems that many people can see the problem when it involves food or mosquitoes, but they can't see private interests working against vital public interests when it comes to education, media, health care, employment, and government. This sort of pervasive corruption of societal interests to serve private interests is much more indirect and hidden.
