Female Mosquitoes Bite, Breed, and Spread Disease: They Will Be Released
Female Mosquitoes Bite, Breed, and Spread Disease: They Will Be Released
Agency partners releasing bacteria-infected mosquitoes in Hawai‘i are lying to the people
At last month’s Hawai‘i Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) meeting, bacteria-infected mosquito releases were voted through unanimously for the island of Kaua‘i. These dangerous mosquitoes are already being let loose on Maui despite our active case in court, and larger scale releases are planned for the East Maui project area this month. While we await a decision on our Petition for a Contested Case Hearing, the agencies involved wasted no time in unleashing mosquitoes on Kaua‘i less than two weeks after the board vote. With faithful allegiance to the biotech industry, one project leader went as far as to call the invasive lab-altered insects “the savior mosquitoes.”
As the BLNR continues to railroad this potentially catastrophic plan through despite serious risks to the health of the people, native birds, wildlife, and environment, their multi-agency partnership Birds, Not Mosquitoes (BNM) is scrambling to cover their tracks. BNM’s misinformation campaign is falling apart in real time. Our investigative team has been scouring these agencies’ own documents for well over a year now, and we’ve repeatedly pointed out the deceptive statements presented by BNM. One of those falsehoods concerns the release of female mosquitoes. From day one, BNM has carried on with the story that only male mosquitoes will be released for this project, tossing out ever-changing figures with no documentation to back those claims. What we found early on is that female mosquitoes that bite, breed, and spread disease will be released – thousands per week are allowed on Maui alone. With indisputable facts on the record, the state’s legal team is now attempting to backtrack BNM’s previous statements while downplaying the hazards these bacteria-infected females pose.
The draft environmental assessment (DEA) for Maui offered no details about the rate of accidental female release, and it wasn’t until we called them out on it in our DEA comments that they even addressed the topic. Their final environmental assessment (FEA) amends the “Human Health and Safety” section (Appendix B) to include the following:
Taking this statement apart piece by piece, the real potential risks to human health and safety tell an astonishingly different story:
“The released mosquitoes pose no risk to human health…Even if a female is released, a bite from a released female will pose no risk to humans and no greater risk to wildlife than a wild female mosquito currently in the environment. Wolbachia cannot live within vertebrate cells and cannot be transferred to humans even through the bite of an infected mosquito (Popovici et al. 2010)…Further, there is no indication that the released mosquitoes would be any better at transmitting disease to humans or wildlife. Popovici et al. (2010) addresses many potential concerns regarding releasing Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes.”
Actually, peer-reviewed studies have shown Wolbachia bacteria to cause increased pathogen infection in mosquitoes and to cause mosquitoes to become more capable of transmitting avian malaria and West Nile virus (bird and human). No studies have been done by these BNM agencies to assess potential increased disease-spreading capability caused by the specific strain(s) of Wolbachia the southern house mosquitoes will be infected with in the lab. This is irresponsible and totally unacceptable.
It’s also shocking that BNM continues to cite the Popovici et al. article to assert that released mosquitoes pose no risk to human health. This article is based on unsound science that has been discredited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA Human Studies Review Board met in 2018, and stated:
“The Board concluded that the research described in the article by Popovici et al. was not scientifically sound and does not provide reliable data to contribute to a weight of evidence determination for assessment of human health risks due to release of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes.”
We’re talking about human disease vectors being released on these islands, and this is the kind of science these agencies are using to back their safety claims?
Another untruth being perpetuated by BNM is that no new organisms or foreign bacteria are being introduced into our environment:
“Additionally, no new organisms would be introduced to Hawaiʻi by the proposed action. Humans are commonly bitten by the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, infected with the strain of Wolbachia that would be transfected into the southern house mosquitoes for release. The southern house mosquito also bites humans, and this species is also naturally infected with Wolbachia. Thus, humans in Hawaiʻi are regularly bitten by mosquitoes containing Wolbachia, including the strain that would be used in the proposed action, and no ill effects have ever been reported nor would there be a mechanism for this to occur.”
Yet, their own Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture application to the EPA for Section 18 Emergency Exemption use of the bacteria-infected mosquitoes (called “DQB Males”) states:
The bacteria used to produce these mosquitoes is coming from Malaysia. That is the very definition of foreign bacteria. If they’re lying about this, what else are they lying about? No comparison can be made to the effects on humans bitten by wild mosquitoes already here. These lab-altered mosquitoes and the bacteria they’re infected with are being brought in from outside the Hawaiian Islands. Again, no studies have been done by BNM to assess disease-spreading capability. To say that “no ill effects have ever been reported” is a tricky way of admitting that they have no idea.
There has never even been any previous documented use of southern house mosquitoes for Wolbachia stand-alone field release, and the East Maui and Kaua‘i project areas are the largest Wolbachia mosquito releases of any kind globally to date (Florida and Texas were the prior largest). Anyone living on or visiting these islands may find themselves to be a non-consenting human subject in these massive mosquito experiments.
Getting back to the topic of numbers, the FEA makes this fantastical claim:
“Only male mosquitoes will be released and only female mosquitoes bite animals or humans. The risk of females being accidentally released is estimated to be 1 out of 900 million…”
This same figure has been repeated by BNM multiple times this past year. In reality, the number of female mosquitoes that the EPA allows for accidental release is one female for every 250,000 males. This is confirmed in the project documents, including the 6/9/22 and 6/28/22 import requests for the mosquitoes, the EPA DQB Males Biological Evaluation, and the HDOA EPA Application for Emergency Exemption:
We can see from these documents that the figures vary wildly. Will it be one in 250,000 or one in 500,000? What happened to one in 900 million? Since quality control checks are optional, it seems like the safest bet is to assume that one female may be let loose for every 250,000 males, particularly since that’s what they’re allowed to do. Apparently, BNM has finally come to agree that this truth can no longer be contained. In an unexpected twist to this ever-evolving story, an attorney defending the state against Hawai‘i Unites in our court case challenging the mosquito releases finally said it out loud at last month’s BLNR meeting. Her testimony in support of the mosquito releases confirmed for the first time publicly that one in 250,000 is indeed the official figure:
“Using ITT [sic], male mosquitoes are injected with this incompatible strain of Wolbachia, and regardless what other folks say, Wolbachia lives actually inside of the ovarians and the reproductive organs, basically of mosquitoes, so when it’s transferred, this is why it works as like a, uh, mosquito birth control. Having one female mosquito out of 250,000 is such a small variable, and we don’t even know if that’s gonna go on to their offspring.”
Science! What she didn’t mention is that for the Maui project, one in 250,000 calculates to over 3,000 females that could be released every week. These females bite and breed. They can spread disease to birds and other wildlife, and to people. If those accidentally released females mate with the intentionally released males, their offspring will be viable. The introduced Wolbachia bacteria transmits vertically to those offspring. Just one female released can produce 160,000 more females in her eight-week lifespan. It only took three females accidentally released in Singapore to cause the mosquito population to be replaced with the lab-strain mosquitoes. Remember, we don’t know if these mosquitoes might be more capable of transmitting diseases. No studies have been done. This could be a catastrophe waiting to happen.
We do know that the lab-altered male mosquitoes can transmit pathogens and viruses to females through mating. This means that not only will the males be capable of spreading disease to any accidentally released females, but they can also infect the existing wild females already here. The Wolbachia bacteria can transmit horizontally through mating and potentially even transfer from the somatic cells of the body to the germ cells (reproductive cells). The male southern house mosquito (Culex quinquefasciatus) is also known to spread viruses to females venereally, including St. Louis encephalitis. In Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, dengue fever virus has been shown to transmit sexually. Because we have no studies of the mosquitoes being used for this project, there’s really no way of knowing what diseases the males might pass to females. There’s also no way of knowing what pathogens these mosquitoes are even being screened for prior to import into Hawai‘i, as our FOIA request to obtain that information from the EPA resulted in it being withheld as confidential.
Southern house mosquitoes transmit human diseases, including West Nile virus, elephantiasis, St. Louis encephalitis, and Western equine encephalitis. They’re also a potential vector of Zika virus. As noted earlier, the bacteria these mosquitoes are being infected with in the lab, Wolbachia, may even cause the mosquitoes to become more capable of transmitting West Nile virus to birds and humans. Why hasn’t this been studied? What about the other diseases here that could impact people’s health – why are these agencies not disclosing pathogen screening information, and why haven’t they studied the potential for their lab-altered mosquitoes to have increased capability of spreading these diseases?
Agency partners in Birds, Not Mosquitoes will continue attempting to deceive the public about the serious risks of these bacteria-infected mosquito releases. They’ve got an insectary to fund right here in Hawai‘i, and their intention is to mass-produce these lab-altered mosquitoes for release on the islands into perpetuity (forever). This first phase of their plan is a trojan horse that opens the door to the state’s long-term goals of producing and releasing CRISPR gene-edited mosquitoes, synthetic biology control tools, and gene drives into our environment. This irreversible desecration of sacred lands endangers the health of Hawai‘i’s people, native birds, wildlife, and the ‘āina.
You can help us stop this biotech experimentation agenda from escalating. Hawai‘i Unites has filed a case in environmental court seeking a ruling to require an Environmental Impact Statement to study the potential significant impacts of this project and to consider alternatives. We also have a hearing in progress for our Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction to stop the release of mosquitoes in East Maui. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to our organization to support our legal case and set a precedent for the voice of the people in the decision-making process. The corporations behind this technology want to use these islands as testing grounds. If we can prevent this travesty from continuing to threaten the well-being and safety of Hawai‘i, we will be a beacon of hope for a global movement to protect our natural world and the health of our communities for generations to come.
Mahalo,
Tina Lia
Founder
Hawai‘i Unites
HawaiiUnites.org
Hawai‘i Unites is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation and protection of our environment and natural resources.
