Posted September 30, 2019
Dr José Maria Gusman Ferraz was asked by fellow members of Brazil’s biosafety commission (CTNBio), which approved the GM mosquito project, to visit the city of Juazeiro where Oxitec’s GM mosquitoes were being released. His technical visit involved checking out biosafety conditions at the lab where the GM mosquitoes were being produced, and checking how they were being released into the local environment and how the people living there were responding to the project. What he discovered so shocked him that in his report he called on his fellow regulators to suspend the release of the GM mosquitoes until further health and environmental impact studies were done. In particular, he highlighted the contempt that he felt Oxitec was displaying towards the safety of the local population, who he says were being reduced to mere guinea pigs. Read more.