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Public response to a proposed field trial of genetically engineered mosquitoes in the United States

Published on April 30, 2018   25 min

A selection of talks on Genetics & Epigenetics

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0:00
It's a pleasure to be able to present this work today. My name is Cinnamon Bloss. I am an Associate Professor at the University of California, San Diego. The title of my talk is Public Response to a Proposed Field Trial of Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes in the United States. This is a case study analysis that I'll be speaking about today.
0:20
So, on August 11th, 2009 in Rochester, New York, a 34-year-old female showed up at her primary care physician with a headache, fever and was ended up being treated for a urinary tract infection. Two days later, she still didn't feel right. She came back to her physician with a worsening headache. She had lightheadedness, retro orbital eye pain which is sort of a neurological red flag. She ended up being referred to the emergency room and at that time had a negative CAT scan and a lumbar puncture. Over the course of her short stay in the emergency room, her lightheadedness resolved and she was sent home after about a seven-hour stay there.
1:05
On August 17th, she came back again to her position for a third visit saying, "I just don't feel right." At that point, her physician learned that she had just returned from a one-week trip to Key West, Florida where she had received multiple mosquito bites. At that point, an infectious disease specialist was brought in and a serum test that they did at that time was sent to the CDC and found to be positive for dengue fever.
1:35
So she was considered patient zero for a dengue outbreak that occurred in Florida beginning at that time. On August 31st, the second patient emerged, a local Florida resident who is positive for dengue. At that point, the Florida Department of Public Health did what's called a serosurvey and randomly tested households in Florida. Of about 240 people that were tested, 13 or about five percent had evidence of recent dengue infection. In a number of months later, by December of 2010, there were a total of 88 confirmed cases of dengue associated with this outbreak. This was the first instance of dengue cases acquired in the continental United States outside of the Texas-Mexico border since 1945 and the first locally acquired cases in Florida since 1934.
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Public response to a proposed field trial of genetically engineered mosquitoes in the United States

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