How screwworm sex is helping fight Zika

The ins and outs of screwworm sex may not sound like a topic that would arouse passions.

Yet it seduced a pair of American entomologists who dedicated years to unravelling the flesh-eating creature’s carnal exploits — sparking derision and accusations of wasteful spending.

More than half a century later and years after their deaths, Edward Knipling and Raymond Bushland are being honoured with the Golden Goose award, which recognises worthy work that was at first thought “silly, odd or obscure”.

“Screwworm research may sound like a joke, but it isn’t,” award creator Jim Cooper said in a statement this week.

Knipling and Bushland created the “sterile insect technique” (SIT) for eradicating disease-bearing creatures such as the screwworm fly (also known as blowfly), the tsetse fly and the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits the Zika virus.

It involves sterilising insects with radiation in the lab and releasing them in infested areas, where sterile males mate with females to produce infertile eggs.

“It saved the livestock industry billions and is giving us a way to fight Zika,” said Cooper.

The screwworm lays its eggs in the open wounds of warm-blooded animals, especially cattle. The larvae eat into the animal’s flesh, and can kill a cow in less than two weeks.

Barring an interruption for World War II, Knipling and Bushland did their research in the 1930s to 1950s “on a shoestring budget and in the face of ridicule”, said the Golden Goose statement.

By 1982, however, their method had led to the eradication of screwworm fly in the United States, and in many other countries since.

“Sometimes, offbeat, quirkysounding science is the best science, paving the way for discoveries years down the road which can revolutionise medicine, physics, biology, technology and how we view the world,” said awards backer Randy Hultgren.

Bushland died in Texas in 1995 at 84, and Knipling in Virginia five years later at 90.

The award, funded by science institutes and universities, will be bestowed posthumously i n September. — AFP