Knock, knock: Who’s there? Another mos!
Why the secrecy over larva deployment to fight dengue?
The Sri Lanka Medical Research Institute announced on Wednesday that it had secretly released to the Lankan environment, specifically to the urban jungle, a special brand of mosquito to do battle with the dengue kind and have it for its dinner.
Apparently this species, scientifically known as Toxorhynchites splendens is bigger than the dengue mosquito and is known as ‘elephant mosquito’ or ‘mosquito eater’ with its larva exhibiting a special fondness for the larva of the dengue carrying mosquito.
Dr. Sagarika Samarasinghe, Director of the Entomology and Parasitology Unit of the Medical Research Institute (MRI) revealed: “The group headed by me started establishing the Toxorhynchites splendens colony in 2016. This is a tough research and therefore we can’t do it overnight. We have released these larvae to the environment several times without publicising it, and this is the end result of the hard work and research conducted at the MRI".
It’s good to know that scientists have been busy working on ways and means to combat the deadly dengue menace and have thought fit to employ the services of a cannibal mosquito which has been used in many countries as a weapon to fight dengue.
But why the secrecy? Was it to prevent alerting the dengue mos that there was a new kid in town gunning for it?
Dr. Samarasinghe assures that “these larvas do not suck blood as their Proboscis has bent 90 degrees backwards. Therefore, no harm would be caused to humans.”
But whatever the degree of Toxorhynchites splendens’ pecker may be, neither do flies suck human blood but the diseases they carry are far too many to mention. And what disease the ‘elephant mosquito’ will carry in its arsenal, especially one given to feeding on its own ilk – and that, too, from a young larva stage – cannot be predicted.
The consequences of deploying one parasite to eradicate another are well documented to give even scientists pause.
Whilst the public must indeed be grateful to Sagarika and her team for burning the midnight oil and being foster mothers to a colony of mosquitoes for over an year as a means to reduce the dengue threat, won’t the public sleep more assured if the MRI were to announce in advance the release of life forms to the environment?
That not even the scientists, dabbling in their mystery works, have the right to play God and breed colonies of possibly disease carrying insects in their shrouded laboratories and secretly unleash it to a habitat colonized by humans? That such an outlandish decision must first be subject to discussion and debate and its good and bad first weighed by experts other than those at the MRI before it is introduced or promoted in the environment? Was even the President, who is also the Minister of the Environment, informed before this decision was taken?
And for the people to be spared of the nightmare when there is a double midnight knock on the door only to be told: ‘Another mosquito. An elephant sized one, carrying a Pandora‘s Box of diseases sans hope.”