Gene Drive, An Outside In view

I must admit, that In my entire life time, I have never deliberated about mosquitoes, their identity, importance, impact, and role in the world we live in.

For me, they have been associated with vaccine, flu, malaria, dengue, COVID, Coil, repellent and Krantiveer* in this order

While doing a team activity on Responsible Strategy on Gene drive in mosquitoes, to prevent and eradicate malaria, which still claims 59% lives effected by it, even after medicine being successful to control COVID which came much later.

Gene drive is method by which the mosquitoes which spread malaria, are modified and released in concentrated areas by which when they mate the population of mosquitoes which cause malaria reduces/ eradicated.

The point of deliberation, was is this ethical, should government take this up and drive it like COVID vaccination, what are economic impacts, what are ecological impacts, how will the society react to this, playing god role by science and technology. Altering the nature's course.

In search of the above we discussed the key stakeholders, Government the key sponsor of this work, the industry, the reasearch and Philintropic organisation who have generous grants flowing into this.The society which plays a key role in accepting this and in building awareness by quelling the misconceptions involved around the subject.

While individual, younger population,  elderly and the pregnant women are key impacted, the people from EWS and sanitation workers who work in highly susceptible areas will be benefactora from this drive.

There came a point to look at this from mosquitoes point of view as we are altering the entire identity and whilebtgere are many known illa from them but they play a key role ecological balance, will the drive disturb the equilibrium, no one knows. What the future will hold except that Brazil has implemented this and has a successful use cases but it has not passed the time test of cycles to evaluate how the moaqui6are building immunity and howbit is impacting in other ways.

If this becomes successful at a large scale, can thia be used to solve other key issues using the same technology.

Or can this be misused and be turned it into a bio warfare, to attack cross borders.

Gene drive will offer sldeaired results but needs to be executed in orderly manner to ensure it doesn't land up crashing or in hands of rogue drivers 

The intent, efficacy needs to be evaluated including the impact, while the cost of this needs to be weighed with the present available substitutes.

Till the Gene Driven mosquito lands on our skin, remember to safe guard, using hands, wash regularly, keep surrounding near and clean. Take precautions which are in our control

* Krantiveer, a Hindi motion picture where Nana Patekar the protagonist says this very famous dialogue, "Ek machar admi ko hijada bana deta hain". Do watch YouTube clip of this power packed scene