NPR WAMU 1A Show Airs GMO Mosquito Misinformation

National Public Radio defies mission statement, uses supporters’ donations to air unscientific, one-sided GMO mosquito misinformation. Call on NPR to produce a show that is truly informative.

National Public Radio’s WAMU 1A show, produced by Amanda Williams, aired “Pest Control: Mutant Mosquitoes Come To Florida” to cover the highly controversial issue of the experimental release of GMO mosquitoes in the Florida Keys.

NPR claims its mission is “to create a more informed public” and its current slogan is “hear every voice.” But the recent 1A radio show was not informative, and we did not hear all sides of the issue. Instead, we heard a 46 minute advertisement promoting the corporate agenda of Oxitec, the British company that created the genetically engineered Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and has a financial interest in bringing them to market. This was poor journalism and does not come close to the standard of impartiality that NPR’s donors expect.

Following is our rebuttal of the most egregious elements of the program:

One-sided conversation. The first glaring problem was the absence of any guests that have an opposing view of Oxitec’s GMO mosquitoes. The live guests included Nathan Rose, Oxitec’s Head of Regulatory Affairs; Andrea Leal, Executive Director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, an agency that has proven to be wholly unresponsive to Florida Keys residents’ concerns; and Omar Akbari, professor and molecular biologist at UC San Diego, who was introduced as “not affiliated with Oxitec” but was anything but an independent scientific voice. Mr. Akbari sounded like a fanboy, fawning over genetically engineered insects and defending Oxitec.

Some concerns were read or audio played on-air by the host, but no live debates were allowed. Barry Wray, Executive Director of the Florida Keys Environmental Coalition, who opposes Oxitec, was allowed a whopping 5-second pre-recorded clip in which 1A did not air his complete statement. Maybe NPR’s slogan should be, “Hear some voices, partially.”

Fearmongering. The show begins with the host stating, “[Mosquitoes] kill hundreds of thousands of people every year by transmitting deadly diseases like malaria and yellow fever. In Florida, there’s a new effort to solve the problem.” The pro-GMO lobby often accuses non-GMO advocates of fearmongering. But this is exactly the scare tactic 1A uses to start the show. Malaria and yellow fever are not problems in the United States.

Irrelevant information. Malaria is transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes, not the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that Oxitec is targeting. So malaria is irrelevant to this story. What about yellow fever? The CDC says, “Yellow fever is a very rare cause of illness in U.S. travelers.” The disease is transmitted by Aedes aegypti to travelers in Africa and South America.

Relevant data excluded. Closely related but different from yellow fever, dengue fever is also transmitted by Aedes aegypti and has affected 110 people in Florida in 2020. But only 70 were locally-transmitted cases. The last small outbreak in Florida occurred in 2013. As a matter of fact, there have only been 332 dengue cases in the entire United States in 2020, of which 80 were locally-transmitted cases, according to the CDC. The rest were travel-associated, contracted outside of the U.S.

So do mosquito-borne illnesses kill hundreds of thousands of Floridians or Americans every year? Absolutely not. Is dengue a problem throughout the U.S.? No. Why would we allow Oxitec to release billions of risky GMO mosquitoes to fix a problem that does not exist?

For-profit corporate agenda. Oxitec’s goal is to sell their GMO Aedes aegypti mosquitoes for municipal use and directly to consumers in stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s across the country. Why? There is no logical reason to spread this risky technology across the country except to make Oxitec and its shareholders wealthy.

Misstatement of facts. Mr. Rose makes Oxitec’s often-repeated fraudulent claim that their technology reduces native mosquito populations by over 95%. But scientists working for the Cayman Islands government’s Mosquito Research and Control Unit (MRCU) dispute the results reported by Oxitec after their experiment in the Cayman Islands. “None of the scientists at MRCU would have said that the project was a success,” wrote Dr. Alan Wheeler, assistant director of the MRCU’s research and development office.

Zero evidence of disease reduction. There was much ado about mosquito-transmitted diseases throughout the 1A program, but they fail to mention that Oxitec has no data and has not proven that their GMO mosquitoes reduce disease transmission. Oxitec has even admitted elsewhere that the Florida Keys experiments will only track mosquito populations before and after GMO mosquito releases, not disease suppression or transmissions.

No cost comparison. Ms. Leal stated that having FKMCD staff go door to door is the agency’s best control method, but is an expensive mosquito abatement strategy. Leal presupposes that Oxitec’s GMO mosquitoes will be less expensive, but Oxitec has not given Florida Keys residents any indication of the costs of releasing GMO mosquitoes indefinitely. Aside from that, it is more logical to spend taxpayer money on what a majority of the taxpayers agree on, which is to not use GMO mosquitoes at all and ramp up other mosquito abatement strategies.

False statements about containment. The host reads a question on-air: “Is there a risk that the genetically modified mosquitoes from Florida or Brazil could find their way back to Africa, where they are native?” Mr. Rose answers, “The mosquitoes that we release will not persist in the environment long enough for that to happen… they are gone within a few weeks or a few months. So we don’t see that as a concern.” In response to a followup question about how invasive Aedes aegypti got to the U.S. in the first place, Mr. Rose answers, “They were probably brought over with some of the slave ships by the Portugeuse in the 16th century. When the mosquitoes came over, they brought the diseases with them.”

Mr. Rose’s own retelling of the history of Aedes aegypti in the U.S. is an admission that it is completely plausible that Oxitec’s GMO mosquitoes could travel beyond their intended target area. Mosquito travel would be far easier today considering our modern forms of transportation. Motorized cars, boats and planes travel much more quickly than 16th century ships. It isn’t a concern for Oxitec because Oxitec is only concerned about making millions of dollars, nothing else.

False statement about reducing pesticides. Near the end of the program, Mr Akbari makes an argument that Oxitec technology is better than using insecticides. But the notion that there are only two solutions, synthetic pesticides or GMO mosquitoes, is not only narrow-minded, it is just false. But there is also a contradiction in presenting this scenario in the first place. FKMCD has admitted before that releasing the GMO mosquitoes would not reduce pesticide spraying. And what is their solution if something goes wrong? More pesticides!

Biased from the start. 1A’s host is a good actor. She feigns concern. But her questions were scripted to readily support Oxitec’s talking points. And questions attributed to listeners that were chosen to be aired were the same. Despite opposition from at least half of the Florida Keys community due to science-based concerns, the discussion was one sided. Many important questions and concerns that the Florida Keys community, doctors, and public interest scientists have posed were not aired on the show. And in all cases, the host did not challenge any misleading or false statements made by the on-air guests.

So where’s the real truth? Certainly not within 1A’s 46 minute Oxitec advertisement.

The Coalition Against GMO Mosquitoes is calling on NPR, WAMU and 1A to produce a show that truly informs its listeners by hosting a debate or another show of equal length where there are an equal number of on-air academic scientists and guests of our choosing. There should be an equal number of questions or areas of discussion submitted from both sides. And there needs to be time for rebuttal.

We are calling on NPR and WAMU donors to withhold future donations until they live up to the mission “to create a more informed public” and follow their slogan to “hear every voice.”

The show can be heard here: https://the1a.org/segments/mosquitoes-florida-yikes.

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