In 2009, Bill Gates gave TEDTalk in which he released mosquitoes to make a point about malaria.

Read about Oxitec[1] a while ago and found their approach quite interesting!

[1]https://www.oxitec.com/

This looks promising. How effective has it been in reality?

It’s early. Studies in Brazil show up to 90% reduction (Oxitec’s numbers) and they’re just now going into their third season of testing in the Florida keys, working with the EPA. They say the results are good, and I assume they must be if the government is letting them expand the trials. I think we’ll have hard numbers soon.

I’ve been following this for years just out of curiosity. It’s a brilliant solution and a brilliant business model. Because the genetic alteration kills the mosquitoes, you have to keep buying them from the company. It both makes it so that there’s seemingly little risk to the environment and subscription revenue.

That’s great. If we can drive disease carrying ones to extinction why do we need to keep buying this?

You probably can't drive them to extinction this way. The introduced mosquitoes only help within a small range (~400m I think) of where they put the little devices they come from, because that particular mosquito doesn't travel far from where it's born. And even within that range, a 95% reduction is great, but the year you stop, that 5% will just start doing whatever they did before and a couple years later you'll be back to where you were beforehand.Insect populations grow exponentially.