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Illustration of a genetically modified mosquito. [File Courtesy]
On Monday, February 9, renowned lawyer and advocate senior counsel Paul Muite wrote on X: ‘@gatesfoundation: Our Capital city, Nairobi, is now flooded with mosquitoes released from your laboratories to eliminate malaria-carrying ones, we’re told. We believe your genetically modified mosquitoes are designed to harm us.
They’re now busy biting children and the elderly’.
The tweet kicked up a storm. @Micky-right replied, ‘Why do our African governments allow this?’ @NkoituOle, appearing to agree with Muite’s sentiments, wrote, ‘Just now I was taking tea in a restaurant in Nairobi and the mosquitoes can't give me a chance to sip my tea...’ @Kirwa44 questioned the unintended consequences that would come out of the said experiments. They wrote:
"We still don't understand 99.9 per cent of the universe… exterminating mosquitoes without knowing their role in the ecosystem cannot be allowed.’
By yesterday evening, the post had attracted over 270 replies – the majority agreeable.
It forced the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to issue a statement denying the accusations. In a statement on X, the foundation said it does not operate mosquito laboratories or conduct mosquito releases in Nairobi or anywhere else in the country.
However, the foundation funds research on innovative anti-malaria tools and solutions in Kenya. Such studies are handled by experts under strict scientific regulations. The foundation also said that everything they do in Kenya follows national laws and local oversight.
And now, a group of advocates has formally demanded that Kenyans have access to all documents pertaining to Muite’s claims.
‘Our clients are deeply concerned about reports and public discourse suggesting that Kenya may be hosting, facilitating, partnering in, permitting, or otherwise enabling activities involving lab-engineered mosquitoes, including but not limited to genetically modified mosquitoes, gene-drive mosquitoes, sterile-male release technologies, or any comparable genetically engineered vector-control interventions intended to suppress, replace, or “eliminate” malaria-vector mosquito populations,’ Dahir, Affey, Abdullahi & Associates Advocates wrote to the permanent secretary at State Department for Public Health and Professional Standards.
An informed guess would suggest that Muite was addressing the gene-drive technology.
Gene drive is a transformative technology used to introduce genetic modifications into wild mosquito populations to reduce their population of those that transmit a specific disease.
‘If Kenya is permitting activities that could culminate in environmental introduction of engineered organisms, the consequences, both intended and unintended, may not be fully reversible,’ the advocates make their case.
Before going to press, The Standard could not ascertain the existence of a gene drive programme in Kenya, or the extent to which it has already progressed, if indeed it is done in Kenya.
‘Our clients formally demand that the Ministry of Health, under your administrative authority and in coordination with the National Biosafety Authority and NEMA, immediately halt and/or suspend any further steps that advance or operationalise any such programme…’
The advocates are expecting a response within 21 days, as indicated in the Access to Information Act. Failure to meet their demands, they intimated, could attract a lawsuit or further legal action.
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