Tag Archives: Sterile

Last week was my final week living in Singapore. I don’t plan on ever returning. Behind the curtains of the hawker stands and the brand new five billion dollar casino, there is a struggle in Singapore. A struggle that is constrained to the small boundaries of this city-state, but reflects issues rooted in the human experience. What happens when everything goes right?

Last year, the National Environment Agency's (NEA's) Environmental Health Institute began doing laboratory tests of male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with a bacteria, Wolbachia, that causes their mating with wild females to produce sterile eggs. These eggs do not develop into mosquitoes. The NEA's tests found that male Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes can compete with wild males for mates.