Question: could you geneticly modify mosquitos so that they reject the maleria parasite?

Ailsa Powell answered on 20 Jun 2011:

In theory yes you could, if you knew what you needed to change to make the mosquito reject the parasite and there is research going on in this area. The modified mosquitos could then be released but you would have to figure out how you would get these new mosquitos to replace or more realistically pass on their modified genes to the original mosquitoes. There wouldn’t be much sense in investing all the money into developing the mosquitos if you were going ever going to get a maximum of 50% able to reject the parasite for example.

There is also the ethical question of releasing genetically modified creatures into the environment – would you be certain that they would do no harm to the environment. There have been problems in the past where natural predators have been released as biological controls for pests only for the to become the problem themselves! And the genetically modified mosquitoes could have the same effect, so careful testing and thought would have to go into the release.

In summary, yes, in theory this is possible.