b'Government Funded Research is a Wasteful Squandering of Public Money. Or is it?IT WAS THE 1950S . In the Southern U.S. screw- continued until 1950 when Knipling happened to come worms were literally screwing cattle, and figurativelyacross an article by Hermann Muller who had received doing the same to ranchers who were annually losingthe 1946 Nobel Prize for the discovery that mutations the equivalent of $1.8 billion in todays dollars.Thecan be induced by X-rays. This prompted Knipling to screwworm is the larva of Cochliomyia hominivorax,contact Muller and solicit his thoughts about sterilizing commonly known as the screwworm fly. The crea- the screwworm fly with X-rays. Mullers response that ture does look somewhat like a worm, and the littlethe idea was sound got the ball rolling. spikes that cover its body give the appearance ofBy this time, much to the relief of rabbits, Knipling the thread of a screw. It is these spikes that allow theand Bushland had found that large numbers of screw-worm to burrow into the flesh of animals as a screwworm flies could be raised on ground meat. Luckily, JOE SCHWARCZmight do. Then the screwworm starts chomping away,they also had a friend at a hospital with access to X-ray is the director ofeating the animal alive. Ranchers were at their witsequipment. Off they went with a brood of flies to give McGill Universitysend. Fortunes were being lost in dead cattle.the theory a shot. The X-rays did indeed render the Office for ScienceScientists were finally able to find a way to pro- flies infertile, and they did that without affecting their and Society whichverbially bring the screwfly to its knees, but it took alove life. But a lab experiment was one thing. Would has the mission ofcritical observation about the females sexual appetite,releasing the flies into the wild have an effect? And separating sensea laboratory full of rabbits, a Nobel laureates concernwhere could this be tried? Once again, chance opened from nonsense. about nuclear war, an X-ray machine, and a letter fromthe door.the Caribbean island of Curaao!Curaao was experiencing a screwworm fly infesta-The life cycle of the screwworm fly is only abouttion and goat herds were being decimated. An official three weeks, but that is long enough to cause cata- reached out to Knipling, who had made already made strophic damage. A female can lay up to 400 eggs ina name for himself in the scientific literature with his one shot, preferring an open wound where the eggspublications on diseases transmitted by biting insects. can hatch into larvae that immediately dive deeperThe entomologist jumped at the opportunity to carry into tissues. Such wounds may come from brand- out a real-world experiment! X-ray machines were not ing, dehorning, castrating or just being scratched bya practical way to sterilize large numbers of flies, but it barbed wire. An animal can die from damage to criticalturned out that radiation from Cobalt-60, a byproduct organs or from secondary bacterial infections of openof nuclear reactors, fit the bill. In 1953 millions of sterile wounds. Once the larvae have gorged themselves,flies were dropped from the air over Curacao and the they drop to the ground where they burrow into top- screwworm fly was eradicated! The success of that soil, pupate, and emerge as flies to start the dreadfulexperiment led to a widespread program of sterile fly cycle again.release in the U.S. and by 1966 cattle were no longer In the 1930s, entomologists Edward Knipling andtormented, ranchers relaxed, and consumers enjoyed Raymond Bushland were struggling to find a solutionlower beef prices. to the screwfly problem. Rabbits inflicted with lesionsSporadic infestations by screwworm flies migrat-proved to be an ideal breeding ground, and as the fliesing from South America have occurred since, but today multiplied, Knipling made a crucial observation thata large facility in Panama continuously raises sterile while male flies were promiscuous, females mated onlyflies ready to be released at the first sign of an infesta-once! If somehow male flies could be sterilized andtion. Curiously, given that government funded research released into the wild, females, unaware of the malesresulted in the development of an effective method to lack of potency, would be lured into mating but wouldcontrol this devastating insect, the granting of govern-produce no offspring.ment funds to study the mating habits of the screw-Knipling and Bushland were floating the idea ofworm fly is still sometimes brought up as an example of some sort of chemical agent that would sterilize males.wasteful squandering of public money. Thats a nonsen-However, none of the chemicals they tried was effec- sical view. Without such funding, researchers would not tive in sterilizing flies. The researchers frustrationhave been able to successfully screw the screwfly.SW80/ SEEDWORLD.COMDECEMBER 2023'