Considering Intergenerational Equity: The Ethics of Deploying a Mosquito Gene Drive in Sub-Saharan Africa, Felicia Sanders, UG '25 (2770420)

Malaria was eradicated in the United States in 1951, but it is now the sixth biggest cause of death in low-income nations, and conventional preventative approaches, like pesticides, are becoming increasingly ineffectual as mosquitoes evolve resistance to these pressures. As a result, scientists have been looking for new solutions, with gene drives being one of the most promising. A gene drive is a sort of genetic manipulation that may rapidly introduce new genes into a population. The ideal malaria preventive strategy would be to introduce a gene that eliminates females from the population. This would effectively limit the spread of malaria because females are the only ones capable of spreading it. Any discussion of genetic modification is usually accompanied by ethical concerns, but all current ethical debates seem to focus solely on intragenerational effects, or the ethical implications for the current generation. However, because mosquito eradication has long-term consequences, I argue that intergenerational ethics must also be considered. Intergenerational equity has three components: access, quality, and options. These three categories served as the framework for my essay, which I supplemented with biological research and analyzing current policy proposals to see if they meet the three intergenerational equity considerations. I concluded that, although current policy proposals for mosquito drives do not fully support all intergenerational equity principles, their deployment with additional regulations ensuring their reversibility, could be an effective tool in improving intra- and intergenerational equity.

Felicia Sanders '25: www.linkedin.com/in/feliciasanders03