Anthony James [...] a microbiologist at the University of California, Irvine [...] and his team just ended a year-long experiment in southern Mexico. They tested an engineered gene that renders female mosquitoes — the gender that transmits dengue through bites — harmless by making them unable to fly. [...] With no international regulations or guidelines governing trials of ”transgenic” organisms, the field can seem a controversial free-for-all. […..] ”We then get this weird situation where Oxitec does a release and now people are taking it seriously,” James, 60, says in a phone interview. ”We’ve been trying to get people to listen to us for a long, long time.”

Still, James says Oxitec didn’t do enough to involve Grand Cayman residents. ”We would never do it that way,” he says.