Ben Bradford

New Zealand had been considering using this virus as well, but it wanted more testing first.

So what do you think happened at this point?

New Zealand farmers, losing millions of dollars as rabbits destroyed their crops, began taking little vacations to Australia to go hunting for infected rabbits.

They liquefied the body parts into virus-laden smoothies, which they spread on their fields.

Bam, New Zealand had the rabbit virus.

And what's the government going to do?

When it's out, it's out.

This is Kevin's fear.

If we do create a mosquito Jurassic Park to test Jerry, which we have to do to make sure he works and doesn't cause a ripple effect of unknown ecological destruction, Kevin says some New Zealand farmer is going to steal one of our mosquitoes.

Of course someone would do that.

And they would tell themselves a perfect story in which they're the hero, right?

If Jerry gets out, we don't know what harm he would cause because we haven't field tested.

Consider the possibilities.

Jerry and his descendants could travel around the world.

These mosquitoes would spawn only males wherever they go, leading to globally extinguishing all of his species.

Worse, what if it turns out Jerry can mate with another type of mosquito?

And he passes along his all-boys gene to one of them.

What if that one can mate with another species and so on?

Maybe that gene travels throughout all types of mosquito and does eradicate them entirely.

What if birds and spiders and flowers can't adapt to that loss and it creates a domino effect of environmental destruction?