by Christoph — Back in 2003, the British ge­neti­cist Austin Burt sug­gested the de­vel­op­ment of "Site-spe­cific self­ish genes as tools for the con­trol and ge­netic en­gi­neer­ing of nat­ural pop­u­la­tions". He wanted to stim­u­late dis­cus­sions on the de­sir­abil­ity ‒ and fea­si­bil­ity ‒ of erad­i­cat­ing or ge­net­i­cally mod­i­fy­ing par­tic­u­lar species, namely the Anophe­les mos­qui­toes, which are...