b'Government Funded Research Is a Wasteful Squandering of Public Money. Or is it?IT WAS THE 1950s . In the southern U.S. screwwormsarticle by Dr. Hermann Muller who had received the were literally screwing cattle, and figuratively doing the1946 Nobel Prize for the discovery that mutations same to ranchers who were annually losing the equiva- can be induced by X-rays. This prompted Knipling to lent of $1.8 billion in todays dollars.The screwwormcontact Muller and solicit his thoughts about sterilizing is the larva of Cochliomyia hominivorax, commonlythe screwworm fly with X-rays. Mullers response that known as the screwworm fly. The creature does lookthe idea was sound got the ball rolling. somewhat like a worm, and the little spikes that coverBy this time, much to the relief of rabbits, Knipling its body gives the appearance of the thread of a screw.and Bushland had found that large numbers of screw-It is these spikes that allow the worm to burrow intoworm flies could be raised on ground meat. Luckily, the flesh of animals as a screw might do. Then thethey also had a friend at a hospital with access to X-ray JOE SCHWARCZ screwworm starts chomping away, eating the animalequipment. Off they went with a brood of flies to give PhD is Director, McGilalive. Ranchers were at their wits end. Fortunes werethe theory a shot. The X-rays did indeed render the University Office forbeing lost in dead cattle.flies infertile, and they did that without affecting their Science and Society,Scientists were finally able to find a way to proverbi- love life. But a lab experiment was one thing. Would Montreal, QC, Canada. ally bring the screwfly to its knees, but it took a criti- releasing the flies into the wild have an effect? And cal observation about the females sexual appetite, awhere could this be tried? Once again, chance opened laboratory full of rabbits, a Nobel laureates concernthe door.about nuclear war, an X-ray machine, and a letter fromCuraao was experiencing a screwworm fly infesta-the Caribbean island of Curaao!tion and goat herds were being decimated. An official The life cycle of the screwworm fly is only aboutreached out to Knipling, who had made already made three weeks, but that is long enough to cause cata- a name for himself in the scientific literature with his strophic damage. A female can lay up to 400 eggs inpublications on diseases transmitted by biting insects. one shot, preferring an open wound where the eggsThe entomologist jumped at the opportunity to carry can hatch into larvae that immediately dive deeperout a real-world experiment! X-ray machines were not into tissues. Such wounds may come from branding,a practical way to sterilize large numbers of flies, but it dehorning, castrating or just being scratched by barbedturned out that radiation from Cobalt-60, a byproduct wire. An animal can die from damage to critical organsof nuclear reactors, fit the bill. In 1953 millions of sterile or from secondary bacterial infections of open wounds.flies were dropped from the air over Curacao and the Once the larvae have gorged themselves, they drop toscrewworm fly was eradicated! The success of that the ground where they burrow into topsoil, pupate, andexperiment led to a widespread program of sterile fly emerge as flies to start the dreadful 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 migrating proved to be an ideal breeding ground, and as the fliesfrom South America have occurred since, but today a multiplied, Knipling made a crucial observation thatlarge facility in Panama continuously raises sterile flies while male flies were promiscuous, females mated onlyready to be released at the first sign of an infestation. once! If somehow male flies could be sterilized andCuriously, 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 some sort of chemical agent that would sterilize males.of wasteful squandering of public money. Thats a However, none of the chemicals they tried was effectivenonsensical view. Without such funding, researchers in sterilizing flies. The researchers frustration continuedwould not have been able to successfully screw the until 1950 when Knipling happened to come across anscrewfly.SWJUNE 2024SEEDWORLD.COM /15'