I heard there was one keeping this under control. It involved transgenic flies, which sounds close to transgender. DOGE ended it. It was also pitched as "why are we studying the mating habits of flies?"
No.
First, the problem here predates DOGE by an entire presidential administration or more. If you had read the article, you’d know that the northward migration of flies started at least in 2020.
Second, the thing you’re misremembering has no relation to this program. It was funding for transgenic animals in a completely different area of research.
You are repeating hearsay that sounds like it should be the reason. It confirms your political priors while ironically making you feel smug about your scientific knowledge. I’m not a fan of the current administration, but seeing so many people here bend over backwards to blame this on their political enemies, without even a hint of intellectual curiosity is more depressing than anything the politicians have done. Your political team can be incompetent too — and probably is!
You are making the same error. Other Republicans (if not Trump) indeed criticized government-funded research into the screwworm lifecycle. Denying that the party of the president has been opposed to both science and regulation on principle -- including with this particular crisis -- makes you look naive at best, dishonest at worst.
https://cra.org/govaffairs/blog/2012/04/members-of-congress-...
That sentence might have been stronger if you'd written:
“but seeing so many people here bend over backwards to blame this on my political enemies, without even a hint of intellectual curiosity…”
See sibling threads.
Also they don't genetically modify flies they still just irradiate the larva.
We do have treatments of screwworm infestations, but it involves physically removing the larva and usually removing tissue as well as systemic treatments like antiparasitics. It's labor intensive and not cheap.
It also doesn't actually fix the _overall_ problem because screwworms will happily lay eggs in wild mammals too and so you will constantly be treating your livestock.
> We've had it solved for a long time
Yes, we solved it with mass releases of sterile flies over decades.
"Involve transgenics" is broad enough cover the intern doing literature reviews on related subjects. The discovery process on an unfamiliar domain is a jargon/term of art minefield, and the phrases that fly past me turn in to shibboleths.