5 ms·
Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)
- Levitating 4mo agoThe Atlantic has two[1][2] rather good articles on the topic. [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-eating-worms-disease-containment-america-panama/611026/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea... [2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/05/screwworms-outbreak-united-states/682925/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/05/screwwor...
- casey2 4mo agoApparently they feed larvae a warm slurry
- Havoc 4mo agoChances of current US gov mounting a coordinated scientific campaign to get on top of this seem vanishingly small to me. They’re busy defunding and dismantling any gov operation that smells like science
- cyanydeez 4mo agoIf we all pass around the hat we can make a bet on Kalshi that they "WONT" do this. Right? That's effective democracy!
- tennfown 4mo ago[dead]
- inigyou 4mo agoI 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?"
- bell-cot 4mo agoJust contemplate who is building major facilities in central and southern Texas, and the potential for poetic justice.
- zdragnar 4mo agoWe already have medicines that treat the problem. We've had it solved for a long time. We didn't need to genetically modify flies to solve it then, and we don't now. See sibling threads.
- inigyou 4mo agoIs this what ivermectin actually treats? Everything comes full-circle.
- squibonpig 4mo agoYeah we did have it solved for a long time. We had no screwworms at all in the country. That was a great solution that lasted decades. Why would having to do all the work of applying medication, paying for the medication, animals that you catch late dying of infection and paying for those animals, people occasionally getting screwworms, pets dying to screwworms, etc etc etc be better or cheaper? Also they don't genetically modify flies they still just irradiate the larva.
- magicalist 4mo ago> We already have medicines that treat the problem 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.
- brendoelfrendo 4mo agoWe didn't need to genetically modify them, we just sterilized them with x rays and the released masses of sterilized flies into the population. We had that tech in the 50s and wiped them out in the 60s. The best treatment we had was eliminating them from the United States and that's no longer reality.
- kevin_thibedeau 4mo agoThey're building a new breeding facility in the US. They can't pull a Don't Look Up on this one because of the powerful business interests they need to placate.
- atoav 4mo agoHeadline from March of last year: Bird flu, screwworm monitoring among foreign aid programs killed by Trump See: https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/22636-bird-flu-screwworm-monitoring-among-foreign-aid-programs-killed-by-trump https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/22636-bird-flu-screwworm... Elect stupid leaders, get stupid consequences.
- timr 4mo agoAs the article you've linked to makes clear, this problem predates the cut in funding.
- mittensc 4mo agoit is the admin responsibility to protect its citizens. has it done anything to prevent/mitigate this? or the opposite?
- jurgenburgen 4mo agoOh great, then the next admin can blame this one when the problem is still around. Why solve a problem when you can just blame the other guys.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- timr 4mo agoThe current administration is funding an increase in response: https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/nws-visit-policy-brief.pdf https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/nws-visit... It's right there, linked in TFA. The press release provided by the GP is instead discussing funding for the "UN Food and Agriculture Organization", which is different. Apparently they also do some unspecified amount of work on the issue.
- brendoelfrendo 4mo agoThat aid money went, in part, to preventing the spread of screwworms in Central America. As of 2024, the flies were mostly eradicated in Mexico and efforts were on-going in Panama to wipe them out down to the Darien Gap. In less than 2 years we've gone from them being almost entirely eradicated in North America to infections observed in the United States.
- silexia 4mo ago[flagged]
- BobaFloutist 4mo ago>We have had our access to medications for livestock severely curtailed over recent years. Oh no, tell me it's not ivermectin...
- GenerocUsername 4mo agoIt is
- readthenotes1 4mo agoIvermectin is a very potent drug against parasites. That's probably why it worked so well in third world countries to "treat" COVID-- It didn't affect the virus but it did reduce the immune burden on the body by getting rid of other stuff
- ifyoubuildit 4mo agoAre you saying this because you only recognize the name from breathless covid propaganda? Or because you know ivermectin is pretty important in livestock management.
- BobaFloutist 4mo agoBoth! I think it would be unfortunate if a valuable deworming drug was difficult to access in an acute worm crisis because it had became unexpectedly politically salient from an crisis that did not involve worms.
- undersuit 4mo agoIvermectin is readily given to livestock. Sheep even get immersed in a bath of it, you can buy sheep drench in the same farm supply store you'll find the apple flavored ivermectin paste for horses.
- skolskoly 4mo ago
- jmward01 4mo agoTrust in science is so low in the US that this was bound to happen. The author's conclusion nails it: But institutional failures like this aren’t just the aggregate failure of a number of irresponsible people, they are a failure of a cultural attitude that doesn’t demand excellence from everyone in order to get the job done. I'll add though that when crisis happens the entity 'doing something about it' suddenly looks amazing, even if they were the cause. That means that it is a winning political strategy to create a lot of crisis so you can solve a few of them and look like a hero.
- readthenotes1 4mo agoIs this like fouci funding gain of function research and then being in charge of managing results (including but not limited to suppressing information about his role in it)?
- jmward01 4mo agono
- devin 4mo agoCan't even spell the name right? Come on, man.
- squibonpig 4mo agoYall ain't sending your best huh
- somelamer567 4mo agoSpotted the intellectual.
- FrustratedMonky 4mo agoWas it ever really suppressed, if everyone knew about it? Because it was public information. No conspiracy. The Right: "Nobody is talking about subject X, where is free speech". -> meanwhile -> "Everyone is talking about subject X", because you always had free speech. It was just a McGuffin to rile up the base and take control so you can suppress others.
- somelamer567 4mo agoOrdinarily, we wouldn't have issues, but seeing as the US is now a full-blown kakistocracy, being run into the ground by know-nothings and mental cases, I don't have much hope of seeing a competent response.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- LarsDu88 4mo agoWhen I was doing my PhD in bio one of my colleagues developed something called CRISPR gene drive, which had the potential of exterminating species wholesale. There was talk of using it to wipe out mosquito populations. The riskiness of it was quite high though. Wonder if people will consider reviving it in this case.
- hristov 4mo agoThis article is misleading because it does not mention Trump or Musk or Doge, and they were mostly responsible for the new outbreak in the US. Mexican cattle imports were banned in the US in 2024 because of the screw worm. Then trump allowed mexican cattle imports in February 2025 even though the screw worm situation was not resolved. Then, in March 2025, Musk's DOGE cut funding for COPEG, the organization that suppresses the screw worm in Panama. Then the screw worm really spread over Mexico and the United states. The administration then stopped mexican cattle imports in the summer of 2025 again, panicked because of the spread of the screw worm, then started them again in the fall of 2025, panicked because of high beef prices. Panama was the ideal place to control the screw worm because it was a small chokepoint. The flies that birth the screw worm cannot fly far by themselves, the screw worm moves with cattle, and cattle almost always moves by land. So COPEG acting at the chokepoint was a cheap and effective way to keep the screw worm from entering north america. The article talks about how great COPEG is, it does not mention that Musk's DOGE cut their funding. But now the screw worm is all over Mexico and the US, the choke point is lost. Now they are spending much more money all over Latin America and the US with much smaller effect.
- timr 4mo ago> This article is misleading because it does not mention Trump or Musk or Doge The article doesn’t mention those things because you’re wrong about both the facts and the timeline, and you’d know that, had you read the article. > Mexican cattle imports were banned in the US in 2024 because of the screw worm. Then trump allowed mexican cattle imports in February 2025 even though the screw worm situation was not resolved. True, but a red herring. The first cases of Mexican screwworm were in late 2024 / early 2025 [1]. The current circumstances began long before the current presidential administration (at least 2020), as TFA correctly notes. > Then, in March 2025, Musk's DOGE cut funding for COPEG, the organization that suppresses the screw worm in Panama. No. The funding cut was for an unrelated UN agency (FAO) not COPEG [2]. FAO does not implement the fly eradication program, per their own website [3], but partisan critics have purposely confused the two issues, which you can see an example of at [4]. They mention COPEG, then talk about the FAO issue, then don’t mention that the one is unrelated to the other, because they want the reader to confuse the two. In fact, the administration did not cut funding to COPEG, funding $165M in FY2025, with a supplemental grant of $21M the same year [5]. I have my problems with the current administration, and certainly don’t think they’re innocent here, but this kind of fact-free political backbiting that actively confuses the issue drives me batty. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexico-confirms-first-human-case-screwworm-myiasis-2025-04-19/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexico-confirms-first... [2] https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/22636-bird-flu-screwworm-monitoring-among-foreign-aid-programs-killed-by-trump https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/22636-bird-flu-screwworm... [3] https://www.fao.org/animal-health/animal-diseases/new-world-screwworm/en https://www.fao.org/animal-health/animal-diseases/new-world-... [4] https://ticotimes.net/2026/06/06/flesh-eating-fly-that-spread-through-costa-rica-has-reached-texas https://ticotimes.net/2026/06/06/flesh-eating-fly-that-sprea... [5] https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IN/HTML/IN12558.html https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IN/HTML/IN125...
- egberts1 4mo agoOther than chronic South America and Libya outbreaks, screwworm has been around forever. Coupled with SIT, pyrethroid, doramectin, ivermectin, debriding, dressing are just about 100% effective. Thanks to our enlarged 230-strong Federal-contracted field workers.