Meeting 1195 minutes

Minutes from the 1195th Meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club

President Avalon Owens called the 1195th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club to order at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, March 12th 2019 in MCZ 101. Approx. 25 members and guests were in attendance.

New business:
Julie Croston of Cambridge School volunteers seeks mentors to work with 4th and 5th graders on nature journaling.
Jay Shetterly announced a bioblitz being organized by Peter Alden to be held in Concord July 4-6.
Avalon requested nominations for 2019-2020 Ent Club officers.

Old business:
Two people were confirmed for membership: Samuel Church and Crystal Maier

Our speaker was Dr. Kevin Esvelt of the MIT Media Lab. His topic was “The gene drive, New World screwworm, and the foundational assumption”
Following President Avalon’s masterful introduction, Dr. Esvelt discussed his widely reported efforts to control Lyme disease on Nantucket by engineering immunity in white footed mice through what he calls “heritable ecological vaccination”.

The Nantucket project is an early step toward “local, open responsive science”, the focus of Dr. Esvelt’s work with gene drives. More recently, Esvelt and his Sculpting Evolution group have developed self-exhausting ‘daisy drives’ in an effort to limit the effects of engineered genes in wild populations.

Kevin gave an overview of the New World screwworm’s natural history in the Americas, and of early methods to control it. He has plans for a transgenic male-only strain to be deployed in Uruguay for field trials. Dr. Esvelt acknowledges researvations many have about releasing transgenic organisims into the environment. His response: when you have the technological means to intervene, you are responsible for using the technology, or not. The question is, who decides?

The meeting was adjourned at 9:05 pm for discussion and refreshments.

Respectfully submitted, Andrea Golden, CEC Secretary