Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

https://www.marginallycompelling.com/p/oh-good-screwworms-are-back

by timr • 1 month ago

81 59 1 month ago

marginallycompelling.com

Levitating• 1 month ago

The Atlantic has two[1][2] rather good articles on the topic.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/05/screwwor...

casey2• 1 month ago

Apparently they feed larvae a warm slurry

Havoc• 1 month ago

Chances 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• 1 month ago

If we all pass around the hat we can make a bet on Kalshi that they "WONT" do this. Right? That's effective democracy!

inigyou2• 1 month ago

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?"

bell-cot• 1 month ago

Just contemplate who is building major facilities in central and southern Texas, and the potential for poetic justice.

zdragnar• 1 month ago

We 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.

timr10• 1 month ago

I heard there was one keeping this under control. It involved transgenic flies, which sounds close to transgender. DOGE ended it.

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!

kevin_thibedeau• 1 month ago

They'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• 1 month ago

Headline 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...

Elect stupid leaders, get stupid consequences.

timr10• 1 month ago

As the article you've linked to makes clear, this problem predates the cut in funding.

mittensc• 1 month ago

it is the admin responsibility to protect its citizens.

has it done anything to prevent/mitigate this? or the opposite?

jurgenburgen• 1 month ago

Oh 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.

maeglin• 1 month ago

I'm not sure what your point is here.

Yes, the screwworm problem predates the funding cut. Surely that should prompt an increase or at least a maintenance of existing funding for monitoring programs though, certainly not a decrease.

I think atoav is saying the /stupid consequence/ is the cut in funding itself, not the screwworm resurgence.

biophysboy2• 1 month ago

The argument is not that cutting funding caused the problem; the argument is that you have to use money to solve the problem.

fanatic2pope• 1 month ago

Umm, yes? The funding was put in place because of the problem.

jmward014• 1 month ago

Trust 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• 1 month ago

Is 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)?

jmward014• 1 month ago

devin• 1 month ago

Can't even spell the name right? Come on, man.

squibonpig2• 1 month ago

Yall ain't sending your best huh

somelamer5672• 1 month ago

Spotted the intellectual.

FrustratedMonky• 1 month ago

Was 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.

madaxe_again• 1 month ago

So close!! That is a shape

tines• 1 month ago

A lesson from The Incredibles which we didn’t collectively learn.

anamax• 1 month ago

Trust in science is so low in the US that this was bound to happen.

How is "They were almost certainly transported via unchecked northward migration of people and animals." a consequence of loss of trust in science?

jmward014• 1 month ago

Mistaking the initiation of something as the cause of something is a common mistake. A spark starting a fire in a bin of oily rags is technically the 'cause' but that thinking is clearly short sighted. In reality it was the bad practices that created the environment that was the true culprit. This is an example of the same. I suspect there are constant incursions in and near panama but a layered approach of constant study, monitoring, consistent prevention techniques, etc are what stop a surge in 'unchecked northward migration' from something that happens once or twice and is contained and corrected into something that happens constantly and isn't figured out until this has spread and established itself over thousands of miles. So, yes, the spark was 'northward migration' but the 'unchecked' was because we gave up in being good at this job. We de-funded monitoring and study. We put in place political leaders and not technical experts all because 'expert' opinions aren't important. That is what created the 'unchecked' and why we are here now.

IAmBroom• 1 month ago

The US far-right is famous for (at least) two things:

1. Mistrust in science, and

2. A habit of hastily strangling government watchdog agencies.

#1 has put all such public-safety programs on the chopping block. #2 is the fatal stroke of the axe.

somelamer5672• 1 month ago

Ordinarily, 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.

LarsDu882• 1 month ago

When 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.

fl4regun• 1 month ago

what is the risk here?

LarsDu882• 1 month ago

Unintended consequences of wiping out a species, evolved resistance to the gene drive modifications, accelerated unintended mutation, cross species jumps of the transgene.

hristov3• 1 month ago

This 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.

timr10• 1 month 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...

[2] https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/22636-bird-flu-screwworm...

[3] https://www.fao.org/animal-health/animal-diseases/new-world-...

[4] https://ticotimes.net/2026/06/06/flesh-eating-fly-that-sprea...

[5] https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IN/HTML/IN125...

hristov3• 1 month ago

I read the article and I am right about everything other than one not very significant detail. I am probably right about that too.

It is not a red herring that Trump allowed cattle imports from mexico when it was widely known that the screw worm was in mexico. It was a very serious lapse in safety and disease prevention.

Furthermore, DOGE did cut federal funding for programs for monitoring and curtailment of the screw worm in Central America in February 2025, and your own links show that. For example your link [2] says the above sentence almost verbatim. The FAO issue is not unrelated to the to the COPEG issue. The FAO also funded programs for detection and curtailment of the screw worm in central america just like COPEG. They were probably complimentary programs.

I could not find any link that COPEG funding was cut, but then again you showed no evidence that it was not cut. DOGE insisted on secrecy and was very vindictive, so a lot of DOGE cuts are not known and there is no definite public list of DOGE cuts. Furthermore, federal employees are scared. Any cuts to FAO programs would be made public because the FAO is an international organization and their employees are not at risk of being fired by Trump. But COPEG is an US organization and everyone in there will be scared to mention funding cuts to the media.

By the way, your statement that the Tump administration funded COPEG with 165 million in 2025 and a supplemental grant of 21 million is an outright falsehood and it is a falsehood proven by your own link [5]. Your own link [5] says that the 165 million funding came in 2024, not 2025 which would make it something done by the Biden administration. The supplemental 21 million funding came in 2025 but that was for fruit flies, not screw worm producing flies, so it did not go to COPEG.

I wonder, did you not read your own links, or did you know you were saying lies and hope that nobody else will read your links.

So in summary, DOGE did cut funding for screw worm detection and prevention in early 2025. Trump did allow Mexican cattle in the US in early 2025, even though it was known that the screw worm is in Mexico. It is not entirely clear whether DOGE cut funding for COPEG exactly or whether it only cut funding for other non-COPEG screw worm detection and prevention programs, but funding for screw worm detection and prevention was cut.

egberts1• 1 month ago

Other 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.

Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

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