{"id":10065,"date":"2025-08-13T17:49:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T22:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=10065"},"modified":"2025-08-13T17:49:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T22:49:03","slug":"gene-editing-and-fly-factories-the-fight-against-a-flesh-eating-pest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/08\/13\/gene-editing-and-fly-factories-the-fight-against-a-flesh-eating-pest\/","title":{"rendered":"Gene Editing and Fly Factories: The Fight Against a Flesh-Eating Pest"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/08\/09\/us\/screwworm-cattle-gene-editing.html\">NYT<\/a> The American and Mexican governments are exploring \u201call options\u201d to battle a deadly parasite threatening cattle and wildlife. Judy McCullough, a rancher in Wyoming, still remembers the blood sprayed on the barn walls, the smell of burning tar and the fear of finding a maggot nestled in the broken hide of a cow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More than 70 years ago, when Ms. McCullough was a child on her grandfather\u2019s cattle ranch, the new world screwworm was all but certain to incite dread. Feeding on the flesh of the live cattle, it laid eggs on open wounds, killing the animals if it went untreated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ranchers resorted to a number of preventative measures: spraying noxious pesticides, dehorning and castrating calves in colder months that screwworm larvae could not survive, and branding using a tar mixture to minimize open flesh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNothing\u2019s nastier than this maggot,\u201d Ms. McCullough, 79, said, recalling the aftermath of a gory dehorning. She pointed to the care that people \u201ctook of wounds, even on themselves,\u201d given that the fly could be equally deadly to humans.<\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\"qndX  bo\"><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NYT The American and Mexican governments are exploring \u201call options\u201d to battle a deadly parasite threatening cattle and wildlife. Judy McCullough, a rancher in Wyoming, still remembers the blood sprayed on the barn walls, the smell of burning tar and the fear of finding a maggot nestled in the broken hide of a cow. More [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emerging-infectious-diseases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10066,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10065\/revisions\/10066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}