The Fall and Rise of Screwworm

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Raymond Bushland grew screwworms in hamburger, blood, water, and formaldehyde instead of infecting live animals.
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The first sterile screwworm pupae release failed spectacularly: ants and other insects ate the pupae on the ground.
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Female screwworm flies mate only once, making every sterile male release far more powerful.
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Radiation sterilizes male screwworms without stopping them from surviving or mating. Their eggs simply fail to hatch.
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Eradication was not self-sustaining: US screwworm cases surged from 170 in 1970 to more than 95,000 in 1972.
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Release enough sterile male screwworms and most females produce no viable offspring. Repeated releases can drive the population extinct.
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New World screwworm maggots eat living tissue, unlike most fly larvae that feed on dead or decaying matter.
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A new Texas facility is designed to produce 300 million sterile flies weekly, while Mexico converts an insectary for screwworm production.
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Re-eradicating screwworm will require close to a decade of continuous facility construction and repeated sterile-fly releases.
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Screwworms do not infect dead animals. They require living tissue.
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With no research funds, Bushland used an Army hospital’s X-ray machine free and obtained cobalt-60 from Oak Ridge.
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At its 1980s and 1990s peak, Central American eradication operations produced more than 400 million sterile flies every week.
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Central American eradication demanded more sterile flies per square mile and new airspace agreements with every participating country.
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The first Southwest barrier failed because production reached only 20 million sterile flies weekly, far below the required scale.
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The screwworm barrier breach resulted from interacting failures rather than one clearly identifiable cause.
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Texas was harder to protect than Florida because its more than 1,000-mile Mexican border sheltered screwworms year-round.
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Florida cattle ranchers were losing $20 million annually to screwworms, helping secure $3 million each from state and federal governments.
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Before eradication, livestock owners inspected animals constantly because even a small wound could become lethal.

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