[biofunsf]

My not at all informed opinion:

You concern isn’t about some sort of side-effect of the Oxitec treatment, but rather your worry is that their solution does exactly the opposite of what it’s trying to do. Just based on this I’m skeptical. Also numbers wise, if some fraction of “Friendly Males” are actually female, or the self-limiting gene is disrupted due to environmental factors, assuming the majority of the friendly males have their self-limiting gene in tact then it’ll still have an overall positive effect. I don’t think the presence of some “defective” (or rather, not defective) mosquitos will off-set the presence of all the other ones working as intended.

I’m also assuming it’s straightforward to measure the effect of this treatment on the environment. It should be easy to confirm this really is having the desired effect. I think.