'Sex life of the screwworm' researchers to receive Golden Goose Award

'We should trust our scientists more than our politicians when it comes to research priorities,' says Congressman as he hails once ridiculed study

Dr Raymond Bushland (standing) and Dr Edward Knipling (Courtesy of World Food Prize Foundation)

A scientific study into the “sex life of the screwworm” – once ridiculed as a waste of money – is to be given a US award designed to recognise research that might sound silly or odd but is actually important.

Its findings led to the development of “the only truly original innovation in insect control” of the 20th century, credited with the eradication of the screwworm fly from North and Central America.

The flies lay eggs in wounds on animals and the resulting maggots can kill a fully grown cow in two weeks. It is estimated the technique, in which males are sterilised to cause the population to crash, has saved farmers billions of pounds over the past 50 years. It is now being used to kill the mosquitoes that spread the Zika virus in South America.

Entomologists Dr Edward Knipling and Dr Raymond Bushland, who developed the technique in the 1950s after years of research, will be posthumously awarded the “Golden Goose Award” at a ceremony at the US Library of Congress in September, it has been announced.

Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper, who first proposed the Golden Goose Award, said: “Screwworm research may sound like a joke, but it isn't. It saved the livestock industry billions and is giving us a way to fight Zika. We should trust our scientists more than our politicians when it comes to research priorities.”

Republican Randy Hultgren added: “Sometimes offbeat, quirky-sounding science is the best science, paving the way for discoveries years down the road which can revolutionise medicine, physics, biology, technology and how we view the world. Given the recent rise of infectious diseases like the Zika virus, developing eradication programmes for carrier pests is a much-needed field of scientific research.

“Even though 'worms' might make some members of Congress – as well as the public – a little squeamish or sceptical, these studies by Edward Knipling and Raymond Bushland have clearly paid off.”

The award deliberately echoes the Golden Fleece Award, which became a US institution in the 1970s and 1980s. It was created by the then Senator William Proxmire and given to state-funded projects he and the judges considered to be a waste of public money.