U.N. ready to irradiate mosquito sperm to combat Zika

A new method to render male mosquitoes infertile by nuclear radiation could help reduce populations of the insect carrying the Zika virus that is linked to thousands of birth defects in Brazil, the U.N. atomic agency said on Tuesday.

Experts from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency are to meet Brazilian officials on Feb. 16 to discuss how best to roll out the so-called Sterile Insect Technology (SIT) in the host country of the 2016 Summer Olympics.

"If Brazil released a huge number of sterile males, it would take a few months to reduce the population, (but . . .