About the engineering of self-destroying species, from New Scientist:

“IN THE urban jungle of Juazeiro in Brazil, an army is being unleashed. It is an army like no other: the soldiers’ mission is to copulate rather than fight. But they are harbingers of death, not love. Their children appear healthy at first but die just before they reach adulthood, struck down by the killer genes their fathers passed on to them.

These soldiers are the first of a new kind of creature – ‘autocidal’ maniacs genetically modified to wipe out their own kind without harming other creatures. The first animals being targeted with these ‘living pesticides’ are disease-carrying mosquitoes and crop-munching caterpillars, but the approach should work with just about any animal – from invasive fish and frogs to rats and rabbits. If it is successful, it could transform the way we think about genetically engineered animals.”