Hi all
Actually, I was one of the first persons to raise questions directly with the investigators, before they were even associated with Monsanto. I have continued to exchange information with the investigators in Israel. They wrote in an email last year:

> Since we demonstrated the silencing of Varroa genes, a new approach can be attempted for Varroa control, but it requires more studies of what genes should be silenced for optimal control. For this practical aim the off-target silencing of Varroa genes is irrelevant, since we wish to harm Varroa anyhow. The off-target silencing of bee genes is very relevant. To that end we did an initial experiment and demonstrated that none of the hive parameters was affected following dsRNA ingestion of these sequences. Of course, if one is developing a control measure of Varroa taking this approach he should investigate deeply the effect on the bee well-being.

PLB

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