What remained was an Amazon full of dense vegetation and swaths of infertile soil that appeared to be untouched by humans when, in fact, humans had been engineering it for centuries.
More speculatively, the team is pondering whether it might be possible to create males which can outplay their un-engineered cousins at the mating game, despite being infertile.
They want to use a method of genetic modification called gene drive, which causes female insects to become infertile, but in a way that has proven immune to the evolution of resistance.
So, the USA has been taken over by Christian extremists, the world has also become extremely polluted by nuclear waste which has made most men and women sterile or infertile.
The discouraging headline is perhaps another indicator of the growing infertility among adults, a source of frustration for infertile couples as well as people around them.
Let's say you got married to a woman, you did not have sex with her before marriage, and then when you became married it became evident that you're an infertile couple.
Their first step was to look for genes which, when disabled, would render male mosquitoes infertile. They began their hunt in fruit flies, a stalwart of genetic research.