In the long human struggle against insects that devour crops and carry disease, a new chapter is being written not with poison but with genetics. The return of the New World screwworm to Texas in 2026 — a pest Americans had declared vanquished sixty years ago — has accelerated federal approval of gene-edited flies designed to collapse wild populations from within. These engineered insects, sterile by design, carry the promise of pest control that hunts its own targets, spares beneficial species, and leaves no chemical residue behind — if science, government, and public trust can hold together