Look out Florida: the mutants are coming.

Well, maybe. And no, they’re nothing like the sexy, superhero ones featured in the X-Men films. They’re actually just some sterile mosquitoes designed to help curb population control – but the idea has people upset nonetheless.

Here’s what’s happening: Key West’s “Mosquito Control Board” (whose existence only reinforces my resolve never to move to Florida) spends $1 million tax dollars a year on eradication efforts. Naturally, people hate mosquitoes, but the efforts are also to keep the potentially-fatal dengue virus in check; which is spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. About 20 percent of the homes in Key West have dengue carrying mosquitoes, says Reuters. And the potential for that number to increase is only growing.

Currently, the MCB uses trucks and helicopters to spray insecticides that can reduce mosquito populations. But it’s costly, time-intensive, not exactly healthy for animals or the environment, and apparently isn’t as effective at killing the Aedes aegypti mosquito as other species.

Enter the ominous-sounding British biotechnology company Oxitec Ltd. Their idea is to introduce gradually sterile males into the mosquito population to mate with females and reduce the overall birth rate. The company recently added a new factory in Brazil capable of producing more than 4 million of the sterile mosquitoes per week.

“If we upset the balance so there are more males that are sterile than their fertile equivalent, then the female has more chance of mating with one of ours,” Oxitec CEO Haydn Parry told Reuters. “We call it birth control for insects.”

Indeed, at a conference last year, Oxitec announced that it had recorded a population drop of 80% of Aedes aegypti during tests on the Cayman Islands.

Still, residents of Key West are concerned that they’re involved in some kind of Resident Evil-style plot to experiment on them and create a population of genetically-modified, blood-sucking mosquito people.

“Have there been studies of what can happen if someone is bit by one of these mosquitoes?” Key West realtor Mila de Mier exclaimed to Reuters. “Are we the subjects, the guinea pigs of this experiment?”

Thankfully, male mosquitoes do not bite – yet.

The FDA is currently reviewing the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District’s request to use the mutant mosquitoes.