Perhaps mosquitos are here to manage the human population in the ecosystem.
Okay. Then lets let some disease carrying mosquitoes into all countries - including Western Europe and the US. We wouldnt want those ecosystems to be imbalanced.
Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes
51–60 of 441 posts
Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps do a pilot test in a limited area and see the impact?
If I recall correctly, that was done in Panama by the canal builders; one of the reasons they were successful was because they wiped out mosquitoes in the region, and protected the workers from malaria. Their method was to put a bit of gasoline in all of the swamps. The thin layer of gas on the water surface killed the larvae. It probably caused lots of other environmental damage too though, so a different approach w…
Malaria used to be endemic in much of the US.
http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.html
I guess they were pretty close to eradicating mosquitoes in transmission areas once they started the control effort.
Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes
#53Serious question: In areas where Malaria is killing many people, access to health care is a big part of why, right? So I'm assuming if you just removed the mosquitos, those people that died would be alive, and putting greater strain on already famine-like food economies. Wouldn't that be equally as bad?
Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes
#54Sometimes I wonder if the relentless human intervention in every aspect of nature will create or leave only life that has a value to people, like cows and wheat, or that which can resist domination or destruction by humans, like HIV, treatment-resistant bacteria, and the unassailable cockroach. Perhaps after a period of rapid upheaval, humanity develops the technology to capture and control those super powerful flora…
> create or leave only life that has a value to people
There is a Jewish creation story (Rashi, Genesis 1:11) that God told the trees to make their bark (or the wood itself) edible to humans. The trees refused because "if we did that humans would eat all of us, leaving none behind".
It seems to me that the trees got it wrong: Plants that are valuable to humans exist in far greater numbers than those that are not.
Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mosquitos aren't about unpleasantness though: It is a vector for deadly disease in the tropics. We are talking hundreds of thousands of deaths a year. Now, getting rid of all of them might not be the smartest idea: it carries plenty of risk, but to say that they are just unpleasant is a major understatement.
We should just cure these diseases. Vector control is fucking hard, we've been trying it for a century without really fixing the problem. That isn't likely to change; therapeutic interventions, however, can keep getting better and cheaper.
" Vector control is fucking hard, we've been trying it for a century without really fixing the problem. That isn't likely to change"
With CRISPR and gene drive, it changes from "fucking hard" to "trivial", so it is not only likely to change, it's already changed.
Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes
#56I remember reading some old tale about all the animals gathering to decide what to do about humanity. Every animal hated humans, so they all voted to destroy us. Except the mosquito, which was the only one to stand up for us because they needed food. The moral of the story was that in return for looking out for us, we should let mosquitoes drink what they need from us. (not my story, I read it in a history book about…
So if I steal food from you every day and some of my friends want to kill you, and I say "no, don't kill him, I need him so I can steal food", you should give me food every day as thanks?
Well in order for this comparison to work, you'd be programmed on a deep level to take from him in order to sustain your own life. Your choice of the word 'steal' implies that the mosquito understands the morality of theft but just doesn't care.
Then again I tend to read way too far into things, my bad.
Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes
#57This is one of those ideas that sounds genius on its face, until it's actually implemented. Kudzu? Grows fast, prevents erosion, let's pay farmers to till it into the top soil. MTBE? Prevents engine knock, makes for cleaner air, let's mandate its use at the federal level. Whoopsie, once it's in the water we can't get it out, and its a carcinogen. Let's kill all of the mosquitos because we find their presence unpleasa…
There will be side effects, but could it really be worse than the alternative? That is, one million deaths per year.
They aren't a random niche animal. Mosquitoes are pollinators and a major food source for many, many other animals. We know that "pollinator" and "major food source" can be critical roles in an ecosystem.
Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes
#58On reddit, I remember seeing something like "Research assures government that killing mosquitos would have no negative effect on world ecology"... right above another thread titled "Scientists underestimate ecological impact of species destruction"... Do we actually understand Mosquitos role in the planet's eco system?
No, but that isn't even the million dollar question because the answer will never be "yes." The real question is how certain do we have to be about their role before we decide the gamble is worth it? In this thread you see wealthy westerners complaining that mosquitos are a nuisance. In many parts of the world they are holocaust-scale killers. It gets to an age old question re: the precautionary principle, and a lot…
Even more on point:
Which is likely to cause more ecological damgage:
1) Wipe out two (of over 3,500) species of mosquito
2) Spray poisons indiscriminately, wiping out many different species of insect, both mosquitos and non-mosquitos?
Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes
#59This is one of those ideas that sounds genius on its face, until it's actually implemented. Kudzu? Grows fast, prevents erosion, let's pay farmers to till it into the top soil. MTBE? Prevents engine knock, makes for cleaner air, let's mandate its use at the federal level. Whoopsie, once it's in the water we can't get it out, and its a carcinogen. Let's kill all of the mosquitos because we find their presence unpleasa…
Mosquitos aren't about unpleasantness though: It is a vector for deadly disease in the tropics. We are talking hundreds of thousands of deaths a year. Now, getting rid of all of them might not be the smartest idea: it carries plenty of risk, but to say that they are just unpleasant is a major understatement.
This could easily be framed as a misattribution of cause though.
Mosquitos occur world-wide, and even flourish in many climates where rates of infection from mosquito-borne diseases are relatively low. As an example, 90% of deaths from Malaria occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and even there, the likelihood of death from infection is radically lower for western visitors than for locals.
These diseases are largely a result of poverty and poor access to healthcare, not of mosquitos.
Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes
#60Most of the "whoops" tales are people that didn't listen to their scientists telling them not to, didn't have scientists at all, or were from long enough ago that we can discard their stories as irrelevant in the same way that we'd discard things like "spaceflight is impossible" and "nukes will end war". We've now traced the food chain around malaria mosquitoes out to three or four degrees of separation, including things like the diseases they carry. Their entire ecological niche is trivially replaced by close relatives that don't carry malaria. They're not even common enough to have major food-chain or crowding effects like you'd see with ants, rabbits, kudzu, or sparrows. Everything that we can find says that the damage from eradication would be zero. Not "small", or "manageable". None. They're small enough and unimportant enough that we should be thinking of them as disease organisms rather than insects. And I'm sure you're perfectly happy with the eradication of bot flies, polio, and smallpox. Reevaluate your beliefs.
Granted, we can never be certain about it. We're not deities, we're still limited by information theory and epistemology. But we're pretty damn sure. Way more than we need to be to go save half a million people a year.