Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 441 posts

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#161

Post by fweespee_ch »

maaku wrote: post #98
alwaysdoit wrote: post #38

We've done this lots[1] of[2] times[3] when it threatens agriculture, but when it threatens the lives of poor people in third world countries, suddenly we're worried about the ecosystem? There will be an environmental impact, but it will be from hundreds of millions of humans not getting malaria and climbing their way out of property, not from the lack of mosquitoes in the ecosystem. It's still a significant problem,…

Those eradications were paid for by the Department of Agriculture (and equivalent organizations in other regions). Who is going to pay for the mosquito? I'm not objecting. I think we should eradicate the mosquito. But as someone who has worked for the government (albeit a different branch) I know that bureaucrats are not being evil or heartless when they don't allocate funds for necessary work that falls outside of t…

http://www.hhs.gov/

> Preventing disease, including immunization services

This seems to fall under that. xD

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#162

Post by nickff »

jessaustin wrote: post #141
nickff wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "bureaucrats are not being evil or heartless when they don't allocate funds for necessary work that falls outside of their mandate: they could go to jail for misallocation of taxpayer funds. " Which bureaucrat has gone to jail for making any decision of this sort? The BLM sold ~1700 protected wild horses to a slaughterhouse a few years ago, and I don't think anyone was even reprimanded.[1] EPA allowed 11 million li…

Clearly the EPA screwed up, but the BLM should have promoted rather than jailed the bureaucrat who sold the feral horses. That program should be ramped up: it would be better for the horses and for the arid environment that they inhabit if the absolutely necessary regular culling resulted in nutrition rather than thousands of horses penned up to no purpose for the rest of their lives. It's not as though we're going t…

I have heard of equivalent 'screwups' described as horrific criminal actions, described as being done by greedy, stupid, and lazy people who should be sent to federal prison; but alas, those were private parties. My point was that catastrophic negligence goes unpunished when committed by a bureaucrat.

Horses were native to North America, and existed on the continent before humans arrived; they were probably wiped out by said humans. These 'giant ungulates' have much the same natural predators as bison and deer, which also happen to be 'giant ungulates', but whose presence I do not believe you would object to.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#163

Post by imakesnowflakes »

slapshot wrote: post #146
imakesnowflakes wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layman here. Even if the impact on the food chain is zero, does it mean that there won't be other impacts? For example, on the eradication of mosquitoes, what if the disease that are currently only spread via mosquitoes mutate/evolve themselves to be airborne?

> what if the disease that are currently only spread via mosquitoes mutate/evolve themselves to be airborne? Evolution doesn't have an intent. Diseases can't "evolve themselves." Evolution happens through random mutations* and selection of the fittest. If a mutation makes a virus or bacteria or protozoan more likely to survive, then the descendants of the mutant tend to multiply more and become more common. If the mu…

>Evolution doesn't have an intent. Diseases can't "evolve themselves."

I know. But when you remove mosquitoes from the picture, aren't you putting selection pressure on the diseases to be airborne?

>Evolution happens through random mutations* and selection of the fittest...

Yes. Say a virus of a disease x that normally spreads via mosquitos, gain a mutation to be airborne. But since there are an abundance of mosquitoes, an airborne strain does not have an advantage over mosquitoes borne strain. So it dies off (because of competition)

But when you eradicate the mosquitoes, or reduce their number significantly, suddenly the airborne strain has a tremendous advantage over the mosquito borne strain. Hence it can grow in numbers and eventually completely replace the mosquito borne strain...

Isn't this even remotely possible?

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#164

Post by ommunist »

x1798DE wrote: post #153
ommunist wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at this problem from different angle. These two species are only abundant in areas where humans live. The malaria annual death toll is about 440000 lives. Maybe it is more worth of an effort to move humans out of there? Since no one is going to eradicate cars worldwide just because the annual human death toll in car accidents is 1.25 million!

But the ongoing cost of eliminating cars would be enormous. The ancestor post is saying that there would be only fixed costs involved in eliminating malaria-transmitting species of mosquito.

What really ailes me is that all research is concentrated on killing poor mosquitoes, not the Plasmodium, which is the real cause of the disease. Should we also kill all the cats because they carry Toxoplasmae?

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#165

Post by kpil »

rimantas wrote: post #79
lucideer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So we get as many cases of malaria in Europe, just nobody dies from it? Or maybe it does indeed has something to do with mosquitos after all?

There was malaria in Sweden a couple of hundred years ago, and we still have a few mosquitos. It was never a big problem but malaria went away when it couldn't spread efficiently, largely because of better houses and hygiene such as not keeping the cattle in the same house (room) as the people. Also a lot of breeding ground was dried out and converted to farm land.

I'm all for releasing CRISPR on the worst species of mosquitos though. And ticks. They can't serve any function other than killing a few persons each year due to TBE.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#166

Post by ommunist »

reustle wrote: post #49
cdubzzz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People living in malaria zones find mosquitos a little more than "unpleasant".

Same with Dengue Fever. I spent a month in Bali last summer with a group of 40 people, 4 of which got Dengue. 10%.

What were you doing there?

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#167

Post by krylon »

jonahrd wrote: post #22

I 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…

The problem is not mosquitos drinking small amounts of our blood. The problem is that in doing so they infect people with diseases like Malaria, effectively killing thousands of people every year.

I like the story, though.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#169

Post by saulrh »

ommunist wrote: post #128
saulrh wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like 30 out of the 500 anopheles species are capable of carrying malaria. Of those, only those two matter, because the rest won't bite humans. Eradicating those two would be sufficient and another species (that doesn't bite humans) would take over. "Bites Humans" is furthermore not a strong enough competitive advantage to overcome any attempts to eradicate a successor that picks up the disease-ridden malari…

Look at this problem from different angle. These two species are only abundant in areas where humans live. The malaria annual death toll is about 440000 lives. Maybe it is more worth of an effort to move humans out of there? Since no one is going to eradicate cars worldwide just because the annual human death toll in car accidents is 1.25 million!

Amusingly, anthropophilia versus zoophilia is genetic. If we all cleared out of Africa completely, those problematic mosquito strains may well go extinct. Now I'm wondering how fast they'd re-evolve. So it's probably more like the case I thought of at the end of my first post, where we'd have to stamp the property back out every time it evolved. It'd be pretty easy, though, and without a major animal reservoir it'd probably give us enough breathing room to eradicate the disease itself with ebola-style quarantines.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#170

Post by ommunist »

rimantas wrote: post #79
lucideer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So we get as many cases of malaria in Europe, just nobody dies from it? Or maybe it does indeed has something to do with mosquitos after all?

Actually there are some in Crimea and some in Bulgaria. Literally less than 100 cases in 10 years, mostly imported, not endemic. Treated in hospitals.
Post reply on HN