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Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

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Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#181

Post by goldbrick »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #55
astazangasta wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> With CRISPR and gene drive, it changes from "fucking hard" to "trivial", so it is not only likely to change, it's already changed.

The kind of hubris displayed here almost certainly belies deep ignorance. Please, doctor, tell us how trivial editing DNA is.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#182

Post by graham1776 »

Is there any website/service that allows US citizens to sign and send a pre-written letter to their congressman to address this issue, specifically pertaining to the Zika Virus and/or killing mosquitoes? Change.org campaign?

My wife is pregnant now, we live in Southern California, and I feel fairly powerless to do anything except ask my wife to DEET up, be on the lookout for freestanding water, add screens, and pray.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#183

Post by jessaustin »

Eventually, a researcher who is genuinely responsible instead of merely professionally so will conduct the X-chromosome shredding experiment in the wild. There won't be publicity at first, but if it works as well as the Chickens Little fear then eventually, after the hymns of praise to the heavens have resounded for a few years, the researcher will reveal the key to a hash she had published years earlier. That hash will be found to be of her lab notes on the day she released the selfish gene into the wild and destroyed a scourge upon humanity for good.

Not only will this be good for the millions of human children who won't die, but we'll gain a better understanding of ecological principles at which we can now only guess. This isn't the last species we'll want to change, but there may only be a few we want to eliminate this way. The knowledge gained in the anti-Anopheles project will be useful for less destructive efforts as well.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#184

Post by ommunist »

maxerickson wrote: post #175
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!

Should we also help malaria reestablish in the areas we previously eradicated it? You know, Europe, the US.

This is technically possible. I wonder what political aim of such a campaign might be?

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#185

Post by theptip »

saulrh wrote: post #169
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!

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 p…

That's interesting; could another approach then be to use CRISPR to switch the anthropophilic species to zoophilic, and thus sidestep the "ecological destruction" argument that is the main objection to just destroying those species?

I think a cost-benefit analysis supports gene-drive-based mosquito eradication, but this option might be as effective and more politically palatable.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#186

Post by MrArtichaut »

nemothekid wrote: post #148
MrArtichaut wrote: post #136

I'm the only one not comfortable with the idea of wiping whole species just because we don't like them? I mean, I'm far fromthe Gaia thing, but what rights do we have to do that? And next? Rats, cockroaches? Hey, this specie of birds doesn't do anything useful and eat our fruits, why not killing them all? Mosquitoes aren't even "responsible" for those diseases... Maybe we should invest in proactive body defenses agai…

> just because we don't like them? It's bit stronger than "we don't like them" > Maybe we should invest in proactive body defenses against virus instead of just killing some random things. Invest more than the billions that billions that Bill Gates has already invested?

And do you think Bill Gates would approve killing whole species ?

I honestly don't known but he seems to be a very clever guy and eradicating species doesn't sound to be a clever solution and really not a good long term solution.

What if you break a whole ecosystem ? What if those mosquitoes contain invaluable genes for future medicine? What if they offer a unique window on the evolution of insects?

But hey, who care? Kill them all..

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#187

Post by theptip »

llamaimperative wrote: post #40
hellbanner wrote: post #7

On 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…

This is the right way to frame it; or perhaps try the counterfactual: by not taking action, we are choosing to allow 0.1 Holocausts/year of deaths to occur.

We wipe species off the face of the earth regularly for as little benefit as increasing the land available for soy farming in the Amazon; averting a holocaust per decade seems like a no-brainer when measured on that scale.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#188

Post by guelo »

I've heard environmentalists say that one advantage of mosquitoes is that it keeps humans out of tropical forests. It's a view of humans as the pest. Which isn't that preposterous when you consider the vast ecological damage we're doing as a species.

Re: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

#189

Post by girishso »

This reminds me of GEM Mosquito control. I believe this is the only real eco friendly solution for mosquitoes menace. But corporates milking money out of mosquitoes control devices, won't let this be mainstream.

> GEM technology is a process of achieving sustainable mosquito control in an eco friendly manner by providing artificial breeding grounds utilizing common household utensils and destroying larvae by non-hazardous natural means such as throwing them in dry places or feeding them to larvae eating fishes.

Process in short - http://www.appropedia.org/GEM_mosquito_control#Modus_operand....

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