Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
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Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#2Can't wait to find out what is next on the list of terrible things that will kill us as the climate continues to warm.
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#3Yeah! we've discovered how to make a species extinct on purpose instead of the "accidental" way we usually do it :)
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#4> Aedes, Anopheles and Culex are found almost all over the world and are responsible for around 17 per cent of infectious disease transmissions globally."
If I understand that correctly, that is a massive number. I really like what these sterilization trials are producing. In my mind, it’s a lot safer than spraying chemicals across cities.
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#5> To address this challenge, Verily, an affiliate of Alphabet Inc, developed a mosquito rearing and sex sorting and release technology as part of its global Debug project.
Verily is formerly "Google Life Sciences" and currently Alphabet Inc's research arm for life sciences.
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#6Yeah! we've discovered how to make a species extinct on purpose instead of the "accidental" way we usually do it :)
Do you actually have arguments to object this from a moral standpoint or it's just a snarky comment?
Because I would really love to hear some moral objections to the matter.
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#7> In an international partnership between CSIRO, Verily and James Cook University, scientists used specialised technology to release millions of sterilised male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes
This is so stupid. A population will recover from this in a single generation, because the second you stop releasing sterile males, the remaining males (no matter how few) can repopulate the species.
If you want to make a species of mosquitoes extinct (and I'm in favor of this, they serve no irreplaceable environmental purposes), the more effective method would be releasing males that only have male offspring.
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#8> In an international partnership between CSIRO, Verily and James Cook University, scientists used specialised technology to release millions of sterilised male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes This is so stupid. A population will recover from this in a single generation, because the second you stop releasing sterile males, the remaining males (no matter how few) can repopulate the species. If you want to make a species of m…
>they serve no irreplaceable environmental purposes
How are we sure of this?
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#9Yeah! we've discovered how to make a species extinct on purpose instead of the "accidental" way we usually do it :)
Do you actually have arguments to object this from a moral standpoint or it's just a snarky comment? Because I would really love to hear some moral objections to the matter.
While I'm all for wiping out the race of mosquitoes, I think it's arrogant on our behalf to assume that we can just remove a species completely from an ecosystem without consequences.
If we're really lucky, the consequences will be minimal: spiders and other predators will simply find something else to eat. But if mosquitoes had some heretofore undiscovered critical purpose for the environment, we might have seriously screwed things up.
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#10> In an international partnership between CSIRO, Verily and James Cook University, scientists used specialised technology to release millions of sterilised male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes This is so stupid. A population will recover from this in a single generation, because the second you stop releasing sterile males, the remaining males (no matter how few) can repopulate the species. If you want to make a species of m…
>they serve no irreplaceable environmental purposes How are we sure of this?
We don't have to wipe out all mosquitos in one shot. There are many different species, not all of which transmit the deadly diseases of concern.
We can start with less populous species that share their ecological niche with other species that can replace them in the food chain - observe the impact of removing that one species then move on to others as warranted by the results.
Answer #2: It's worth the risk. Kill them all.