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

Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

csiro.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 285 posts

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#131

Post by dosy »

evgen wrote: post #112
billions wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if some helpful antibodies are transmitted via mosquitos? What if this happens cross-species?

What if invisible unicorns are actually the transmission vector and they are also spreading it to mosquitos? Wow, posing useless hypotheticals is somewhat enjoyable. We must do this again sometime.

This seems hopelessly naive. "Invisible unicorns" might as well have been germs 200 years ago. But antibodies, horizontal gene transfer, is very much mainstream science. If you know the science. If you don't, I think you should not be judging utility of others suggestions. But hey, it's the internet, let's do it again sometime, indeed.

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#132

Post by medunham97123 »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #73

According to the WHO ( http://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria ) * Malaria killed 445,000 people in 2016. * Of those, 285,000 were children under the age of 5. * There were 216 million cases of malaria in 2016. That is a large city's worth of children dying every year, and a large country's population having severely reduced productivity. And that is just one mosquito born illness. The guaranteed h…

I am all for wiping out Malaria, but wouldn't it be prudent to try and develop what-if scenarios and test them to see if there is an adverse ecological impact?

I would also be curious to know the business / funding arrangement details to see if there is any possible conflict of interest. No one will look for adverse impacts if the profit motive is persuasive enough not to look very hard.

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#134

Post by JackCh »

jessaustin wrote: post #75
JackCh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Yet in many cases, scientists acknowledge that the ecological scar left by a missing mosquito would heal quickly as the niche was filled by other organisms." More concerning than the ecological scar left behind by the eradication of some species of mosquito is the precedent that would be set. Once you've deliberately eradicated one pest species, people will incorporate the knowledge of that action into their image…

Trade-offs in ethics and effectiveness can be a subject of discussion, but it's hardly an "emotional outburst" to want to prevent swimmers from being eaten. Slippery-slope arguments seem to make sense when we're locked into one way of modeling the behavior of our fellow humans, but they're usually wrong anyway.

> "but it's hardly an "emotional outburst" to want to prevent swimmers from being eaten"

Considering...

> "Since 2000 there have been 15 fatal shark attacks along the West Australian coast.[9]"

Yes, it's an emotional outburst. Anybody who goes in the water should know the risks. If that's the problem, put up more signs warning people. Very few people are getting killed by sharks; the shark culls are totally unjustified. If you talk to your average Australian about the Chinese slaughtering sharks for soup, they'll condemn it. But a disturbing number will defend the slaughter of sharks for an infinitesimal chance of saving some surfer who knew the risks and chose to swim with them.

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#135

Post by drb91 »

pm90 wrote: post #99
twelvechairs wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only Australia's CSIRO still had enough funding to do this kind of work itself rather than 'partner with' (i.e. contribute public funding towards the private investment goals of) for-profit companies. Amongst CSIRO's earlier inventions are 1960s insect repelent 'Aerogard', polymer banknotes and major components of Wi-Fi as we know it.

I don't see what the problem is if the for-profit companies goals align with theirs.

The public has no control over the incentives of private corporations, so their goals could change at any time.

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#137

Post by soperj »

adventured wrote: post #125
soperj wrote: post #122

I never understood why the U.S didn't just do the same sort of thing with poppies in Afganistan. Would have completely wiped out the Taliban funding.

It's a big mixed bag. If you do it that way, you just massively increased the recruitment potential for the Taliban. All of those farmers are now wiped out, have nothing to do for work, and have a new sworn enemy for life. The only possible solution that might yield positive results is aggressive replacement subsidization (extremely expensive).

They were supporting the Taliban already...

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#138

Post by dosy »

ABCLAW wrote: post #77
billions wrote: post #50

It is theorized there is no adverse effect from killing mosquito species. There is always a counter-effect. Typically it's unpredictable. Mosquitoes FACILITATE transmission of bad stuff. I believe that if bad stuff is not transmitted, species evolve more slowly against pathogens. Species will still be exposed, maybe generations later through a scratch or otherwise. At that point, having never evolved a strong immune…

This is why they're taking it slow; they're not worried about knock on issues with our herd immunity. They're worried about ecological collapse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign "The "Four Pests" campaign was introduced in 1958 by Mao Zedong, as a hygiene campaign aimed to eradicate the pests responsible for the transmission of pestilence and disease: the mosquitos responsible for malaria; the rodent…

We can thank the Chinese for their bold experiments in recent history to give us some significant real-world examples to back up our cautions about the risks of ecosystem engineering.

I think we should get into ecosystem engineering (it will be a tech, like anything else, capable of good or bad), but it's too powerful now and our knowledge / control is too limited. Thanks Mao.

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#139

Post by Semirhage »

somebodynew wrote: post #127
JackCh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Yet in many cases, scientists acknowledge that the ecological scar left by a missing mosquito would heal quickly as the niche was filled by other organisms." More concerning than the ecological scar left behind by the eradication of some species of mosquito is the precedent that would be set. Once you've deliberately eradicated one pest species, people will incorporate the knowledge of that action into their image…

I'm personally pretty satisfied with not having my flesh eaten by screw flies. They were wiped out in North America and I'm very grateful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochliomyia_hominivorax

Unless you’re livestock, or indigent that was never going to be a problem for you.

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#140

Post by Semirhage »

Nasrudith wrote: post #69
JackCh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Yet in many cases, scientists acknowledge that the ecological scar left by a missing mosquito would heal quickly as the niche was filled by other organisms." More concerning than the ecological scar left behind by the eradication of some species of mosquito is the precedent that would be set. Once you've deliberately eradicated one pest species, people will incorporate the knowledge of that action into their image…

Eradicating pest and threat species is so very not new. Ask the wolves around centuries old ranching regions. Mosquitoes have indirectly the highest human body count in history and prehistory. Even with reuse it is pretty mating strategy dependent. It isn't a dial an extinction. Trying that with say feral cats would be a miserable failure or at best the equivalent of releasing a bunch of teaser tomcats into an area h…

Killing off wolves has had many unintended and unforeseen consequences. Just for one example, the lack of large predators such as wolves leads to uncontrolled population explosions of deer, which leads to a massive increase in the population and prevalence of deer ticks, and consequent tick borne diseases.

As a species we’re piss poor at calculating blowback in complicated systems, ranging from the deaths of animal species, to interventions in foreign lands. Is it really surprising? We have an incomplete picture of the systems we intervene in, so the outcomes surprise us, then we rationalize our next blunder with the old saw, “this time it will be different.”

Post reply on HN