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

But yes, the law of unintended consequences will probably apply.

But it's worth keeping in mind that Malaria kills one child every 30 seconds.

But it's worth keeping in mind that Malaria kills one child every 30 seconds.

As for you last comment, well even the Dahlia Lama swats mosquitoes.

The normalization of extermination should be avoided, even if it comes at the costs of hundreds of millions of human lives per year. (There is no people shortage, but damage to the environment is often permanent. And not to put too fine a point on it, but human populations are growing too fast as it is which is a leading cause of environmental destruction. We should not be attacking the environment to encourage massive increases in human population growth; not unless we have very concrete and immediate plans on how to artificially retard the growth of human populations. Waiting for economic factors to suppress birth rates isn't good enough; that sort of milquetoast approach leads to extraordinary destruction of the environment. It's little more than an excuse to ignore the problem and do nothing.)

Germline altering should only be done in extreme circumstances, and I think this is one of them. Even if mosquitoes do pass on vital antibodies (why hasn't this issue already been noticed in wealthy people who have never been bit and have never consumed something that was bit?) or malaria finds a new way to spread or their absence otherwise creates some kind of butterfly effect ecosystem chaos, what's easier to do in 30 years? Artificially re-introducing safer versions of these mosquitoes / mosquito analogs / isolated antibodies back into the ecosystem and finding new treatments for pathogens, or resurrecting the millions of people who needlessly suffered and died of preventable diseases?

And also consider the chance that maybe nothing bad at all will happen if they all die off. Obviously, this is a very risky hypothesis that's nearly impossible to prove or disprove in a lab, but it's just a possibility to keep in mind. Complex systems like ecosystems are fickle. Sometimes removing a tiny piece of a system wrecks the whole thing like a Jenga tower collapsing, and sometimes removing a massive piece has almost no effect at all. Eliminating a parasite species doesn't necessarily mean there will be significant negative consequences. But of course, there absolutely could be.

As long as this technology is tested extremely carefully and applied to smaller real-world ecosystems which can be studied for years before being deployed globally, it seems like the overall best answer is to avoid the short-term death and despair and deal with future problems as they arise.

Evolution by natural selection no longer holds all the cards. Humanity has, and will continue to, supersede it and override it to achieve things that would never otherwise be possible. We don't have to cower in fear of natural processes anymore, because we can intelligently shape our world, and soon other worlds, as we see fit. We still have to understand these systems and processes to prevent externalities, but that doesn't mean we can't cautiously venture into this kind of technology. It would happen sooner or later, so why not right now?