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

csiro.au

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

#161

Post by caf »

dosy wrote: post #123
billions wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly. I agree and think this is actually a thing. We don't know enough about what mosquitoes could be doing to help us. I think less-risk strategies like repellents / clothing / vaccines are better than ecosystem engineering. As 'impressively effective' as their results are, I do not think they are doing a good thing. So you better get your mosquito bites while they last.

This particular mosquito is not an indigenous part of the ecosystem where this trial is taking place, it is an introduced species.

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

#162

Post by enneff »

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'd be a lot easier to make cheap, pure heroin available to people who choose to use it. Switzerland does just that and it seems to benefit their society while taking money out of the pockets of the drug cartels: http://drugwarfacts.org/region/switzerland

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

#163

Post by robotcookies »

ksec wrote: post #8
bmcusick wrote: post #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 m…

>they serve no irreplaceable environmental purposes How are we sure of this?

We can always keep a few in labs around the world in the very small chance they do serve a useful purpose.

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

#164

Post by soperj »

enneff wrote: post #162
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'd be a lot easier to make cheap, pure heroin available to people who choose to use it. Switzerland does just that and it seems to benefit their society while taking money out of the pockets of the drug cartels: http://drugwarfacts.org/region/switzerland

Physically easier yes, politically easier debatable.

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

#165

Post by subpixel »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #57
subpixel wrote: post #48

I’m not a zealot on the subject but I do believe some form of equally-distributed sterilization is the only way the human race can be saved from itself. That’s a very hard conversation I’d like to see broached.

It's tough when the cancer is sentient, distributed, and has a sense of morality.

I like this

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

#166

Post by gremlinsinc »

dosy wrote: post #138
ABCLAW wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is how we start Jurassic Park, btw.

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

#167

Post by tomrod »

soperj wrote: post #164
enneff wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be a lot easier to make cheap, pure heroin available to people who choose to use it. Switzerland does just that and it seems to benefit their society while taking money out of the pockets of the drug cartels: http://drugwarfacts.org/region/switzerland

Physically easier yes, politically easier debatable.

Proof is in the pudding. People generally come around.

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

#169

Post by caf »

JackCh wrote: post #142
Nasrudith wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I never said this was new. What concerns me is it being done in the modern era. And not just in the modern era, but backed up by scientists too, which lends it additional credibility. In general, people in this era trust science more than they trust politicians. If a politician tells them something is a good idea, they will distrust that politician if it goes against their gut instinct. But if a scientist tells them…

Eradicating an invasive species that we (inadvertently) introduced in the first place seems more similar to me to wolf rewilding/reintroduction programs than the opposite. We're trying to unwind an earlier intervention.

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

#170

Post by stale2002 »

billions wrote: post #82
dosy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Ecosystems are a delicate balance. Who knows what chaos will be unleashed by tampering with them? Especially species facilitating horizontal gene transfer. Pathogen vector may be only one of the functions of the mosquito. Perhaps by simply existing and occupying so much of a certain pathway they are keeping other pathogens at bay or preventing other viruses from evolving, perhaps down paths that, after the pr…

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

Ok, and what if those are harmful antibodies instead?

Your hypothetical is just as likely to be harmful instead of helpful, unless there is actual evidence proven otherwise.

The null hypothesis should assume that it is no more likely to be helpful than harmful.

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