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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

#221

Post by PeterisP »

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?

What if it's not, and we effectively murder a million people by needlessly postponing a solution that would save their lives?

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

#222

Post by PeterisP »

IllogicalLogic wrote: post #78
scythe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ants actually serve a purpose in the ecosystem. Mosquitoes are unique in that many ecologists believe mosquito eradication would not adversely affect other species.

Strong suspicion every member of the ecosystem plays a role in sustaining the ecosystem. Mosquitos are still the deadliest animal as far as humans are concerned, makes me wonder what other populations they are keeping under control.... Ecologist hubris and ignorance of 2nd and 3rd order effects is marching with misplaced confidence towards the death spiral. *Buys more SpaceX bonds....

"every member of the ecosystem plays a role in sustaining the ecosystem" is not entirely true - there are many members of the ecosystem (including this particular species of mosquitoes) that provably are not required to sustain the ecosystem, because they're invasive species who clearly weren't needed to sustain that ecosystem which was just fine before they arrived. In many cases (though not this one) the invasive species actively contributes to destruction of the ecosystem, so preserving the ecosystem may require to fully eliminate a particular species from it.

Most members of an ecosystem play a role in sustaining it, but certainly not all.

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

#223

Post by dosy »

stale2002 wrote: post #170
billions wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On balance I feel that that hypothetical is more likely to be helpful than harmful. Naturally, since I supported it. But of course I could be wrong. And it's very easy I think to say "let's be cautious" because we don't know. And I think it's a valid criticism to say that position is not adding any value. It's not. But maybe it is trying to preserve some value, and just because it's easy doesn't make caution an unworkable strategy.

But in the worst case caution could be a harmful position. So in these tech matters I think it's adaptive that we disagree, since if we were (hypothetically) both on the same ecosystem-engineering team, maybe our diverse opinions would contribute to a balanced strategy that I think can have the best chance of greatest net benefit.

Interesting point about null. How can we factor in risks like 'unknown unknowns' into null hypothesis thinking? I don't know right now. But I think one issue/limitation with null hypothesis thinking is that it is not imaginative. This makes it very applicable for assessing evidence for something. But not applicable for thinking about the unknown risks that could occur for something. Different thinking frameworks for different problems, not one-sized fits all, I think. But I think it is applicable for you to use it here to advocate your position of pushing forward unless we have evidence otherwise. My position differs in that I'm saying I think we need to be imaginative about the potential risks.

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

#224

Post by PeterisP »

medunham97123 wrote: post #132
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.

It's not inherently prudent to wait and do more analysis; proceeding too quickly is dangerous since it may do harm, but proceeding too slowly is dangerous since people are dying right now and needlessly postponing a solution means needlessly murdering many people. There's a tradeoff of "carefulness" where beyond a certain level waiting to do extra analysis is harmful. For this particular species of mosquitoes we currently have a good reason to believe that we are beyond this point, we have enough information about the risks so that it's prudent to go ahead and, well, save lives.

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

#225

Post by dosy »

whatshisface wrote: post #212
JackCh wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I've stated throughout this threat, it isn't just about mosquitoes. Honestly I would not mourn mosquitoes if every last species was exterminated. What concerns me is the social impact of further establishing humanity as the arbitrators of which species get to live and which deserve to be exterminated. It won't stop at mosquitoes; the extermination of mosquitoes will be used to justify even more exterminations in t…

Just recruit a few of the millions of people whose lives will be saved as environmental activists to warn against the dangers of tampering with nature and the social effects will balance out.

I appreciate your Machiavellian/pragmatic streak.

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

#226

Post by electricwater »

BigJono wrote: post #198
enneff wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The most recent governments' hostility toward scientific research has been hugely damaging to the research community in Australia. The CSIRO were once an amazing asset to the world, now with their funding slashed dramatically there are many brilliant teams without the resources to develop their ideas. So disappointing and frustrating to watch. :-(

They are and always have been a bunch of anti-intellectual religious zealots. I'm not sure what anyone was expecting. There's still too many people drinking the kool-aid to say it now, but I'd be very surprised if by 2050, Tony Abbott isn't considered the worst PM in Australian history.

I think Tony Abbott moved to the Republic of Gilead.

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

#227

Post by ggm »

zavi wrote: post #191
ggm wrote: post #176

IIRC this is an Australian initiative: the basic work on the application of Walbachia to dengue, the formation of the world mosquito program, it's an initiative grounded in Australian science. yes, you will find "we did it" in China and Brazil and Vietnam and other places: The roots of this work go back to 2011 and before, at Monash University: https://www.monash.edu/industry/success-stories/dengue http://www.elimina…

The article says it's "an international partnership between CSIRO, Verily and James Cook University".

Yes. this story is. It would not surprise me if there are co-collaborators in CSIRO who came from the Monash programme, or if the WMP has funded this (which is run from Monash).

Verily brought mechanistic sex-sorting of mozzies. The CSIRO has a remit to get IPR into play, its government science for profit (I used to work at the CSIRO btw) and James Cook is right in the heart of the Australian mosquito belt. Maybe Monash is in a different sphere now.

No matter: the groundwork on Walbachia, the fundamentals stem from what they did. The cited 'happened here before' moments in this thread? most of them are WMP initiatives.

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

#230

Post by thaumasiotes »

dev_dull wrote: post #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.

There is a link in another thread to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sterile_insect_techniq... .

That list suggests that the technique is an effective way of holding an insect population down in general, but not a good way of eliminating it entirely. Furthermore, the trials involving Aedes, Anopheles, and Culex are particularly unpromising:

> Culex quinquefasciatus / Myanmar / 1967 -- population eliminated

> Culex quinquefasciatus / Florida / 1969 -- population eliminated

> Culex pipiens / France / 1970 -- population "reduced"

> Anopheles albimanus / El Salvador / 1972 -- population reduced "below detection level"

> Culex quinquefasciatus / Delhi / 1973 -- population "reduced"

> Culex quinquefasciatus / Delhi / 1973 (?) -- population unaffected

> Aedes aegypti / Kenya / 1974 -- no long-term effect

> Anopheles albimanus / El Salvador / 1977-1979 -- significant reduction, but eradication prevented by immigration

> Culex tarsalis / California / 1981 -- "no population reduction"

So, in 9 trials the first 5 were whole or partial successes and the last 4 failed. (I have no idea what the story is with the two ~simultaneous trials in Delhi.) That's not great and the trend is ugly.

I tend to suspect the reason mosquitoes show up in this list with so many failures is precisely the fact that people hate them and significant efforts have already been devoted to their extermination. This strategy can't work over the long term -- either the population is wiped out quickly or not at all.

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