ITT: people who live in countries that aren’t ravaged by malaria share their vague feelings of doubt about whether or not getting rid of mosquitos is a good idea
Sure, because species collapse and your ultimate demise are a better outcome?
CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species
81–90 of 122 posts
Re: CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species
#82What technical limitations allow us to genetically target mosquitos with this but not the malaria parasite itself?
Re: CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
The discussion isn't about wiping out a disease, it's about wiping out a species to wipe out a disease. Smallpox was eliminated in large part due to vaccination, not wiping an animal or insect from the face of the planet. Now, if you can eliminate the malaria within the mosquito, that's something else entirely.
Smallpox was a species, too. If we allow viruses to be species.
Fair - and you are probably right. But I'd rather not get into semantics. You know what I meant.
Re: CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species
#84It's horrible that people are dying because of malaria. I'm a bit divided on this approach though, I don't know enough about the topic at hand to suggest a different approach, but let me try. Would it be feasible to suggest using CRISP to create another adaptation to the gene, one that preserves the mosquitoes but makes them unable to transfer the disease to humans? Eliminating a species because we don't like it remi…
I like to paste this awesome response from reddit whenever someone doubts these approaches (since I couldn’t put it better myself)
> Malaria is only carried by a tiny number of mosquito species. Of the thousands of species only something like a dozen actually matter to humans. We can target exactly the ones we want and even better : nothing stops us from maintaining a population in some labs somewhere. If it turns out they matter in any significant way, contrary to various impact analysis... we just release them back into the environment.
> The current cost of not wiping out those few mosquito species is about half a million dead children. Imagine that someone was nuking a mid sized American city every year and you could stop it right now but you'd prefer to wait for a slightly more athsteticly pleasing solution.
> How much blood would you be willing to let stain your soul .
https://pay.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/9ivkka/genetic_mod...
Re: CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But we know nothing comes for free, no good human deed goes unpunished. We know nothing of the sort. Perhaps this is something you know.
Pretty much all projects of large-scale human ecological interventions ended up with some unexpected side-effect. It's extremely hard to take into account all the variables and often you fix one issue, but create 10 new ones. Just think of using myxomatosis to control rabbit population, or introduction of cane toads in Australia in attempt to control sugarcane pests.
Erradication of smallpox?
Re: CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen very few countries of note (aside from the US) that use "race" as any kind of indicator. This has a very good reason: It's not a clear biological separation and it also otherwise has little bearing on reality. It's an old, obsolete carry-over that was kept from the days when racism was still an accepted practice and it needs to die the death that it deserves as soon as possible.
I'm really struggling to understand your first sentence. Are you saying people generally aren't racist outside the US? Because my experience has been very, very different (and that's as a white male)
There's certainly racism in other countries but it's not based on skin colour like in the US. For example some people in the UK have an aversion to Eastern Europeans, who are white but have no problems with black Britons.
Re: CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species
#87Re: CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Classical ad hominem argument . Attack the people who make the immoral choice of thinking about the fact instead of blindly going forward and doing it, regardless of the cost. Perhaps it is worth to consider carefully before eradicating a species by any means? And perhaps it is worth to consider using a domain of technology - biotechnology - we have yet to understand better? Every tool comes with it's price, and so d…
If importing rabbits to Australia would have saved 500,000 lives annually, it would have been one of the best health-related things to happen to humanity. (The eradication of this particular mosquito species is likely harmless, but that does not matter. We should do it even if it isn't)
How many lives did industrialization save or improve? Compared to the costs?
Was it worth it? Yes, but all the consequences have not yet come home to roost.
Re: CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species
#89It's horrible that people are dying because of malaria. I'm a bit divided on this approach though, I don't know enough about the topic at hand to suggest a different approach, but let me try. Would it be feasible to suggest using CRISP to create another adaptation to the gene, one that preserves the mosquitoes but makes them unable to transfer the disease to humans? Eliminating a species because we don't like it remi…
> Eliminating a species because we don't like it reminds me of speciesism
How about eliminating them because they are killing us, literally by the millions? Viewed that way, it seems more like normal self-defense to me. Currently mosquito-borne diseases kill around 700,000 people each year; this figure does not include the cost to society of the people who become ill but later recover. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito
Re: CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species
#90It's horrible that people are dying because of malaria. I'm a bit divided on this approach though, I don't know enough about the topic at hand to suggest a different approach, but let me try. Would it be feasible to suggest using CRISP to create another adaptation to the gene, one that preserves the mosquitoes but makes them unable to transfer the disease to humans? Eliminating a species because we don't like it remi…
I like to paste this awesome response from reddit whenever someone doubts these approaches (since I couldn’t put it better myself) > Malaria is only carried by a tiny number of mosquito species. Of the thousands of species only something like a dozen actually matter to humans. We can target exactly the ones we want and even better : nothing stops us from maintaining a population in some labs somewhere. If it turns ou…
What exactly do you mean by "Of the thousands of species only something like a dozen actually matter to humans." How sure are you?
Keep in mind that, in this case, extinction is a side effect of another antimalarial effort.