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Eradicating Earth’s Mosquitoes to Fight Disease Is Probably a Bad Idea

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Re: Eradicating Earth’s Mosquitoes to Fight Disease Is Probably a Bad Idea

#11

Post by ghshephard »

Almost no support for the thesis of "bad things will happen if we wipe out mosquitoes" other than "We don't know what will happen."

On the flip side, we do know what will happen if the Aedes aegypti, Anopheles, etc... is allowed to continue to exist - 100s of thousands of people a year will die.

I wonder how the author would feel about keeping mosquitoes around "just in case", if hundreds of thousands of her neighbors were dying every year.

And guess what, if, for some very, very bizarre reason it turns out that Aedes aegypti/Anopheles was a super important species, there is zero difficulty in breeding and releasing billions of them back into the wild in very short order.

Re: Eradicating Earth’s Mosquitoes to Fight Disease Is Probably a Bad Idea

#12

Post by snarfy »

I'm not convinced disease is inherently bad for a species. Sure it's bad for the poor individual that catches it, but who knows what the total net sum gain/loss is. For all we know the net result could be a higher rate of extinctions as species end up with overall weaker immune systems.

Re: Eradicating Earth’s Mosquitoes to Fight Disease Is Probably a Bad Idea

#13

Post by berntb »

ghshephard wrote: post #11

Almost no support for the thesis of "bad things will happen if we wipe out mosquitoes" other than "We don't know what will happen." On the flip side, we do know what will happen if the Aedes aegypti, Anopheles, etc... is allowed to continue to exist - 100s of thousands of people a year will die. I wonder how the author would feel about keeping mosquitoes around "just in case", if hundreds of thousands of her neighbor…

As you probably know very well, there must have been similar arguments when they killed off birds in China during the cultural revolution... :-)

(Sure, you can breed mosquitoes quickly, but what happens until the birds or something else which used to eat them breeds back into reasonable numbers? I don't know, you don't know. That is just one unknown.)

I'm not really arguing, I do agree that people have precedence over bugs. But changes like these have bad precedents. And a catastrophe here might make changes in some other place politically impossible, with even worse results.

Re: Eradicating Earth’s Mosquitoes to Fight Disease Is Probably a Bad Idea

#14

Post by taneq »

digital_ins wrote: post #10
taneq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, even if there are no obligate mosquivores, we're perturbing a chaotic system, which is defined by sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Any action we take (including none at all) is going to have some arbitrarily large (or small) effect on the future state of the system. If it works exactly as described, the 'only male offspring' modification should be nice and side-effect-free. But then, evolution is a b…

it's quite possible that mosquitoes that don't require a male to procreate will take dominance. I think there are wasps like that...

True, species with heterogametic females (such as some reptiles) will revert to parthogenesis if no male is available. If mosquitoes are like that (are they?) then that could lead to all sorts of interesting consequences after a dedicated push to release infertile males.

Re: Eradicating Earth’s Mosquitoes to Fight Disease Is Probably a Bad Idea

#15

Post by mjburgess »

ghshephard wrote: post #11

Almost no support for the thesis of "bad things will happen if we wipe out mosquitoes" other than "We don't know what will happen." On the flip side, we do know what will happen if the Aedes aegypti, Anopheles, etc... is allowed to continue to exist - 100s of thousands of people a year will die. I wonder how the author would feel about keeping mosquitoes around "just in case", if hundreds of thousands of her neighbor…

It's like modern culture is trapped in a cold-war b-movie about the excesses of science.

On the pro-science side there's singularities and AI fantasy and the anti-science side the planet is "being destroyed".

It's just one giant argument from ignorance, "we don't know, therefore you don't know, therefore we can say anything we like".

Re: Eradicating Earth’s Mosquitoes to Fight Disease Is Probably a Bad Idea

#16

Post by ghshephard »

soft_dev_person wrote: post #6
taneq wrote: post #3

Species go extinct all the time, and the world doesn't end. Wiping out one species deliberately will probably not be a disaster. Letting mosquitoes continue to exist is just as likely to "bring along with it an endless string of unforeseen consequences, one that could possibly be worse for humans than the problems we have now" as not doing so. On the other hand, we should probably do some due diligence before decidin…

I think the "how" is more important. Genetic modification sounds awesome, and really dangerous. If it's not just right, or if the potential of unforeseen mutations occurring is above zero, I think we risk too much regardless of the benefits. I.e. please be completely certain that the GM offspring mating with female individuals will not result in some other side effect...

Other than movies, do we have any evidence that "GM offspring" (whatever that means, turns out defining "GM" is not as straightforward as one might suspect), are, in any way more likely to be dangerous than plain, vanilla, two-mosquitoes having babies offspring?

Because, here's the thing - we do know the implications of letting these mosquitoes live. 100s of thousands of people a year die. Every Year.

Re: Eradicating Earth’s Mosquitoes to Fight Disease Is Probably a Bad Idea

#17

Post by dnautics »

the article keeps conflating the idea of eradicating human-disease-causing mosquitoes with eradicating all mosquitoes. Presumably the strategy of genetically sterilizing male mosquitoes, for example, would only work for aegypti. The article itself says, "there are thousands of different mosquito species found across the planet, and relatively few of them impact human health"

So eradicating human-threat mosquitoes may not have such a large effect on the global mosquito ecosystem.

Re: Eradicating Earth’s Mosquitoes to Fight Disease Is Probably a Bad Idea

#18

Post by StavrosK »

soft_dev_person wrote: post #6
taneq wrote: post #3

Species go extinct all the time, and the world doesn't end. Wiping out one species deliberately will probably not be a disaster. Letting mosquitoes continue to exist is just as likely to "bring along with it an endless string of unforeseen consequences, one that could possibly be worse for humans than the problems we have now" as not doing so. On the other hand, we should probably do some due diligence before decidin…

I think the "how" is more important. Genetic modification sounds awesome, and really dangerous. If it's not just right, or if the potential of unforeseen mutations occurring is above zero, I think we risk too much regardless of the benefits. I.e. please be completely certain that the GM offspring mating with female individuals will not result in some other side effect...

> if the potential of unforeseen mutations occurring is above zero

The potential of unforeseen mutations occurring is 100%, GM or no. How do you think species evolve?

Re: Eradicating Earth’s Mosquitoes to Fight Disease Is Probably a Bad Idea

#19

Post by crusso »

snarfy wrote: post #12

I'm not convinced disease is inherently bad for a species. Sure it's bad for the poor individual that catches it, but who knows what the total net sum gain/loss is. For all we know the net result could be a higher rate of extinctions as species end up with overall weaker immune systems.

While there is some truth in that, the thought that we should allow natural culling processes to continue to thrive so that the rest of the surviving genetic population can improve the species goes against many core principles built into our society.

Re: Eradicating Earth’s Mosquitoes to Fight Disease Is Probably a Bad Idea

#20

Post by mschwaig »

snarfy wrote: post #12

I'm not convinced disease is inherently bad for a species. Sure it's bad for the poor individual that catches it, but who knows what the total net sum gain/loss is. For all we know the net result could be a higher rate of extinctions as species end up with overall weaker immune systems.

I think that reasoning is less applicable to a species like ours, which has so much power to collectively and conciously take action. In my opinion "let nature take it's course" is just a fancy way of saying "give up".
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