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GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests

bbc.co.uk

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Re: GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests

#111

Post by koodiorja »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #17

Predictable negativity from the comments here ignores that over one million people die of malaria per year. Not using what we can against something this horrible is a choice, too. And one that has the greater of consequences. It's easy to poke holes in things from the sidelines. That action is actively causing us to drag our feet and kill a lot of people. It should also be noted that mosquitoes are not depended on as…

Areas worst affected by Malaria mostly happen to be the ones also suffering from unsustainable population growth. I'm not sure whether fighting malaria should be the first priority if people potentially saved are likely to end up having miserable lives anyway? If there's any risk that that this might hurt the already harmed biodiversity, then it's clearly not worth it.

Re: GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests

#112

Post by joshypants »

koodiorja wrote: post #111
throwaway13337 wrote: post #17

Predictable negativity from the comments here ignores that over one million people die of malaria per year. Not using what we can against something this horrible is a choice, too. And one that has the greater of consequences. It's easy to poke holes in things from the sidelines. That action is actively causing us to drag our feet and kill a lot of people. It should also be noted that mosquitoes are not depended on as…

Areas worst affected by Malaria mostly happen to be the ones also suffering from unsustainable population growth. I'm not sure whether fighting malaria should be the first priority if people potentially saved are likely to end up having miserable lives anyway? If there's any risk that that this might hurt the already harmed biodiversity, then it's clearly not worth it.

Comments like these are completely unacceptable.

Re: GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests

#113

Post by mixmastamyk »

smilbandit wrote: post #83
throwaway13337 wrote: post #17

Predictable negativity from the comments here ignores that over one million people die of malaria per year. Not using what we can against something this horrible is a choice, too. And one that has the greater of consequences. It's easy to poke holes in things from the sidelines. That action is actively causing us to drag our feet and kill a lot of people. It should also be noted that mosquitoes are not depended on as…

it should be noted that only 3 out of ~3,000 mosquito species are responsible for the spread of disease in humans and just 1 transfers malaria.

There are others (Aedes aegypti) that spread Dengue and Zika.

Re: GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests

#114

Post by bubblewrap »

Nasrudith wrote: post #74
bubblewrap wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fighting Malaria will presumably enable humans to settle in more areas than before, which will in itself do a lot of ecological damage. Edit: 2 downvotes. At this point, HN might as well switch off voting. It has become ridiculous. Here is something else for you to vote down: 2 + 2 = 4 Take that, suckers!

Mere habitable area is already not the main constraint by far. Farmland isn't even as increased yield has lead to a decrease and market breaking surpluses for almost a century with lesser yield boosts. If habitable land was the constraint we would see ruralization - instead we see urbanization even when policies favor the suburban.

Well then you could solve Malaria by moving away from infested places, I suppose.

Not yet convinced that land use is actually shrinking, but will google. And what about the rain forests? Why burn them down, if there is enough land already?

Re: GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests

#115

Post by craigsmansion »

saulrh wrote: post #87
craigsmansion wrote: post #59

The previous magic bullet against Malaria was called Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT. DDT worked very well, initially, but its effects and consequences were intractable and long-term. It's still deployed to various degrees of effectiveness, but usage is far more complex than the initial promise of getting rid of Malaria. A GM fungus 99% kill rate sounds good, but for insect populations that mig…

This is like arguing that the Model T demonstrates that cars will never be safe enough to drive. Yes, there are ways to do this wrong. We have a much better idea what they are and our standards for precision and reliability are much higher. The 1940s are long gone and we aren't the baby boomers. We require seat belts in all cars, houses to be built to fire and electrical codes, and household chemicals to have plain l…

Your counter examples are about the mitigation of unexpected and unwanted effects. These were implemented after the fact.

There are situations that have no possibility of redress.

Your paragraph about ecological impact can serve as an example of the lurking danger. I wasn't even concerned about ecological impact. My concern was about artificially creating a resistant species. That's one of the pitfalls here. We're talking about the same thing, but because it's new we're not addressing the same issue.

We got away with DDT because:

- We could stop using it.

- There were alternatives that reshuffled the genepool of a now largely resistant population the other way, after the fact.

These two are not a given when deploying engineered organisms. Even though both are means to fight malaria, they are not the same and need different considerations of which some are new and not valid for any older approaches.

> The people working on this understand what will happen if their solution isn't good enough.

So do most programmers...

Re: GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests

#116

Post by sorryforthethro »

Kalium wrote: post #88
_Microft wrote: post #45

People do not take issue with doing something against malaria but with the proposed method. How could it be stopped if something went wrong? It's not like a chemical agent that you just stop applying when you notice adverse effects. This is a living thing. Living things can procreate, mutate, enter new niches and the only deciding factor is the rate of reproduction. Life doesn't optimize for killing malaria-carrying…

Perhaps there might be a higher level question at hand here. What level of caution is appropriate when the deliberate choice of inaction has a price tag of six digits of lives attached? What level of risk and potentially unforeseen consequences are we willing to accept? This is not an idle question. It's a critical question for informing a decision-making framework that rests on calculation. Which we need here - I th…

Another criticism of this haste is that you set yourself up to be taken advantage of by profiteers or genuine malicious actors. I understand the urgency to save lives as soon as possible; but the risk is high and uncertain.

Re: GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests

#117

Post by User23 »

roywiggins wrote: post #106
Kalium wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clearer, the question of what level of caution is appropriate is one that cannot depend on the approach being considered. It needs to to be one that can be applied evenly across the whole of the solution-space. Approaches like insisting on fully and completely explore all the ideas that are readily palateable before we try to understand the potentials and risks of others seems like making policy primarily based…

> Also, vaccines can run horribly off the rails. One cannot mutate into a pathogen, as you say The live polio vaccine absolutely can. Before polio was largely eliminated, it didn't really matter, but once the risk of getting the wild-type virus dropped below the risk of getting it from the vaccine , it stopped making sense to use the live-attenuated vaccine. http://www.virology.ws/2015/09/10/why-do-we-still-use-sabin…

This makes me think that it's good persuasion to acknowledge that all anti-vaxxers aren't necessarily fundamentally irrational (some are I'm sure). Most people are anti-vaccine with respect to smallpox for example, as well as the polio example you give. We continue to use the vaccines we do because they improve the overall odds, not because they are a panacea with no downsides.

Re: GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests

#118

Post by jeffdavis »

Kalium wrote: post #88
_Microft wrote: post #45

People do not take issue with doing something against malaria but with the proposed method. How could it be stopped if something went wrong? It's not like a chemical agent that you just stop applying when you notice adverse effects. This is a living thing. Living things can procreate, mutate, enter new niches and the only deciding factor is the rate of reproduction. Life doesn't optimize for killing malaria-carrying…

Perhaps there might be a higher level question at hand here. What level of caution is appropriate when the deliberate choice of inaction has a price tag of six digits of lives attached? What level of risk and potentially unforeseen consequences are we willing to accept? This is not an idle question. It's a critical question for informing a decision-making framework that rests on calculation. Which we need here - I th…

It sounds like you want to take a calculated risk. I'm not convinced that this is a calculated risk -- it's an unbounded risk. What if it, for example, kills of pretty much all of the insects over a large part of the earth?

Re: GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests

#119

Post by beat »

keyfl wrote: post #39
YokoZar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rich countries drained their swamps to end malaria starting in the 19th century. It was one of the first major public works projects.

What exactly is stopping 3rd world countries from doing that?

I dunno. What do you think is stopping them?

My home state of Minnesota jokes about mosquitoes being our state bird, but I have zero risk of catching malaria from them. That's because malaria isn't carried by our native mosquitoes. So our cost of mitigation is rather lower.

Re: GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests

#120

Post by beat »

zapita wrote: post #86
Avamander wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not permanently crippled.

As pygy_ explained above, colonialism has morphed into "neocolonialism through private corporations and puppet governments". That is a symptom of the widening gap in power between former colonies and former colonizers. That gap is compounding over time, making it harder and harder for former colonies to catch up. In that sense, the crippling effects of colonization are still felt today, and are continuing to grow wit…

What makes you think the gap is compounding? Is that fact-based, or feelings-based?

I'd recommend reading Factfulness, by Hans Rosling. It'll cause you to rethink some things.

edit: Here's an interesting fact for you. In the late 1990s, the global extreme poverty rate (around $1.80/day in today's dollars) was 29%. Today, it's under 9%. We've wiped out two thirds of the world's extreme poverty in twenty years. https://www.gapminder.org/topics/extreme-poverty-trend/

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