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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

#21

Post by throwaway13337 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #19
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…

The article says 400,000 people per year die from Malaria. Regardless, it’s a lot.

My mistake. It looks like my information is old.

https://ourworldindata.org/malaria

It's gone down a lot recently due, I'm sure, to a lot of effort on this front.

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

#23

Post by mattigames »

hajola wrote: post #11
mattigames wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind malaria also kills lots of animals besides humans.

Those animals now not dying, might cause further ecological damage. Ecosystems tend to have a rather delicate balance and viruses play their part.

Thousands of insects and animals species appeared and disappeared before humans existed, countless of times, so I wouldn't give that much weight to existent equilibriums; what we can do is being aware of the changes, e.g. if we detect a sudden increase in spiders population we can check what is killing the frogs and act accordingly

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

#24

Post by amarant »

Good efforts! I'm still slightly partial to that other approach where they genetically modified the mosquitos themselves to only produce male offspring, in such a fashion that the gene was dominant and thus soon there would be only male mosquitos.

Still, if there's been a snag in the road for that approach, this appears to be a viable alternative

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

#27

Post by learnstats2 »

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…

In the research as described, the mosquito nets they used work more effectively than the proposed solution.

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

#28

Post by ghostDancer »

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…

We have to take into account that with climate change the area where the mosquitoes live will probably be wider affecting more people so extending malaria to bigger populations. IMHO, can be wrong , that we have not made a lot against malaria because till now it affected only poor countries but from now on it will probably arrive to richer ones.

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

#29

Post by petre »

afarrell wrote: post #2

I wonder how much ecological damage is done by humans trying to protect their communities from disease borne mosquitos. I grew up with parents that urged me to prevent pools of standing water, but don’t lots of non-mosquito insects need standing water to breed?

You can populate pools of standing water with fish that eat mosquito larvae like Gambusia affinis, Phoxinus phoxinus etc.

https://pondinformer.com/pond-fish-that-eat-mosquito-larvae/

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

#30

Post by SargeZT »

afarrell wrote: post #5
joecool1029 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I grew up with parents that urged me to prevent pools of standing water, but don’t lots of non-mosquito insects need standing water to breed? Sure, they can use the other pools of standing water not near humans. The reason it works to limit some species of mosquito (mostly aedes aegypti) is that they preferentially seek to bite humans and so live near them. Other bugs seek out plants and other bugs so they can live…

There are more than 7 billion humans in the world and lots of agricultural land is required to feed the ones in cities. How much land area is not near humans?

Roughly half of the habitable land in the world is used for agriculture. Of the remaining half, only about 1% is developed in any sense.
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