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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

#31

Post by jddj »

These threads about whether it's moral to kill mosquitoes en masse always seem to end up being about unintended consequences and ecosystem collapse.

Some points to consider:

- Those who study the strains of mosquito (a generous 50 out of ~3500) which spread disease in humans regularly state that they are not a primary food source for any one predator.[1]

- Malaria killed 429 000 people in 2015, 90% of those being in Africa, and many of them children.[2]

- All of our current control methods have unintended consequences. Take for example that NGOs who offered insecticide-treated mosquito nets to communities found that they were being used in waterways for fishing.[3]

- In developed nations we are happily deploying much less targeted solutions without significant levels of complaint (and to counter relatively less serious mosquito-borne diseases), such as the indiscriminate aerial spraying of insecticides over large areas and waterways.[4]

Everything is a trade-off, admittedly, and we can never know the full set of consequences in advance (see: the impacts of introduced species), but it might be a useful exercise to weigh your concerns against the benefits to sub-saharan Africa as a whole (and to individual African families) that could materialize were these particular strains of mosquito to be eliminated.

And give a little credit to those educated people doing the research into the likelihood of ecosystem collapse and producing reasonable peer-reviewed results.

Edit to add: That said, I'm personally partial to the efforts which release genetically-sterilised males. That seems less like the plot of a Hollywood doomsday movie than a spider-venom fungus.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/09/13/what-would-hap...

[2] https://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/31/global-u...

[4] https://www.cdc.gov/zika/vector/aerial-spraying.html

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

#32

Post by jimworm »

amarant wrote: post #24

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

I'd much prefer the (theoretical) gene drive.

Bad outcomes for gene drive are either that it doesn't work, or the mosquitoes go extinct in nature and cause more ecological issues by their absence. The worst problem is fixable by keeping live specimens for reintroduction. In fact, since malaria is the target and not the mosquitoes, reintroduction might be a good idea after malaria becomes extinct.

Bad outcomes for the fungus is it becoming uncontrollable and starts killing other insects. Reintroduction becomes impossible without engineering a new, immune mosquito. Or that evolution backfires on the spider and causes them to go extinct. Or all of those happening together.

Comparing the two, the fungus has all the downsides and more, with zero upside.

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

#33

Post by petre »

joecool1029 wrote: post #4
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?

>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…

Aedes Aegypti can breed in jars, tires, basically anything that holds water. No need for pools of standing water.

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

#34

Post by bayesian_horse »

fiblye wrote: post #15
bayesian_horse wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fungus is supposed to be deployed on a rather small scale. It is not infectious for other insects, so it's probably not able to spread very far. Most of all, it is already freely spreading in its natural form, and does not lead to mass extinction of these malaria mosquitos, proven by the fact that they still exist... On top of that the spider venom is probably bad for the fungus. Apart from taking away resources…

>It is not infectious for other insects Yet. It’s definitely possible for it to adapt to infect something that’ll help it proliferate farther.

Which would be a much bigger evolutionary leap compared to losing the spider venom. And dauntingly big for a fungus that kills off 99% of hosts in the region that quickly.

I presume that the fungus is obligatorily parasitic, meaning it can't thrive outside its host, except as a spore. This is true for most pathogenic fungi.

From the article it's not even clear that the fungus "spreads" well or at all in a mosquito population. I think they intend to grow the spores large-scale in a lab, and infect most of the mosquitos directly, and not through secondary transmission...

Also: The fungus already exists in the wild. It just doesn't kill the host that quickly.

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

#36

Post by Udik »

ghostDancer wrote: post #28
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.

- with climate change the area where the mosquitoes live will probably be wider

Malaria used to be widespread in Italy. It was causing 15000 deaths/ year in the 19th century. It's nowhere to be found now thanks to insecticides and soil drainage.

So I'm a bit sceptical when I hear that climate change will widen the range of malaria. The range already included the first world, we eradicated it.

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

#37

Post by YokoZar »

ghostDancer wrote: post #28
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.

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

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

#38

Post by andygates »

jimworm wrote: post #32
amarant wrote: post #24

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

I'd much prefer the (theoretical) gene drive. Bad outcomes for gene drive are either that it doesn't work, or the mosquitoes go extinct in nature and cause more ecological issues by their absence. The worst problem is fixable by keeping live specimens for reintroduction. In fact, since malaria is the target and not the mosquitoes, reintroduction might be a good idea after malaria becomes extinct. Bad outcomes for the…

The fungus doesn't affect other insects - this was part of the test. So the worst case is that it becomes uncontrollable and wipes out the mosquitoes.

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

#39

Post by keyfl »

YokoZar wrote: post #37
ghostDancer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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

#40

Post by kaybe »

ghostDancer wrote: post #28
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.

We are working on it (not me):

> The only approved vaccine as of 2015 is RTS,S, known by the trade name Mosquirix. It requires four injections, and has a relatively low efficacy. Due to this low efficacy, the World Health Organization (WHO) does not recommend the routine use of the RTS,S vaccine in babies between 6 and 12 weeks of age.[1]

> A WHO-led implementation program is piloting the vaccine in three high-malaria countries in Africa in 2019. The first phase of the project, covered by grants from Unitaid, Gavi and the Global Fund, is planned to establish the feasibility, impact and safety of RTS,S, when used as part of a routine immunization program.[2][3] Research continues into recombinant protein and attenuated whole organism vaccines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria_vaccine

It seems to be quite complicated.

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