Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 142 posts

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#71

Post by danieltillett »

bluejekyll wrote: post #68
danieltillett wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The collateral damage they are talking about here is avoided human misery and death. This is one sort of collateral damage we can happily live with.

I think they mean something more along the lines of Dragonflies. They love to eat mosquitoes and their larvae. Not that we shouldn't do it, I'm sure they can live off knats just as easily.

I am pretty sure they were talking about people. From the Nature article

"The ecological effect of eliminating harmful mosquitoes is that you have more people. That's the consequence," says Strickman.

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#72

Post by danieltillett »

sanxiyn wrote: post #69
danieltillett wrote: post #9

The sooner we get serious and start to deal with mosquitos the better. We already know what needs to be done [1], now all we need to do is get on with. How many millions of people have to die before we solve the problem of mosquito borne disease once and for all. Are we really going to sit around for decades debating if we should use this technology or not? Edit. For those who want to understand more about this gene…

Note that it is far from clear [1] is what needs to be done. [1] introduces sterility using gene drive. Sterility is effective but in a sense self-defeating, and it can only suppress, not eradicate, mosquito population. [2] demonstrates introducing malaria immunity using gene drive. To attack malaria, it is enough to immunize mosquito against malaria, instead of eradicating mosquito. Immunity is also not self-defeati…

With multiple gene drivers you can drive a species to extinction - the power of CRISPR-Cas9 gene drive system is that you can make multiple different drivers easily.

Yes you can use gene drivers to create immunity in mosquitos against carrying certain diseases, but that only targets one disease at a time. Better to remove the vector rather than try to make the vector less dangerous.

This paper by George Church is a pretty good overview [1].

1. http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2014/07/17/007203.f...

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#73

Post by tiatia »

danieltillett wrote: post #9

The sooner we get serious and start to deal with mosquitos the better. We already know what needs to be done [1], now all we need to do is get on with. How many millions of people have to die before we solve the problem of mosquito borne disease once and for all. Are we really going to sit around for decades debating if we should use this technology or not? Edit. For those who want to understand more about this gene…

You would not release a gene into the wild, but the CRISPR-Cas9 system. The long tail risk would be tremendous.

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#74

Post by danieltillett »

tiatia wrote: post #73
danieltillett wrote: post #9

The sooner we get serious and start to deal with mosquitos the better. We already know what needs to be done [1], now all we need to do is get on with. How many millions of people have to die before we solve the problem of mosquito borne disease once and for all. Are we really going to sit around for decades debating if we should use this technology or not? Edit. For those who want to understand more about this gene…

You would not release a gene into the wild, but the CRISPR-Cas9 system. The long tail risk would be tremendous.

What would be the “long tail risk”? All the CRISPR-Cas9 systems would die out with the mosquitos.

We have 700 million cases of mosquito caused misery a year (along with more than a million deaths) on one side, and a completely vague risk that something bad might happen on the other. It is like worrying if you are going to get cancer from the smoke while your house is burning down.

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#75

Post by brazzledazzle »

mitchtbaum wrote: post #55
danieltillett wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But how could we put it into practice? I only saw gene-level mechanics in that article. Please show me a machine that could do this at scale Figure 1C is what you need to look at. This is real mosquitoes, not genes. I think the problem is you don’t understand what a gene driver system is and how it works (it is complex genetics so there is no shame in this). The wiki article [1] is not great, but the original articl…

> The problem was until now we didn’t have a good system to actually make these drivers, we do now. Link? Again, please show me a machine that can operate at scale or even a simple demo with an inlet, a re-engineered mosquito, and an outlet. (preferably without insulting me)

Unless he edited his post he wasn't being insulting. I'd say he was being very patient throughout this thread considering how demanding you're being.

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#76

Post by purpled_haze »

danieltillett wrote: post #9

The sooner we get serious and start to deal with mosquitos the better. We already know what needs to be done [1], now all we need to do is get on with. How many millions of people have to die before we solve the problem of mosquito borne disease once and for all. Are we really going to sit around for decades debating if we should use this technology or not? Edit. For those who want to understand more about this gene…

The world needs more bats. While bats will eat other more nutritious insects like moths, wasps, etc. before mosquitos, they can help control the mosquito population in areas where there are many mosquitos, and most of the insects they get rid of are a nuisance to humans: http://www.mosquito.org/faq#bats

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#78

Post by sitkack »

rdtsc wrote: post #48
themartorana wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have we ever on-purpose driven another species to extinction in order to save ourselves?

To save, maybe not. But we sure did it for other reasons -- like say to hurt others, or for economic reasons. One example is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_hunting We went from 30 million on North American continent around 16th century, to a few hundred around 19th century.

We were trying to exterminate the American Indian.

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#79

Post by danieltillett »

purpled_haze wrote: post #76
danieltillett wrote: post #9

The sooner we get serious and start to deal with mosquitos the better. We already know what needs to be done [1], now all we need to do is get on with. How many millions of people have to die before we solve the problem of mosquito borne disease once and for all. Are we really going to sit around for decades debating if we should use this technology or not? Edit. For those who want to understand more about this gene…

The world needs more bats. While bats will eat other more nutritious insects like moths, wasps, etc. before mosquitos, they can help control the mosquito population in areas where there are many mosquitos, and most of the insects they get rid of are a nuisance to humans: http://www.mosquito.org/faq#bats

While I am generally pro-bat, I don’t think bats are going to solve the mosquito borne disease problem. If DDT couldn’t do it then bats aren’t going to be able to either.

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#80

Post by djsumdog »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #47

This isn't the first dangerous disease spread by mosquitos, and may not be the last. Not to mention how incredibly annoying they are in general. I've been to Brazil a number of times, and the thing I could never understand is why, in a tropical country knee-deep in hungry disease causing mosquitos, is there not a single screen on any of the windows there? Big mistake, they're not expensive. They are cheaper and safer…

Most counties don't have window screens. They've rare I'm Europe, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Most of those places also don't have residential air conditioning either.
Post reply on HN