71–80 of 80 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The negative is you're disrupting the ecosystem. They reduce the mosquito lifespan's which might impact their population. Things that eat mosquitoes might have to adapt. At this point I'm prepared to accept that though. The suffering these things cause is immeasurable. I hate mosquitoes so much I wish I could nuke them.
More likely, the targeted mosquitoes are outcompeted by other mosquito or small insect species that are just as useful to whatever was dependent on the targets. There's an obvious exception for if some plant is exclusively pollinated by some disease-carrying mosquito, or other bet specific relationship, but that seems unlikely and easy to detect in advance. People in these discussions forget that there are lots of mo…
When they release new males they put a flyer up at our lift that says "there's gonna be tons of mosquitoes soon, don't worry, they are males and they don't bite" and shortly after, all mosquitoes are gone.
It seems to work. I'm not a fan of meddling with nature in this way, though. I have zero doubts that this will end up in some kind of unforeseen disaster.
Singapore has been doing this for years. When they release new males they put a flyer up at our lift that says "there's gonna be tons of mosquitoes soon, don't worry, they are males and they don't bite" and shortly after, all mosquitoes are gone. It seems to work. I'm not a fan of meddling with nature in this way, though. I have zero doubts that this will end up in some kind of unforeseen disaster.
This is hardly the place for this kind of discussion but I can't help but comment on this. Countless species are already going extinct all the time, both known to us and completely unknown to us, and both "naturally" and from human impact, and no one really cares. Here's a rare case of a species that there is very good reason to deliberately get rid of, and suddenly people care and object, a lot!? Of course there's j…
On this case of the Aedes Aegypti in the Americas, should not even be a big consideration whether to exterminate or not, since it's an invasive species from Asia.
it's astonishing that so many of them (not all, but many) are all for keeping all other invasive species in check but somehow make an exception for Aedes Aegypti, literally the most harmful and destructive one :melting_face:
This is hardly the place for this kind of discussion but I can't help but comment on this. Countless species are already going extinct all the time, both known to us and completely unknown to us, and both "naturally" and from human impact, and no one really cares. Here's a rare case of a species that there is very good reason to deliberately get rid of, and suddenly people care and object, a lot!? Of course there's j…
It's the means. If people wanted to look for ways to help reduce stagnant water, as a means of reducing mosquito populations, I suspect exactly 0 people would object. But releasing billions of mosquitos with a bacteria and hoping there's no natural evolution to it, and everything continues to work as planned indefinitely...? There's more than sufficient reason for skepticism there. Beyond this, I would also consider…
there really isn't. it just sounds bad to uneducated laymen - like I said, every expert who studies this, including biologists and environmentalists, agree the mosquitoes can and should be eradicated with zero impact on ecosystems
> It's like how NASA can lose a half a billion dollar probe in modern times because nobody bothered to ensure that all systems were using the same unit systems
this has nothing to do with the subject
> Take yourself a decade in the future and imagine reading about these mosquitoes gaining, at the minimum, a resistance to the bacteria being used. Would it really surprise you? Or would you be thinking something more along the lines of, 'Wow, how could they not see that coming?'
no, the bacteria and/or mosquitoes evolving together is an anticipated outcome and that would surprise absolutely no one. the real question is, when that happens, so what? then we can deploy CRISPR or some other means to extinct the mosquitoes
Starfield companions would've frown upon this solution. More seriously though: 10 years is a long time, this is super interesting but one would wonder if in such time other limiting dengue factors might've arose.
Note that California has reported two cases of Dengue in people who haven't travelled outside the United States.
> The case remains under investigation, but it appears that someone became infected with the dengue virus, returned home and was bitten by a mosquito that passed it on to the local resident, according to Pasadena health officials. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/california-officials... It seems part of the common pattern for outbreaks of dengue viral infections in other urban centres. However California lacks…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can’t help but feel like I’ve heard this before.
How often do you hear about the downsides of malaria eradication in the United States (probably spraying most of Florida with DDT would be one…)? What about screwworm fly elimination in the United States and parts of Central America? That program is much more similar to the thing described in this article than spraying every puddle with insecticide.
I do agree however that the eradication efforts of both caused significantly more good than harm, no question.
This is great news. Dengue was a constant problem in my home country of Malaysia, and remains a problem to this day. I still remember all the public education campaigns about it that I saw when I was young (random ads on TV about making sure there's no stagnant water, seeking medical help if you notice , etc), I'm very glad that there are easily implementable solutions to these problems. As a side note, I wonder why…