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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

#81

Post by pvaldes »

shawnz wrote: post #65
pvaldes wrote: post #63

Lets put it simple, this is terrorism. We talk about a plan to disseminate a potent lethal poison claiming moral reasons. Not unlike releasing gas sarin in metro (for highly moral reasons also, everybody has a good reason stuck in their head). Killing millions to save thousands and so. The main difference here is that is a lethal stuff regenerated constantly and released in the air at random days. Yup, this could be…

I think you mean negligence and not terrorism

I can't help to wonder myself how they though that releasing in the nature a creature able to synthesize venom of funnel-web spider was a good idea. Is astonishing.

Are this organisations, supposedly full of smart people, so hierarchical that nobody could point to the obvious elephant in the room? Even a child could see it coming.

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

#82

Post by Avamander »

Nasrudith wrote: post #70
thaumasiotes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably this incredible nonsense: >> The reason former colonies haven’t been able to do the same at home is because their society and economy are permanently crippled by colonization. Here's an interesting passage from Early China: A Social and Cultural History ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GA22L0E/ ): > Even when we are talking only about the areas that can be considered as part of Early China, back in a time…

You kind of proved the point though because century time scales are involved then instead of decades for the project. I would certainly call "multigenerational when others can do it in one" crippled.

But not permanently crippled.

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

#83

Post by smilbandit »

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.

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

#84

Post by DanCarvajal »

_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…

No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes.

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

#85

Post by ladyattis »

The issue I can see from such techniques is the same issue with all pesticides and that is are these species we've deemed pests necessary for the food web? I know it seems silly but apparently mosquitoes are a major biomass source for fish and other species which may not be easily substituted with a less dangerous one. Maybe the more correct answer isn't killing off the mosquitoes which feed off humans but find a way to eliminate malaria itself. I'm being naive in my assessment, to be honest, but that's just my thoughts on the matter.

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

#86

Post by zapita »

Avamander wrote: post #82
Nasrudith wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kind of proved the point though because century time scales are involved then instead of decades for the project. I would certainly call "multigenerational when others can do it in one" crippled.

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 with no end in sight.

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

#87

Post by saulrh »

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 labels and clear warnings.

We also now know that we need to specifically target something like three sub-species of mosquito and that if we hit exactly those three the ecological impact will be essentially zero; we've verified that they don't compete with anything and that nothing eats them and that they don't interact in any of the dozens of ecological systems that professional biologists understand that programmers never learn about. We know that we need to hit exactly those sub-species because DDT happened. We know that we need to study things like evolution rates and virulence before deploying engineered organisms; we have, after all, all watched Jurassic Park.

The people working on this understand what will happen if their solution isn't good enough. You are not adding anything to this situation except uncharitable negativity. You cite DDT. I'll cite Greenpeace, whose blind opposition to nuclear power is still contributing to the ongoing death of our planet. Don't be Greenpeace.

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

#88

Post by Kalium »

_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 think we can all agree that personal ick-factor is a bad approach to large-scale public policy.

Which is to say you're right. We cannot be certain that won't happen with this approach. Indeed, we cannot be certain of all consequences with any approach.

With that in mind, what level of certainty should we require?

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

#89

Post by Nasrudith »

ashildr wrote: post #51
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…

- Something has to be done. - This is something. - Therefore it has to be done.

I think it is more a moral trolley problem really. Not doing something will result in X but do it for Y which will lessen it. Included the associated arguements about responsibility vs outcomes.

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

#90

Post by lkbm »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #21
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I pay some attention to malaria rates, partly because I like to donate to the Against Malaria Fund[0], and these charts are fascinating to me because I usually just see the UN charts (the first chart in your link[1]). All the other charts on that page show deaths increasing until 2003, and then dropping. They're using IHME data.

Further down, at [2], they discuss why these charts are so different, pointing out that IHME was estimating roughly double the rates as the UN in Nigeria, DRC, and India due to "differences in methodology, data coverage and sourcing".

Cool, that's nice. But what happened in 2003 to turn this all around?

According to the IHME itself, "One of the biggest forces in the decline in malaria deaths was the advent of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), which provided 40% of development assistance for health targeted toward malaria from 2003 to 2008."[3]

So that's neat.

It's important for us to keep in mind that while aid often messed up terribly (especially in the late 20th Century), a lot of aid has been working really well for decades now. We figured out, for the most part, how to provide aid without it all going to funding corrupt governments, or destroying local agricultural economies.

Here's where I do a quick shill for The Against Malaria Foundation. They're very well-rated by Givewell[4], so if you want to stop malaria, I highly recommend giving them money. :-)

[0] https://www.againstmalaria.com/

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-malaria-deaths-by-...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/malaria#data-quality-definitions

[3] http://www.healthdata.org/research-article/global-malaria-mo...

[4] https://www.givewell.org/

[5] Also, the mentioned GFATM: https://www.theglobalfund.org/en/

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