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

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

#91

Post by danieltillett »

jevinskie wrote: post #87
danieltillett wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Thanks for the link. That article mentions a plan where A) a vector species is eliminated and B) the species is repopulated from "clean" populations that have been simultaneously been kept alive in a lab/farm. Supposedly this will eradicate the parasite and its host while (probably?) allowing the reintroduction of the host species in the future without all the nasty parasites. I suppose if the parasite rears its head…

Yes as long as we kept some of the species alive we could always choose to repopulate the environment later if it turned out some extremely unlikely catastrophic result occurred.

Personally I think the only good blood sucking mosquito is a dead one so I doubt I would want to see them back even if they didn’t kill people.

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

#92

Post by mixmastamyk »

PerfectElement wrote: post #66
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…

When I lived in Brazil, we had window screens, but it was on an affluent area in the coast of Rio. I'm not sure it made things that much better though. You need a lot of discipline to keep those screens shut all the time when you live in a tropical country and go outside all the time. We just learned that during the summer, around 7pm, it was time to close doors and windows and turn the A/C on.

There's no discipline needed, the kind I'm talking about aren't (easily) removable.

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

#93

Post by raphinou »

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…

Are we sure wiping out a mosquito will not wreak havoc? Eg (just an hypothetic illustration) starving out a spider species which results in another nefast insect to proliferate? Are we sure the mosquito is not a key element in the ecosystem? Really curious to know more on this.

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

#95

Post by danieltillett »

mitchtbaum wrote: post #89
danieltillett wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not trying to insult you, but you do need to try to understand what is being discussed. I am pretty sure if you knew what a gene driver system is and what it can do then you would understand the significance of this paper. I edited my original post to include a link to a review paper that explores this whole area. You might find reading this helpful.

Ok, I see my misunderstanding. Gene driving takes both genetic engineering, like the process you pointed to initially, and it would require a catch-and-(selective)-release approach that works on guiding sexual reproduction (sorta like domestication, not gene therapy). (Aside: This reminds me of the TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_ewald_asks_can_we_domesticate... ) It makes a lot more sense to me when looking…

Excellent. In regards how to best target the mosquitoes using this system this is still an open question, but it is now an engineering and political problem, not science problem.

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

#96

Post by danieltillett »

raphinou wrote: post #93
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…

Are we sure wiping out a mosquito will not wreak havoc? Eg (just an hypothetic illustration) starving out a spider species which results in another nefast insect to proliferate? Are we sure the mosquito is not a key element in the ecosystem? Really curious to know more on this.

Yes we are as sure as we can be about anything in science [1], but even if it did cause some ecological issue it would be worth it given the misery mosquitoes cause.

1. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html

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

#97

Post by tiatia »

danieltillett wrote: post #74
tiatia wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

May I assume you have zero background in biology/biochemistry/chemistry?

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

#98

Post by danieltillett »

tiatia wrote: post #97
danieltillett wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What would be the “long tail risk”? All the CRISPR-Cas9 > systems would die out with the mosquitos. May I assume you have zero background in biology/biochemistry/chemistry?

No you may not (you can look at my profile here). Once again what is the long tail risk? Up thread there is lots of discussion about all of this.

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

#100

Post by adrianN »

rewqfdsa wrote: post #81
danieltillett wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a certain strain of environmentalist that sees deindustrialization, technological regression, and human population decline as the solution to the world's problem. This perspective misses the mark, I think.

Human population decline would solve a lot of our environmental problems and is not necessarily tied to technological regression. In many developed countries it happens by itself and it could rather easily be helped along with some financial incentives, say, a tax on children.
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