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Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes
- losty 10y agoIntrexon (NYSE:XON) bought Oxitec last year.
- joeyspn 10y agoLooks like someone wants to unleash the CRISPR gods... - http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247(15)00262-4 http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247(15)0026... - http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/malaria-zika-crispr-gene-editing-could-wipe-out-blood-sucking-female-mosquitos-1544426 http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/malaria-zika-crispr-gene-editing-co... - http://phys.org/news/2016-02-crispr-female-mosquitos.html http://phys.org/news/2016-02-crispr-female-mosquitos.html - http://www.nature.com/news/gene-drive-mosquitoes-engineered-to-fight-malaria-1.18858 http://www.nature.com/news/gene-drive-mosquitoes-engineered-...
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoSometimes I wonder if the relentless human intervention in every aspect of nature will create or leave only life that has a value to people, like cows and wheat, or that which can resist domination or destruction by humans, like HIV, treatment-resistant bacteria, and the unassailable cockroach. Perhaps after a period of rapid upheaval, humanity develops the technology to capture and control those super powerful flora and fauna, and use them for our own devices. Then we can finally become Pokemon trainers.
- dasil003 10y agoI suspect our ecosystem would collapse and humanity itself would be collateral damage before that actually came to pass, maybe I'm overly pessimistic though.
- noir_lord 10y agoGiven what we've achieved in the last 200 years I wouldn't put it past us to terraform the entire Earth into a giant garden, > Under the FAO's definitions above, agricultural land covers 38.4% of the world's land area as of 2011 [1] You could argue we already have. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_land https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_land
- twirlip 10y agoOf all of Larry Niven's SF, perhaps the most likely future is his Svetz stories. That is to say an overpopulated, polluted world with a global and imperial bureacracy, bereft of any life save man and yeast.
- ars 10y ago> create or leave only life that has a value to people There is a Jewish creation story (Rashi, Genesis 1:11) that God told the trees to make their bark (or the wood itself) edible to humans. The trees refused because "if we did that humans would eat all of us, leaving none behind". It seems to me that the trees got it wrong: Plants that are valuable to humans exist in far greater numbers than those that are not.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoFascinating. Maybe that's the point of the story? It's not as if the ancient Hebrews were unfamiliar with agriculture. Perhaps the meaning is that people should listen to God even if it seems counterintuitive, because you could be more wrong than you (a puny mortal) could possibly understand. That was really interesting. Thanks for that.
- qb45 10y agoThe meaning to you or the meaning to the ancient? If the latter, I'm not sure if people back then were so megalomaniac to consider being useful to humans as an advantage. The world was much less developed before steam engines gave us craploads of energy for free.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoI'm pretty sure that people back then were rather clear on the idea that if something you put in the ground makes food and seeds you're gonna want to keep the seeds to make more.
- qb45 10y agoBut then you become a slave of those pesky humans and their whims, while trees grow freely in forests where they didn't face much danger from humans before the industrial revolution.
- 10y ago
- gerbilly 10y agoHarpers magazine had an article on just this: Planet of Weeds by David Quammen http://www.botany.wisc.edu/courses/botany_422/readings/Quammen1998.pdf http://www.botany.wisc.edu/courses/botany_422/readings/Quamm...
- mc32 10y agoSounds good, but afaik only a few mosquito species actually are spreaders of diseases affecting humans. I suppose I don't know if those pathogens can mutate to use other mosquitoes as hosts. While we're at it, get rid of ticks.
- sunstone 10y agoHey I'm concerned about the biters too, as well as the disease carriers. Get rid of both and I'll tolerate the rest buzzing around in my ear. :)
- mod 10y ago+chiggers
- Turing_Machine 10y agoWe've already got a good start on guinea worms (they'd already be gone if it weren't for a set of superstitious, fuckface warlords in certain African countries). Other prime candidates: Pediculus humanus (human louse, including the head and body subspecies). Pthirus pubis (crab louse) Onchocerca volvulus (causes river blindness) Trichomonas vaginalis (causes nasty vaginal infections, and can be carried and spread by men) Ascaris lumbricoides (giant human roundworm) I believe all of these are parasites specific to human beings, and find it highly unlikely that wiping them out would cause any significant ecological catastrophe. Those who disagree would be welcome to serve as hosts a fallback population, so we could restore them if it became necessary. Concerned about Aedes aegypti mosquitos? Sign up to serve as a blood donor for them. You can help save the species, at the small cost of yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and (apparently) zika. What, that doesn't sound like a good deal? Then why are you willing to wish that fate on others? Especially unwilling others? Sorry for any sarcasm, but it's quite disturbing to see First Worlders condemning Third Worlders to horrible deaths because of ecowhacko "concerns" about friggin' mosquitos.
- yourapostasy 10y agoAs long as we're making lists, add Cimex lectularius (common bed bugs). I'm tempted to toss the entire Cimicidae family into a gene incinerator from the outset, but I'll settle for wiping them out one species at a time. But nuke the mosquitoes that are proven viral vectors first; Cimicidae species if they transmit at all, transmit in very rare instances.
- mikestew 10y agoThis is one of those ideas that sounds genius on its face, until it's actually implemented. Kudzu? Grows fast, prevents erosion, let's pay farmers to till it into the top soil. MTBE? Prevents engine knock, makes for cleaner air, let's mandate its use at the federal level. Whoopsie, once it's in the water we can't get it out, and its a carcinogen. Let's kill all of the mosquitos because we find their presence unpleasant. Well, that's done and...oh, shit. Turns out there was a value to mosquitos after all. Anyone think to save some of that DNA?
- pkaye 10y agoPerhaps do a pilot test in a limited area and see the impact?
- DougWebb 10y agoIf I recall correctly, that was done in Panama by the canal builders; one of the reasons they were successful was because they wiped out mosquitoes in the region, and protected the workers from malaria. Their method was to put a bit of gasoline in all of the swamps. The thin layer of gas on the water surface killed the larvae. It probably caused lots of other environmental damage too though, so a different approach would be needed today.
- maxerickson 10y agoMalaria used to be endemic in much of the US. http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.html http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.html I guess they were pretty close to eradicating mosquitoes in transmission areas once they started the control effort.
- bradstewart 10y agoA similar tactic was used in Cuba and New Orleans to combat yellow fever. [1] They used a layer of oil rather than gasoline though. [1] http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/yellowfever/new_strategies/ http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/yellowfever/new_strategies/
- jonahrd 10y agoI remember reading some old tale about all the animals gathering to decide what to do about humanity. Every animal hated humans, so they all voted to destroy us. Except the mosquito, which was the only one to stand up for us because they needed food. The moral of the story was that in return for looking out for us, we should let mosquitoes drink what they need from us. (not my story, I read it in a history book about India)
- bognition 10y agoI remember reading the same story, however in this case I'm not sure how the metaphor should be applied
- StavrosK 10y agoSo if I steal food from you every day and some of my friends want to kill you, and I say "no, don't kill him, I need him so I can steal food", you should give me food every day as thanks?
- castis 10y agoWell in order for this comparison to work, you'd be programmed on a deep level to take from him in order to sustain your own life. Your choice of the word 'steal' implies that the mosquito understands the morality of theft but just doesn't care. Then again I tend to read way too far into things, my bad.
- krylon 10y agoThe problem is not mosquitos drinking small amounts of our blood. The problem is that in doing so they infect people with diseases like Malaria, effectively killing thousands of people every year. I like the story, though.
- _AllisonMobley 10y agoThose people, if they survived, would have gone on to cause far more ecological damage to the planet than they otherwise did. Until we figure out how to colonize other solar systems, endeavors to spare every human life from such naturally occurring population controls seems foolishly good-hearted.
- hellbanner 10y agoOn reddit, I remember seeing something like "Research assures government that killing mosquitos would have no negative effect on world ecology"... right above another thread titled "Scientists underestimate ecological impact of species destruction"... Do we actually understand Mosquitos role in the planet's eco system?
- ethanbond 10y agoNo, but that isn't even the million dollar question because the answer will never be "yes." The real question is how certain do we have to be about their role before we decide the gamble is worth it? In this thread you see wealthy westerners complaining that mosquitos are a nuisance. In many parts of the world they are holocaust-scale killers. It gets to an age old question re: the precautionary principle, and a lot of philosophers have spent a lot of time reasoning about it. No one has a generalizable answer.
- Turing_Machine 10y agoEven more on point: Which is likely to cause more ecological damgage: 1) Wipe out two (of over 3,500) species of mosquito 2) Spray poisons indiscriminately, wiping out many different species of insect, both mosquitos and non-mosquitos?
- serge2k 10y ago> We’re told that scientists must work hard to find a new vaccine, as if that would be the best solution to the problem. Because it's probably easier than just preventing mosquitos.
- Pitarou 10y agoThe advantage we have with mosquitoes is that they fly about and mingle with the general population, looking for other mosquitoes to mate with. Isolated population reservoirs are relatively easy to identify. So if the latest advances in DNA technology bear fruit, mosquitoes may well turn out to be the easier target. Also, I hate mosquitoes and want them all dead.
- AdmiralAsshat 10y agoInteresting that this article shows up now, given that this one just poped up five days ago: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3284/what-if-we-eradicated-mosquitoes http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3284/what-if-we-era...
- canistr 10y agoWouldn't mosquito predators effectively die off as well? Birds, larger bugs, bats, etc.
- maxerickson 10y agoNot all mosquitoes bite hoomans.
- noir_lord 10y agoNot necessarily, Mosquito's are not primary prey for any species and the niche they occupy would likely be filled rapidly by similar species that don't tend to spread horrific diseases.
- mod 10y agoThis is addressed in both the article and the video.
- roywiggins 10y agoMost mosquitoes don't bite humans; we will leave those alone. Birds can eat those all they like.
- SubZero 10y agoHow many bugs and spiders rely on mosquitoes as part of their diet? Out of all of the ideas in this article, not once was the impact to the biological food chain discussed. We can kill all of the little annoying things, but how many beneficial organisms are being supported by them?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- teraflop 10y agoYou must have stopped reading part way through: > There’s little evidence, though, that mosquitoes form a crucial link in any food chain, or that their niche could not be filled by something else. When science journalist Janet Fang spun out this thought experiment for Nature in 2010, she concluded that “life would continue as before—or even better.” I arrived at the same answer when I looked into the same question for a piece published three years later. “There’s no food chain that we know of where mosquitoes are an inevitable link in a crucial process,” one mosquito-control expert told me.
- clord 10y agoThere will always be experts (and journalists) who can't think of the impact of some change. But I believe tropic cascades are a real thing in food webs, and we can't really know for sure that something will have no impact until we do the thing. If there is one thing we're learning right now, it's that these cascades are real and quite dangerous. Now that this is known, no one should in good conscience set off a possible cascade without knowing something about what might happen. Humans can improve on nature once they understand the impact of an action well, so I'd get behind a well funded study into what effect getting rid of mosquitoes would have — one with an experimental basis and not just a journalist's thought experiments.
- sliverstorm 10y agoThat line from Fang continues to be quoted, but I never found the justification in her own article. It's been a bit since I read it, but I recall that she spent the entire article relating the various ways the absence of mosquitoes would damage ecology, and then concluding nothing would change.
- masterponomo 10y agoMy condo is clear. Next.
- andrewfromx 10y agowatch the will smith movie "I am Legend" where he's the last human alive because scientists made a bold decision like this, then decide if we should do a pre-emptive strike. Or will this be the 12 monkeys (wow, 2nd movie reference) tipping point.
- ch4s3 10y agoYou know that's not a documentary right?
- teraflop 10y agoThere are plenty of sci-fi stories where scientists meddle with forces beyond their understanding and get burned. That's not evidence of anything except the fact that people enjoy those sorts of stories. See also: http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/ http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/
- andrewfromx 10y agogreat point and cartoon. Am I being like a caveman not wanting to mess with nature? I guess so.
- krapp 10y agoOthers have mentioned that this isn't really relevant, but I'm just going to recommend at least reading the novella, and avoiding the movie.
- gsmethells 10y agoPerhaps mosquitos are here to manage the human population in the ecosystem.
- vtlynch 10y agoOkay. Then lets let some disease carrying mosquitoes into all countries - including Western Europe and the US. We wouldnt want those ecosystems to be imbalanced.
- _AllisonMobley 10y ago>>lets let some disease carrying mosquitoes into all countries Why bother when you can count on tourism to do it for you? http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/united-states.html http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/united-states.html
- vtlynch 10y agoLooked at your comment history and its clear you are either a xenophobe, or clueless.
- alwaysdoit 10y agoWe've done this lots[1] of[2] times[3] when it threatens agriculture, but when it threatens the lives of poor people in third world countries, suddenly we're worried about the ecosystem? There will be an environmental impact, but it will be from hundreds of millions of humans not getting malaria and climbing their way out of property, not from the lack of mosquitoes in the ecosystem. It's still a significant problem, but our current solution of "let all the poor people die" is not a good one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochliomyia_hominivorax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochliomyia_hominivorax [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceratitis_capitata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceratitis_capitata [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastrepha_ludens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastrepha_ludens
- bduerst 10y agoIt's not really an apples to apples comparison. All of those are invasive species, except for the screw fly, which isn't a large part of a biological ecosystem (e.g. a sizeable portion of the Myotis lucifugus diet).
- nradov 10y agoIn principle why should it matter whether a particular species is native or invasive? Regardless of whether a particular species spread to an area naturally or were introduced by humans we have to deal with them as they exist today. And certainly some mosquito species are invasive to the areas where they live now.
- wodenokoto 10y agoThe difference is that invasive species are considered harmful to the ecosystem while naturally spread species are considered part of the ecosystem.
- ajuc 10y agoNative species are just an invasive species 10 000 years later.
- degenerate 10y agoThere's an excellent 20min Radiolab you can listen to that was released in 2014, explaining how the genetically modified male mosquitos work: http://www.radiolab.org/story/kill-em-all/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/kill-em-all/ One (single) notable role mosquitos played was stopping early settlements from inhabiting and destroying much of the world's rainforests... "nature's Viet Cong".
- mgberlin 10y agoSeems like it would be relatively easy to preserve large captive populations of existing mosquito species, then kill everything in the wild. If we notice some tragic consequence, ctrl+z.
- infinityplus1 10y agoLol that is a good idea.
- mark-r 10y agoThere's no guarantee that re-releasing the mosquitos would undo the damage. If wiping out mosquitos causes some other species that relies on them to go extinct, we might not notice until another species that relies on them starts suffering too.
- sklogic 10y agoAFAIR (cannot find sources) they are crucial for the soil formation (at least for tansfering the nutrients from the swampy areas), there've been some old Soviet studies.
- bbarn 10y agoSerious question: In areas where Malaria is killing many people, access to health care is a big part of why, right? So I'm assuming if you just removed the mosquitos, those people that died would be alive, and putting greater strain on already famine-like food economies. Wouldn't that be equally as bad?
- roywiggins 10y agoAll the people chronically sickened by malaria (but not killed) could be more productive. Probably the strain from chronic malaria is worse for an economy than any theoretical strain due to feeding a few million more people.
- _AllisonMobley 10y ago>>Probably the strain from chronic malaria is worse for an economy than any theoretical strain due to feeding a few million more people. How about the strain on the planet's non-renewable resources? One would think that the million more people would cause said resources to run out sooner than they otherwise would. Perhaps we should focus on how to deal with the consequences of eliminating certain natural human population controls before we go through with it.
- function_seven 10y agohttp://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Media/Annual-Letters-List/Annual-Letter-2014 http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Medi... See the third section in that link.
- saulrh 10y agoMost of the "whoops" tales are people that didn't listen to their scientists telling them not to, didn't have scientists at all, or were from long enough ago that we can discard their stories as irrelevant in the same way that we'd discard things like "spaceflight is impossible" and "nukes will end war". We've now traced the food chain around malaria mosquitoes out to three or four degrees of separation, including things like the diseases they carry. Their entire ecological niche is trivially replaced by close relatives that don't carry malaria. They're not even common enough to have major food-chain or crowding effects like you'd see with ants, rabbits, kudzu, or sparrows. Everything that we can find says that the damage from eradication would be zero. Not "small", or "manageable". None. They're small enough and unimportant enough that we should be thinking of them as disease organisms rather than insects. And I'm sure you're perfectly happy with the eradication of bot flies, polio, and smallpox. Reevaluate your beliefs. Granted, we can never be certain about it. We're not deities, we're still limited by information theory and epistemology. But we're pretty damn sure. Way more than we need to be to go save half a million people a year.
- ommunist 10y agoIs MBTE really specific to only A. gambiae and A. funestus?
- saulrh 10y agoSomething like 30 out of the 500 anopheles species are capable of carrying malaria. Of those, only those two matter, because the rest won't bite humans. Eradicating those two would be sufficient and another species (that doesn't bite humans) would take over. "Bites Humans" is furthermore not a strong enough competitive advantage to overcome any attempts to eradicate a successor that picks up the disease-ridden malarial torch.
- ommunist 10y agoLook at this problem from different angle. These two species are only abundant in areas where humans live. The malaria annual death toll is about 440000 lives. Maybe it is more worth of an effort to move humans out of there? Since no one is going to eradicate cars worldwide just because the annual human death toll in car accidents is 1.25 million!
- sickbeard 10y agoWhat if mosquitoes are the only thing preventing an alien invasion? Or even worse, the key to stopping one when it happens. "Tabarnak! we would have won if we had some damn mosquitoes!"
- OldSchoolJohnny 10y agoTabernac? Never thought I would see a french canadian curse here.
- esaym 10y agoNext up is the "kissing bug" http://pvangels.com/news-mexico/176714/us-and-mexico-must-jointly-combat-chagas-disease http://pvangels.com/news-mexico/176714/us-and-mexico-must-jo... Possibly responsible for most heart failures in people under the age of 50.
- viach 10y ago"The End of the Whole Mess" by Stephen King is a good read illustrating the problem with this approach.
- ant6n 10y agoWhatever happened to those mosquito laser zappers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKm8FolQ7jw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKm8FolQ7jw
- acdha 10y agoAccording to an acquaintance who worked there, the original research was funded by the Gates Foundation’s anti-malaria R&D program. Intellectual Ventures developed the prototype Photonic Fence (http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventions-patents/our-inventions/photonic-fence/ http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventions-patents/our-i...) but concluded that low-tech things like bed nets had higher benefit per dollar for malaria prevention, particularly when you factor in the challenge of powering the device in areas without reliable electricity (the kill laser requires enough power to make solar non-trivial). The good news is that they licensed it to a company for commercialization last year: http://www.intellectualventureslab.com/invent/new-collaborator-for-photonic-fence-research http://www.intellectualventureslab.com/invent/new-collaborat... The business plan I'd like to see would be selling it as a luxury for the relatively affluent and use that sales volume to drive the manufacturing costs down. I live in Washington DC and it'd have to be really expensive compared to the cost of real-estate which is unpleasant to use from May to November due to mosquitoes, not to mention the growing number of people who will pay a premium not to spray pesticides around their children and pets. Diseases like Zika, Dengue, etc. should boost that even higher.
- ant6n 10y agoDefinitely agree with the idea that it should be sold in the first world to get economies of scale. How much would these things cost, like 300$ a pop?
- ojii 10y agoAccording to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser it would cost $50. They deliberately built it using already available parts (the laser is the same as used for bluray for example) to keep cost down. The problem seems to be (as parent pointed out) reliable electricity.
- quotemstr 10y agoI'm disappointed that the prevailing sentiment is applying the precautionary principle. We didn't create a technological civilization by being absolutely sure of all possible consequences before acting. That approach would have paralyzed us. Technology is a boon. It's done some harm, but a whole lot of good. Let's not throw up our hands and decide that we're no longer comfortable modifying our environment to suit us.
- aethertap 10y agoThere is a long list of things about our technological civilization that would have benefited from applying the precautionary principle a little more. We're in damage control mode right now for a large number of environmental catastrophes, our agricultural techniques of the last half-century or so have depleted and desertified a large amount of prime arable land, we're rapidly shooting ourselves in the foot by abusing antibiotics, and we have some huge problems with war, poverty, and other kinds of social strife. In my opinion, we should be learning to think deeply through consequences instead of looking at our track record and saying "let's do more of that." We don't need to be absolutely sure, but given our history I think we could probably strive to be /more/ sure before we make irreversible changes.
- quotemstr 10y agoI see where you'd coming from, but it's easy to see the costs now that we're so utterly used to the benefits. Use of filthy, polluting energy sources was a necessary stepping stone for the industrial revolution. There was no way to go directly from Newcomen's engine to ITER. Sure, the process left us with some problems to solve, but compared to the alternative, they're good problems to have. If we'd applied the precautionary principle, knowing what we know now, we'd never have had an industrial revolution, nor a green revolution, and we wouldn't be here to talk about it.
- aethertap 10y ago(upvoted) It's hard to predict the alternate present from a notional past. I agree that the things we did were necessary stepping stones on the path to technology that likely could not have been avoided. We might have done it more slowly and with more limited scale and still made it to where we are now (over a longer time span), and I have no idea if that would have had better results or not. The real question for me is, now that we do have this perspective, can we make our future decisions better than our past decisions? We're now at a point where the global system has far less excess capacity to absorb our blunders. In resilience speak[1], it seems to me like we're in the late conservation phase, which typically precedes rapid release (collapse) and reorganization. We have evidence of this in the critical slowing down[2] of adaptive responses from a variety of present-day systems ranging from corals to economies. From my perspective, provoking a system in that condition feels a lot like playing with a doomsday footgun. I don't think that killing off mosquitoes will be the final insult that causes cataclysmic ecosystem collapse; that seems pretty far-fetched. However, I don't know that, and I do think we should strive to have strong evidence for the costs and benefits of any irreversible change we make to our world at this point. 1. http://www.resalliance.org/adaptive-cycle http://www.resalliance.org/adaptive-cycle 2. https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151117-natures-critical-warning-system/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151117-natures-critical-war...
- antognini 10y agoFor the purpose of disease control it's not strictly necessary to exterminate all mosquitos. Mosquito borne diseases are transmitted when a mosquito bites an infected person, becomes infected itself, and later bites another person. So long as mosquitos can be eliminated from the populated areas of a region, even if only for a couple of months, the infected mosquitos will die off, and the people infected with the diseases will eventually (hopefully) recover. By the time new generations of mosquitos reach these populated areas, they will no longer be infected, there will be no infected people for them to bite, and the disease will be eradicated. Such a strategy might be more feasible than total extermination anyway since eliminating mosquitos in unpopulated regions would probably be the most expensive part of such a project due to the lack of infrastructure in those areas. Of course, once the mosquitos return, you still have to deal with those annoying bites....
- palunon 10y agoWhat do you do when the virus infects reservoir species ? Or when there are infected people that aren't sick (and so, don't die or recover) ?
- Gratsby 10y agoI'm getting attacked here at home. Tell me one of you has a mosquito destroying IOT startup going on. Something that maybe counts the kills and pushes stats to the cloud?
- brbsix 10y agoI realize this is blasphemy to some, but perhaps it's time to consider further use of DDT.
- ommunist 10y agoThis is indeed blasphemy. I worked close with people who replaced Soviet DDT programme for controlling gypsy moth populations with effective biological treatment programme in 70-ies (viral agents species-specific). Cheaper, easier to apply, no side effects, real cute. Took 15 years to develop.
- ArtDev 10y agoDDT and the like are too chemically stable.
- hyperion2010 10y agoAh, the scapegoat for the much harder problem: "Let's get rid of bad government."
- outworlder 10y agoDo different species of mosquitoes interbreed? I'm guessing not, as this is the definition of "species". If so, why do we care about the "ecological" impact of mosquito species that feed on humans? If anything, the ecosystem is unbalanced given the human population and the amount of mosquito food sources.
- pareci 10y agoEgo is the problem.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- itsananderson 10y agoThe only comments I see here seem to be taking the the article literally, but I have a strong suspicion that it's largely a parody of the Trump/Cruz talk talk on the Middle East, ISIS, and Islam. > The ugly situation on the ground does not call for Integrated Mosquito Management; it demands a program of Total Mosquito Destruction. and > we’re left to wait and watch swarms of evil on the wing, mating in midair, and landing on our shores. An enemy has made its way to the nation’s borders. Now is not the time for soft responses. (and more)
- marcell 10y agoAside from the question of whether we should kill all mosquitoes, I question if we can. Is there really a pesticide that we can apply globally that kills all mosquitoes, but not huge swaths of other types of insects? And what is the cost of this--who is paying for this global campaign?
- MrArtichaut 10y agoI'm the only one not comfortable with the idea of wiping whole species just because we don't like them? I mean, I'm far fromthe Gaia thing, but what rights do we have to do that? And next? Rats, cockroaches? Hey, this specie of birds doesn't do anything useful and eat our fruits, why not killing them all? Mosquitoes aren't even "responsible" for those diseases... Maybe we should invest in proactive body defenses against virus instead of just killing some random things. Even if we just kill those mosquitoes species you know what? Nature evolves. Other mosquitoes and viruses will come. Do we kill them too?
- nemothekid 10y ago>just because we don't like them? It's bit stronger than "we don't like them" >Maybe we should invest in proactive body defenses against virus instead of just killing some random things. Invest more than the billions that billions that Bill Gates has already invested?
- MrArtichaut 10y agoAnd do you think Bill Gates would approve killing whole species ? I honestly don't known but he seems to be a very clever guy and eradicating species doesn't sound to be a clever solution and really not a good long term solution. What if you break a whole ecosystem ? What if those mosquitoes contain invaluable genes for future medicine? What if they offer a unique window on the evolution of insects? But hey, who care? Kill them all..
- maxerickson 10y agoThe Gates foundation funds efforts to eradicate polio and malaria. He's written about it: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Eradicating-Malaria-in-a-Generation https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Eradicating-Malaria-in-a-G...
- nemothekid 10y ago>And do you think Bill Gates would approve killing whole species ? Yes, and in fact he's done the research, written about it and ultimately it may have been his investments that led to this conclusion. Or we can just let hundreds of thousands continue to die because they might magically contain the cure to cancer in the future.
- quotha 10y agoFirstly, the cure should not be worse than the disease.
- neaanopri 10y agoThis article doesn't seem to know what the impact will be and doesn't seem to care. Mosquitos are food for birds and bats. I think that talking to bird and bat biologists would be the best idea.
- toomanythings2 10y agoCame here to say this and surprised HN isn't outraged over this obvious oversight.
- sirtastic 10y agoWhy do people think it's a good idea to kill off an insect that's a food source to thousands of other insects and animals?
- ElijahLynn 10y agoTruth. Most of the comments here made me realize that a significant amount of HN readers are less intelligent than I thought.
- sportanova 10y agoYeah, as long as it's poor black people and South Americans who cares? </sarcasm>
- sirtastic 10y agoSave a hand full of people while potentially dooming billions? I might not be getting your sarcasm but I'm totally okay with the current situation when the other presents the possibility of destroying millions of ecosystems which mind you would effect billions to trillions of animals, insects, and even people across the globe who are dependent on these functioning ecosystems. Killing off the primary source of food for a few insects/animals can have cataclysmic effect. In addition Mosquitoes do serve a purpose outside of being food. They introduce many diseases, much of which we developed immunities to and continue to successfully ward off naturally to this day. They are the worlds natural vaccination shot so to speak. Truthfully the idea of killing off all mosquitoes seems so damn absurd I don't understand why anyone thinks it's a good idea.
- sportanova 10y agoWhile potentially dooming billions - is anyone seriously suggesting that? Especially if you can target only a handful of the 3500 species. > They introduce many diseases, much of which we developed immunities to and continue to successfully ward off naturally to this day What diseases are you referring to here? There are ~200 million cases of malaria a year and about ~500k of those are fatal. It's a debilitating disease and if it happens to the breadwinners it can ruin the entire family. Hardly a "handful" of people
- phkahler 10y agoHere's a thought. If the people who developed these things spent their own money to release them worldwide (yep, not just one continent) because they believe in the safety and importance of it... What would happen to them? And what would happen if they are right and it works great? Would the public really allow them to be punished? Would someone not reimburse them? They claim it's safe and are willing to risk the world, but not willing to risk their own livelyhood and reputation apparently. If you believe in such a cause, and honestly believe the downside was zero, and you have the tool to do the job... What is holding you back? That's an honest question and I'd love to hear their responses.
- jerryhuang100 10y agoThis author clearly twists the words from that 2010 Nature report[1], as 1) That quote "Life would continue as before — or even better." is not even the conclusion in the Nature report. It's in the fifth paragraph of the first part out of the three part report. I guess this author just stopped here and failed to read the rest parts of the report for his conclusion? 2) The other two parts of the reports talk about the mosquito biomass and its impact to arctic tundra ecosystem, food chains and even cacao pollination. 3) The original author Janet Fang actually concluded the report by quoting entomologist Joe Conlon "If we eradicated them tomorrow, the ecosystems where they are active will hiccup and then get on with life." And the more important part is the next sentence: "Something better or worse would take over." The key is that there is a high probability something worse would take over when you tried to mess Nature's arrangement in the past 100 million years abruptly. As noted by other HN user, Chairman Mao also thought getting rid of sparrows was really a good idea. [1] http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html
- graham1776 10y agoIs there any website/service that allows US citizens to sign and send a pre-written letter to their congressman to address this issue, specifically pertaining to the Zika Virus and/or killing mosquitoes? Change.org campaign? My wife is pregnant now, we live in Southern California, and I feel fairly powerless to do anything except ask my wife to DEET up, be on the lookout for freestanding water, add screens, and pray.
- cpeterso 10y agoDEET has its own health risks.
- jessaustin 10y agoEventually, a researcher who is genuinely responsible instead of merely professionally so will conduct the X-chromosome shredding experiment in the wild. There won't be publicity at first, but if it works as well as the Chickens Little fear then eventually, after the hymns of praise to the heavens have resounded for a few years, the researcher will reveal the key to a hash she had published years earlier. That hash will be found to be of her lab notes on the day she released the selfish gene into the wild and destroyed a scourge upon humanity for good. Not only will this be good for the millions of human children who won't die, but we'll gain a better understanding of ecological principles at which we can now only guess. This isn't the last species we'll want to change, but there may only be a few we want to eliminate this way. The knowledge gained in the anti-Anopheles project will be useful for less destructive efforts as well.
- guelo 10y agoI've heard environmentalists say that one advantage of mosquitoes is that it keeps humans out of tropical forests. It's a view of humans as the pest. Which isn't that preposterous when you consider the vast ecological damage we're doing as a species.
- girishso 10y agoThis reminds me of GEM Mosquito control. I believe this is the only real eco friendly solution for mosquitoes menace. But corporates milking money out of mosquitoes control devices, won't let this be mainstream. > GEM technology is a process of achieving sustainable mosquito control in an eco friendly manner by providing artificial breeding grounds utilizing common household utensils and destroying larvae by non-hazardous natural means such as throwing them in dry places or feeding them to larvae eating fishes. Process in short - http://www.appropedia.org/GEM_mosquito_control#Modus_operandi http://www.appropedia.org/GEM_mosquito_control#Modus_operand....
- ElijahLynn 10y agoJust wanted to say this is a fucking stupid idea.
- ElijahLynn 10y agoEvolution requires the human population to go through epidemics in order to get stronger. Unfortunately what is best for the planet and species is not always the best for individual humans.
- krapp 10y agoDon't fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing evolution. It doesn't "require" anything, it certainly isn't sending epidemics to help us "get stronger", and it really doesn't "care" whether anything lives or dies. People thought the bubonic plague and cholera were God's will up until the germ theory of disease was discovered, happy to pray and cast spells while wallowing in their own feces in flea-bitten squalor, and that's not much different (or much more rational) than arguing that epidemics should be accepted because they're "evolution's will." Believing that nature has a plan only causes unnecessary suffering. Nature no more has a plan than does the dust in a dust storm.
- ajuc 10y ago"Evolution's reaction" to malaria was to give people sickle cell anemia. Evolution doesn't care for happiness, strength, health or anything like that. It only optimizes the number of copies of genes in given circumstances.
- SFJulie 10y agolet's give mixomatose to all rabbits to try to eradicate them all.... Well, long story short, Australia is still full of rabbits and this disease has been introduced in Europe by an idiot and it is still harming the ecosystem. Adaptation sux.
- justsaysmthng 10y agoI'm a vegetarian for spiritual reasons and also because I don't agree with causing suffering to other species. If there's a fly in my room, buzzing on the window, I would open the window and let it fly away. If there's a big ant or a spider or a bee on my foot, I'd wait for it to explore me and then go on its way (although I'm scared of spiders and allergic to bee stings). But even a hardcore flower sniffing fly kissing hippy like myself has his limit. And that limit is called The Mosquito. I've sent so many bad vibes towards this species that they'd stopped biting me years ago. Even so, I still hate them for the sleepless nights and for the crazy, bad, aggressive thoughts that they've spawned inside my mind with their evil buzz. One of the worst things about them is that it takes just one slap - 50 ms - to transform a living, buzzing mosquito into a bloody spot on the wall. They don't even have time to understand wtf has happened to them ! One moment she's like "Yeah! Who I should suck next?!" and next moment she's mush. No pain, no regrets, no suffering. Nothing ! Yet I have to live with the memory of the suffering it has caused me my entire life. Maybe we should design mosquitoes with more advanced nervous systems - optimized for feeling pain and suffering - and make their bodies more resistant and stronger, so that humans can torture them properly. This "let's interbreed them with sterile males" sounds like a really soft and humane (?) punishment - give them lab grown mosquito studs so that those bloodsucking bitches can have a good sex life ? What kind of revenge is that ? No! They must suffer ! Oh my, you see what thoughts they've spawned in me ? Otherwise, I'm pretty peaceful.. /humor
- dingo_bat 10y ago>Maybe we should design mosquitoes with more advanced nervous systems - optimized for feeling pain and suffering - and make their bodies more resistant and stronger, so that humans can torture them properly. You're scaring me (wo)man!
- mavdi 10y agoIt's an amusing article, almost sounded like we are not the most destructive species to most other species on the planet.
- gtirloni 10y agoFrom the article: But New Yorkers, like everyone else in the United States, can take solace in two simple facts. The first is that Zika virus can’t easily be transmitted from one person to another "Zika virus can be spread during sex by a man infected with Zika to his partners." http://www.cdc.gov/zika/transmission/sexual-transmission.html http://www.cdc.gov/zika/transmission/sexual-transmission.htm...
- iamleppert 10y agoWhy don't we kill off some of the humans instead? It's sad when a child dies of malaria, but anymore I'm wondering just what makes us think we deserve to be here more than any other animal, insect, etc? Epidemics are tools of nature to deal with an unbalanced ecology. People are far more destructive to the environment and have been around for far less longer than the mosquito, which has been here since the beginning. At least something like a mosquito is honest about its intentions. It wants to have a handy blood meal from you. A human, on the other hand, will engage in varying forms of deceit, deception and then probably fuck your mother behind your back, before they sucks you dry. Which one would you rather have around? Something to think on next time your get bit by one.
- rmallol 10y agoThere are other way to control the diseases. There's even a startup called AIME (http://www.aime.life http://www.aime.life) that focuses on using machine learning to predict the next mosquito borne disease outbreak. They claim to have pretty good accuracy too. The truth is though, that as the diseases mainly originate in "developing countries", no one seems care enough to even financially support them (not even YC). Still, they've made a lot of progress in the past months, even supporting the state of Sao Paulo in Brazil.
- marknutter 10y agoI wonder what PETA would have to say about this.
- wambotron 10y agoWe have a TON of mosquitos in the late spring through late autumn seasons. Those asian tiger mosquitos. They bite all day long. You can't go out and expect to avoid them unless you're doused in Off, and even then it's no guarantee. Last year my daughter got bit so badly that both of her legs looked like she had a huge rash. It was just a string of mosquito bites combined with a sensitivity to them that exaggerated an already rough problem. All that said, I'm not sure I'm pro-extermination. We have a lot of bats that come around and eat the mosquitos around dusk. I'm sure they'd find other things to eat, but I like seeing them skim the pool for a drink and then eat a few dozen skeeters while they dart around. I also don't like people playing god with this type of stuff. The butterfly effect is real, and if we exterminate them all, we won't know what the effect is until it's already too late. Realistically, the earth adapts to whatever we do to it. Long after we're gone, there will be tons of interesting life forms. That still doesn't make me any less uneasy about it. I don't know.
- OneTwoFree 10y agoProbably I'm biased because I had a dengue fever infection a few years ago, but I don't understand the commenters here. Humanity as a whole burns millions of tonnes of coal, manufacturing millions of tonnes of products which are just thrown away, releasing who knows what chemicals into the rivers and oceans, not to mention the radioactive waste. And seriously you are worried about killing mosquitos?
- mirimir 10y agoDo we really know biological systems well enough to globalize code that nukes all X chromosomes in sperm? Maybe there are unknown mechanisms for cross-species sequence transfer. That could end up being quite the Darwin award ;)
- ommunist 10y agoIf there is simultaneously released artificial retrovirus, carried with Plasmodium, that will transfer gene to human blood from now sterile mosquito, than we are doomed. And from what I know about the US and current state of pharma research, that is entirely technically possible and application only depends from a certain political will. Discl. a good friend of mine developed biological weapons in late 80-ies. In 40 years there has been significant progress in the field.
- duncan_bayne 10y agohttp://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary-blog/3896-death-by-environmentalism http://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary-blog/3896-deat... "What does it mean in practice to hold a philosophy that declares that pristine nature has intrinsic value in itself, and that regards Man and his activities as intrusive threats to the so-called ecological balance? I have discussed the history, meaning, and basic premises of environmentalism previously, in my monograph The Green Machine and in my recorded talk "Green Cathedrals." I also explore these issues on my ecoNOT.com website. But here I want to focus on the consequences of accepting core environmentalist premises—specifically, their deadly impact on human life." Those who object to the eradication of mosquitoes are stating pretty clearly the value of human life according to their philosophy.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoMy friends in Ft. Lauderdale got a couple of CO2 "puffer" traps[1] and it really cut down the mosquito population and it was "chemical free". (caveat adding CO2 to the air I suppose) I was really impressed at how well they worked, my friend calls them the "fake cows". In the Bay Area I've never really had enough mosquito angst to try to build one. The basic idea is to lure them into range and then using a fan blow them into a bucket of sugar water. Something you could easily implement with an Arduino. That said, killing them with lasers[2] is pretty cool too. [1] These are some examples, I am not endorsing these guys just found them for folks who were wondering what I was talking about -- https://www.megacatch.com/ https://www.megacatch.com/ [2] http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventions-patents/our-inventions/photonic-fence/ http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventions-patents/our-i... -- if only someone other than Intellectual Ventures had built it ...
- known 10y agoWe need to eliminate/inject mosquitoes with a virus that is not harmful to humans
- Dove 10y agoI am astonished by the comments in this thread. Many people seem to assume that the chance of disaster as a result of wiping out mosquitoes is high - a sentiment I can only assume arises from having watched a lot of movies with the Arrogant And Foolish Scientist's Ill-Thought-Out Plan Backfires plot. It is good to think through consequences, but supposing that real world scientists acting deliberately and collaboratively will make the same mistakes that movie scientists make for the sake of drama - I find that a concerningly distorted perception of reality. It's sort of like the people who react to robotics with concerns that the robots will go rogue and turn on their creators. Yeah, this is like a 90% probability event in movies, but that does not make it a reasonable thing to worry about in the real world. Yeah, of course we should carefully think through the consequences before acting. That's what is happening. But if the mosquito experts say the ecological impact is likely to be negligible, then it probably will be. These guys are experts. Species go extinct all the time, and life goes on because it's pretty robust. I'm not saying scientists are all knowing and can foresee all side effects, though I suspect if they are willing to state a view like that with confidence, they won't be far off. What I'm saying is the ZOMG BIRDS EAT MOSQUITOS and WHAT IF WE INFECT OURSELVES AND GET WIPED OUT talk is a little silly. Cool it there, Spielberg. ;)
- givan 10y ago1 mosquitos only carries diseases, many other species do this, for example rats spread the plague in the dark ages, even infected humans spread diseases. 2 there is no expert or science that can fully understand the whole ecosystem and how it works, mosquitos and many insects are at the base of the food chain, the impact will probably be a domino effect that will make many other species extinct, where will this lead? nobody knows, it's like playing with fire. Wiping out entire species to solve the spread of a virus is not only inefficient (there are other ways it can spread) and dumb but also dangerous, it's like a solution of an infant that can only think destroy destroy. We need creative and intelligent ideas for hard problems, not simple and stupid infant like ideas, and hn is a place where people with such ideas gather this is why you see more of these comments.
- Dove 10y ago
- rdiddly 10y agoCorporate trolling
- pastyboy 10y agoMaybe all the pesticides used to control mosquitos have created the virus in the first place.
- sametmax 10y agoMosquitoes is not just about the macro-ecosystem. Blood sucking animals actually help micro-organism maintain their biodiversity by allowing DNA from very different environment to mixup. Killing mosquitos would be like killing bees (which we are). Also you may think that most organism causing diseases are bad, but they can be actually useful in your own organism most of the time, and only trigger a disease once their population is out of control or when your body is not tuned correctly anymore. Killing everything that seems to affect us in a bad way could snow ball into terrible consequences. Not to say I'm not glad that the plague is out of the picture, but everything is not "plague-level". BTW: I have malaria. I hate mosquitos. I still believe we should not eradicate mosquitos.
- zamalek 10y agoWhy haven't we talked about possibly engineering Aedes that cannot carry the virus and release those into the wild to spread their resistant genes to other Aedes? I don't know if this is practical, or even possible - I just have yet to see any solution other than the typical human "kill the threat" response.
- _AllisonMobley 10y agoI agree with you. "Let's get rid of all these natural population controls!" Sounds like the beginning of a bad post-apocalypse movie.
- cmurf 10y ago"This is genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of all life on Arrakis!" Yeah ok, just mosquitoes, but it made me think of the angry emperor.
- Ontheflyflyfly 10y agoFirst: genocide liches
- Zelmor 10y agoThe writer thinks in terms of human loves, excluding the fact that birds and other species thrive on mosquitoes. If you remove one step of the foodchain, you will hurt everyone, including us.
- NoGravitas 10y agoNot strictly on topic, but the discussion of screwfly eradication made me think of [this brilliant and chilling short story][0]. [0]: https://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/sheldon/sheldon1.html https://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive...
- lunchTime42 10y agoCan we do this systematic? First massive reduction, to test wether the Eco-System can handle it short term. If yes, eradication until the diseases have vannished. Measurement if the ecosystem handles it. Reintroduction if needed.
- nec977 10y agohttp://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160422-battling-the-zika-virus-one-old-tyre-at-a-time http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160422-battling-the-zika-vi...