5 ms·

Mosquitos aren't about unpleasantness though: It is a vector for deadly disease in the tropics. We are talking hundreds of thousands of deaths a year. Now, get

by hibikir 11y ago

Mosquitos aren't about unpleasantness though: It is a vector for deadly disease in the tropics. We are talking hundreds of thousands of deaths a year. Now, getting rid of all of them might not be the smartest idea: it carries plenty of risk, but to say that they are just unpleasant is a major understatement.

astazangasta 11y ago
We should just cure these diseases. Vector control is fucking hard, we've been trying it for a century without really fixing the problem. That isn't likely to change; therapeutic interventions, however, can keep getting better and cheaper.
- ethanbond 11y ago
  With the risk being that we breed immunity into the population, seeing as it's still being carried and evolving in its carriers (the mosquitos). FWIW, we could "cure" a lot of these diseases. We have, in rich parts of the world. If the option was between "we distribute cures to forgotten diseases to everyone who needs them" versus "we take a gamble and murder all the mosquitos," I might agree the former would be the better bet. That's not the choice we're given because not enough people in the first world want to step up in a serious enough way.
  - astazangasta 11y ago
    It doesn't really take that many people; these need not be expensive programs. It's a matter of political will, but a serious vector control program would be no different. In any event, learning how to control human diseases and prevent parasites from killing us seems like a very fundamental goal of medicine which should be accomplished in any eventuality. Eradicating mosquitoes need not be. Also, regarding resistance, it is much easier to track and defeat resistance in human patients than to track and defeat resistance in wild populations of mosquitoes, which is what we'll be doing if we try eradication campaigns.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  " Vector control is fucking hard, we've been trying it for a century without really fixing the problem. That isn't likely to change" With CRISPR and gene drive, it changes from "fucking hard" to "trivial", so it is not only likely to change, it's already changed.
  - astazangasta 11y ago
    Can you show me an actual program using CRISPR and gene drive that's produced some effective changes? As far as I know this is still in the realm of theory. And given that we're talking about a single resistance mechanism, I'm going to guess that it will very quickly be defeated by evolution. DDT was the "perfect" mosquito killer, as well. It didn't last - resistance inevitably follows these attempts in wild populations.
    - Turing_Machine 11y ago
      Can you show me an actual program using CRISPR and gene drive that's produced some effective changes? So your argument is that it can't be done because no one has done it? No one has released gene drive systems to the wild, but there is every reason to believe that it will work fine, and no credible reason to believe that it won't.
      - astazangasta 11y ago
        Err, I can give you a credible reason to believe that it won't: the parasite will inevitably develop resistance. Here is the paper where they talk about the mechanism of resistance being conferred on the mosquito: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/28/E1922.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/109/28/E1922.abstract The mechanism is this: "These scFvs are derived from antibodies specific to a parasite chitinase, the 25 kDa protein and the circumsporozoite protein, respectively." So you'll spend a ton of money building a fancy CRISPR system in your mosquitoes, release them into the wild, and in a matter of months you will have parasites with on-target mutations in these proteins that will allow them to evade your resistance mechanism. I'd lay $1000 on this without blinking. You're basically talking about curing malaria in mosquitoes. Why not, instead, just cure malaria in humans?
- libeclipse 11y ago
  >We should just cure these diseases. Much, much easier said than done.
  - astazangasta 11y ago
    It is just the application of money, time and effort. Total global funding for malaria research is ~ half a billion dollars. I imagine if we, say, multiplied this by ten, it would have a susbstantial effect on improving outcomes.
lucideer 11y ago
This could easily be framed as a misattribution of cause though. Mosquitos occur world-wide, and even flourish in many climates where rates of infection from mosquito-borne diseases are relatively low. As an example, 90% of deaths from Malaria occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and even there, the likelihood of death from infection is radically lower for western visitors than for locals. These diseases are largely a result of poverty and poor access to healthcare, not of mosquitos.
- rimantas 11y ago
  So we get as many cases of malaria in Europe, just nobody dies from it? Or maybe it does indeed has something to do with mosquitos after all?
  - kpil 11y ago
    There was malaria in Sweden a couple of hundred years ago, and we still have a few mosquitos. It was never a big problem but malaria went away when it couldn't spread efficiently, largely because of better houses and hygiene such as not keeping the cattle in the same house (room) as the people. Also a lot of breeding ground was dried out and converted to farm land. I'm all for releasing CRISPR on the worst species of mosquitos though. And ticks. They can't serve any function other than killing a few persons each year due to TBE.
    - charlieflowers 11y ago
      It's sad when a chain of logical reasoning points out (again) how weird it is that we cannot solve the real problem, which is "Why is there a third world in the first place?" Why does there have to be a region in permanent squalor? Why can't every place on earth where civilization exists be a decent place for humans to live, with peace, opportunity and sanitation? But ... back down to earth. Since we can't fix that larger problem, at least maybe we can stop malaria by killing all the mosquitoes.
      - readams 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
SimpleXYZ 11y ago
Exactly, we are talking about millions of people if you go back a few thousand years.
- sportanova 11y ago
  Millions of people if you go back a few years
  - ommunist 11y ago
    You know, mathematically speaking, each of us had about 20 million ancestors, if we go back in time. All of them dead now. So what?

by hibikir 11y ago

astazangasta 11y ago

We should just cure these diseases. Vector control is fucking hard, we've been trying it for a century without really fixing the problem. That isn't likely to change; therapeutic interventions, however, can keep getting better and cheaper.

ethanbond 11y ago
With the risk being that we breed immunity into the population, seeing as it's still being carried and evolving in its carriers (the mosquitos). FWIW, we could "cure" a lot of these diseases. We have, in rich parts of the world. If the option was between "we distribute cures to forgotten diseases to everyone who needs them" versus "we take a gamble and murder all the mosquitos," I might agree the former would be the better bet. That's not the choice we're given because not enough people in the first world want to step up in a serious enough way.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  It doesn't really take that many people; these need not be expensive programs. It's a matter of political will, but a serious vector control program would be no different. In any event, learning how to control human diseases and prevent parasites from killing us seems like a very fundamental goal of medicine which should be accomplished in any eventuality. Eradicating mosquitoes need not be. Also, regarding resistance, it is much easier to track and defeat resistance in human patients than to track and defeat resistance in wild populations of mosquitoes, which is what we'll be doing if we try eradication campaigns.
Turing_Machine 11y ago
" Vector control is fucking hard, we've been trying it for a century without really fixing the problem. That isn't likely to change" With CRISPR and gene drive, it changes from "fucking hard" to "trivial", so it is not only likely to change, it's already changed.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  Can you show me an actual program using CRISPR and gene drive that's produced some effective changes? As far as I know this is still in the realm of theory. And given that we're talking about a single resistance mechanism, I'm going to guess that it will very quickly be defeated by evolution. DDT was the "perfect" mosquito killer, as well. It didn't last - resistance inevitably follows these attempts in wild populations.
  - Turing_Machine 11y ago
    Can you show me an actual program using CRISPR and gene drive that's produced some effective changes? So your argument is that it can't be done because no one has done it? No one has released gene drive systems to the wild, but there is every reason to believe that it will work fine, and no credible reason to believe that it won't.
    - astazangasta 11y ago
      Err, I can give you a credible reason to believe that it won't: the parasite will inevitably develop resistance. Here is the paper where they talk about the mechanism of resistance being conferred on the mosquito: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/28/E1922.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/109/28/E1922.abstract The mechanism is this: "These scFvs are derived from antibodies specific to a parasite chitinase, the 25 kDa protein and the circumsporozoite protein, respectively." So you'll spend a ton of money building a fancy CRISPR system in your mosquitoes, release them into the wild, and in a matter of months you will have parasites with on-target mutations in these proteins that will allow them to evade your resistance mechanism. I'd lay $1000 on this without blinking. You're basically talking about curing malaria in mosquitoes. Why not, instead, just cure malaria in humans?
libeclipse 11y ago
>We should just cure these diseases. Much, much easier said than done.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  It is just the application of money, time and effort. Total global funding for malaria research is ~ half a billion dollars. I imagine if we, say, multiplied this by ten, it would have a susbstantial effect on improving outcomes.

lucideer 11y ago

This could easily be framed as a misattribution of cause though. Mosquitos occur world-wide, and even flourish in many climates where rates of infection from mosquito-borne diseases are relatively low. As an example, 90% of deaths from Malaria occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and even there, the likelihood of death from infection is radically lower for western visitors than for locals. These diseases are largely a result of poverty and poor access to healthcare, not of mosquitos.

rimantas 11y ago
So we get as many cases of malaria in Europe, just nobody dies from it? Or maybe it does indeed has something to do with mosquitos after all?
- kpil 11y ago
  There was malaria in Sweden a couple of hundred years ago, and we still have a few mosquitos. It was never a big problem but malaria went away when it couldn't spread efficiently, largely because of better houses and hygiene such as not keeping the cattle in the same house (room) as the people. Also a lot of breeding ground was dried out and converted to farm land. I'm all for releasing CRISPR on the worst species of mosquitos though. And ticks. They can't serve any function other than killing a few persons each year due to TBE.
  - charlieflowers 11y ago
    It's sad when a chain of logical reasoning points out (again) how weird it is that we cannot solve the real problem, which is "Why is there a third world in the first place?" Why does there have to be a region in permanent squalor? Why can't every place on earth where civilization exists be a decent place for humans to live, with peace, opportunity and sanitation? But ... back down to earth. Since we can't fix that larger problem, at least maybe we can stop malaria by killing all the mosquitoes.
    - readams 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

SimpleXYZ 11y ago

Exactly, we are talking about millions of people if you go back a few thousand years.

sportanova 11y ago
Millions of people if you go back a few years
- ommunist 11y ago
  You know, mathematically speaking, each of us had about 20 million ancestors, if we go back in time. All of them dead now. So what?