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On the other hand, letting them live is disastrous too. Malaria has killed half of all people who have ever lived. Also, we unintentionally destroy a lot of sp
by lifeformed 8y ago
On the other hand, letting them live is disastrous too. Malaria has killed half of all people who have ever lived. Also, we unintentionally destroy a lot of species every year, often with little direct consequence to humans, so destruction of another one isn't necessarily ecologically disastrous. Of course, it could still be a bad idea, and we shouldn't do it without sufficient research, but the option to do shouldn't be dismissed outright.
- fooker 8y agoMaybe without that humans would have overpopulated the earth and driven everything to extinction much quicker that what is happening now?
- soundwave106 8y agoThe issue with most current mosquito control (https://www.wired.com/2016/06/zika-mosquitos/ https://www.wired.com/2016/06/zika-mosquitos/) and actually most insect control in general is that, historically and even heavily today, they generally involved chemicals (pesticides). Pesticides in general are not insect specific, and can have some rather serious effects on the environment, other animals, and even maybe humans. They also only tend to be effective against mosquitoes for, say, a couple decades or so before mosquitoes develop resistance, and a new one has to be deployed. I definitely would personally welcome research on efforts to more specifically target the mosquito and the mosquito alone. Chemical based insect control isn't going to go away in the absence of alternatives, meaning that, should an alternative, mosquito specific approach be developed, it probably will have much less "knock on effects" to the ecosystem compared to what we are already doing.