5 ms·
We need this for ticks..
by Dowwie 8y ago
We need this for ticks..
- craftyguy 8y agoFar more people die from malaria than from lyme disease.
- theothermkn 8y agoThere are serious nonfatal diseases. The Guinea worm doesn’t really kill anyone, but the eradication of it, along with other of the neglected tropical diseases, is still a boon to humanity. Reducing debilitating suffering is perfectly valid.
- craftyguy 8y agoI see your point, but malaria is 1) debilitating and 2) kills hundreds of thousands per year. With unlimited funding for research, it would make sense to try to cure all the things. Since that's not the case, should we really be shifting priority away to diseases that effect fewer people?
- theothermkn 8y agoAbsolutely. Work should definitely proceed in parallel. The marginal utility of an extra dollar to a more or less fully funded research activity is small, even after factoring in the effect size. That same dollar spent on another disease could have much more benefit. Even without considering the varied research interests of scientists, or without considering any other human factors in the labor supply, the maximum benefit to humanity is not going to be achieved by throwing all or most money at a single disease.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jvandonsel 8y agoThere are plans for this: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/science/ticks-lyme-disease-mice-nantucket.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/science/ticks-lyme-diseas...
- HumanHater 8y ago... and for bed bugs, and for fleas, and also for basically every insect that feeds on mammal blood. They are important vectors of transmitting a whole lot of diseases, some of which already dangerous to humans while others could easily mutate to become ones. We are already eradicating a lot of species. May as well exterminate bad ones. There are no ethical problems because no sane person feels bad about killing ticks. These species probably don't have any important ecological role (well maybe they speed up evolution a little bit, but in that case screw evolution). And in case anything goes wrong repopulating the whole globe with them would take no time.
- andrewl 8y agoI agree. I would not mourn if ticks were eradicated. Off the top of my head the only ecological role I can think of for them is as food for tick-eating birds. But I don't think there are any birds that subsist exclusively on ticks, so they'd probably be all right. And for our general literacy, I want to point out that ticks are arachnids, not insects.
- s0rce 8y agoPossum's also eat ticks.
- BenjiWiebe 8y agoBut they definitely don't only eat ticks.
- HumanHater 8y agoWell all these species probably has role in horizontal gene transfer. They also help keeping animal population from growing too big. However it is very unlikely that any of this factors has any global effect. Some areas of the world don't have mosquitoes or ticks, in others they were eradicated with DDT and other chemicals. Observed negative consequences didn't have anything to do with eliminated targets. It's possible that in some local areas some animals would be severely affected. But even in that case climate change already changing natural balance. For example ticks are almost culling deers. It is better to find new equilibrium while humanity still can have some control over the ecosystem.