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Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
- mulletbum 8y agoCan't wait to find out what is next on the list of terrible things that will kill us as the climate continues to warm.
- dev_dull 8y agoMy friend, you’re barely a few generations removed from a time when a scraped knee could be a bacterial infection and death. This news is fantastic and your life probably isn’t as bad as you make it seem.
- erikig 8y agoYeah! we've discovered how to make a species extinct on purpose instead of the "accidental" way we usually do it :)
- emilsedgh 8y agoDo you actually have arguments to object this from a moral standpoint or it's just a snarky comment? Because I would really love to hear some moral objections to the matter.
- AdmiralAsshat 8y agoWhile I'm all for wiping out the race of mosquitoes, I think it's arrogant on our behalf to assume that we can just remove a species completely from an ecosystem without consequences. If we're really lucky, the consequences will be minimal: spiders and other predators will simply find something else to eat. But if mosquitoes had some heretofore undiscovered critical purpose for the environment, we might have seriously screwed things up.
- crusso 8y agoThere's nothing stopping us from preserving enough specimens in labs around the world so that we can repopulate. This problem has been studied: https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/pdf/466432a.pdf https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/pdf/466432a.pdf
- jonny_eh 8y ago> But if mosquitoes had some heretofore undiscovered critical purpose for the environment But what if mosquitoes are actually bad for the environment? By not removing them we can be screwing things up!
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoThe 'environment' is often in balance. Any abrupt change can cause oscillations and crashes. May as well ask "By not removing this brick from the wall, I may be screwing the wall up!"
- njarboe 8y agoThe 'environment' is really never in balance. Predator/prey oscillations and crashes are the norm even without humans around. Maybe some ecosystems have been around long enough to have some properties of complex adaptive systems where the parts interact to keep extreme oscillations from occurring, but knowing how an ecosystem will respond to a single species disappearing is really unknowable until it happens.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoOscillations are surely the norm. But total eradication is different. It may not recover. And it sure isn't unknowable - find what is interacting with that mosquito (something may be eating its larvae or reproducing symbiotically or parasitically etc). That dependent creature will be catastrophically affected, likely become extinct as well.
- sesteel 8y ago
- dev_dull 8y ago> Aedes, Anopheles and Culex are found almost all over the world and are responsible for around 17 per cent of infectious disease transmissions globally." If I understand that correctly, that is a massive number. I really like what these sterilization trials are producing. In my mind, it’s a lot safer than spraying chemicals across cities.
- luma 8y agoIt gets worse. As I posted elsewhere in the comments, an article in Nature[1] suggests that up to half of humans ever to live have died as a result of mosquito-borne disease. In light of those numbers I feel we are ethically clear to take drastic action. We don't have to kill all mosquitoes as fewer than 1% of mosquito species feed on humans. We have several tools which will target the specific species which impact us (such as the approach used in this article). It's time we do something about it, or accept the fact that millions more humans are going to die while we wring our hands. [1] https://www.nature.com/news/2002/021003/full/news021001-6.html https://www.nature.com/news/2002/021003/full/news021001-6.ht...
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoWhat are the negative outcomes? Presumably we leave a niche for other mosquito or insect species to prosper in, which species will they be. Which species predate the mosquitoes we're eliminating, or how do those particular species adapt the environment and so impact the local eco-system? If we've not found any negatives then I imagine we've not tried very hard. Australia is kinda synonymous with species-wide population control and not in a good way; hopefully this will change that?
- samatman 8y ago"You imagine" That says more about you than it does about the science.
- joatmon-snoo 8y agoThis question comes up every time something like this makes the news, and in general the people qualified to have opinions are generally either ambivalent or believe the pros outweigh the cons. One article: https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html
- denzil_correa 8y ago> To address this challenge, Verily, an affiliate of Alphabet Inc, developed a mosquito rearing and sex sorting and release technology as part of its global Debug project. Verily is formerly "Google Life Sciences" and currently Alphabet Inc's research arm for life sciences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verily_Life_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verily_Life_Sciences
- cbhl 8y agoVerily has also been releasing these sterile mosquitoes in Fresno since 2016: https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/07/18/heres-the-real-buzz-google-releases-20-million-mosquitos-in-fresno/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/07/18/heres-the-real-buzz-g... https://blog.verily.com/2017/07/debug-fresno-our-first-us-field-study.html https://blog.verily.com/2017/07/debug-fresno-our-first-us-fi...
- rurban 8y agoThe Fresno result was a 68% reduction, also promising. https://blog.verily.com/2017/11/wrapping-up-debug-fresno-2017.html https://blog.verily.com/2017/11/wrapping-up-debug-fresno-201... Better than the Chinese results on a more massive scale in Guangshou with about 50% reduction. I'd also like to see the Brazil and Vietnam results. https://www.worldmosquitoprogram.org/ https://www.worldmosquitoprogram.org/ Wonder why Australia had 12% better results? The sheer size of the experiment there? Australia was much bigger than Fresno, with only 300 acres there.
- twelvechairs 8y agoIf only Australia's CSIRO still had enough funding to do this kind of work itself rather than 'partner with' (i.e. contribute public funding towards the private investment goals of) for-profit companies. Amongst CSIRO's earlier inventions are 1960s insect repelent 'Aerogard', polymer banknotes and major components of Wi-Fi as we know it.
- pm90 8y agoI don't see what the problem is if the for-profit companies goals align with theirs.
- bmcusick 8y ago> In an international partnership between CSIRO, Verily and James Cook University, scientists used specialised technology to release millions of sterilised male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes This is so stupid. A population will recover from this in a single generation, because the second you stop releasing sterile males, the remaining males (no matter how few) can repopulate the species. If you want to make a species of mosquitoes extinct (and I'm in favor of this, they serve no irreplaceable environmental purposes), the more effective method would be releasing males that only have male offspring.
- ksec 8y ago>they serve no irreplaceable environmental purposes How are we sure of this?
- crusso 8y agoWe don't have to wipe out all mosquitos in one shot. There are many different species, not all of which transmit the deadly diseases of concern. We can start with less populous species that share their ecological niche with other species that can replace them in the food chain - observe the impact of removing that one species then move on to others as warranted by the results. Answer #2: It's worth the risk. Kill them all.
- craftyguy 8y ago> It's worth the risk Not really. Mosquitoes, both adults and larvae, serve as an important food source for many animals that humans eventually depend on for food. Many types of juvenile fish eat their larvae, for example, juvenile fish that eventually grow up and become a major source of protein for some groups of people.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago>a major source of protein for some groups of people. // But not for Westerners in temperate climes, so, y'know, who cares ... [that's deeply black sarcasm in case it's not obvious].
- beauzero 8y agoI have one question...can we do this with fire ants?
- aero142 8y agoAs annoying as fire ants are, invasive aquatic species like Zebra Mussels are having a frightening impact in the United States. If we can remove them using a similar technique, that would be amazing.
- annamargot 8y ago...and ticks
- felipemnoa 8y agoDon't forget about bed bugs.
- dublidu 8y agoand fleas
- FuckOffNeemo 8y agoAnd fucking cane toads. Edit: as in the Australian, introduced pest.
- zavi 8y agoPoison oak please.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- scythe 8y agoAnts actually serve a purpose in the ecosystem. Mosquitoes are unique in that many ecologists believe mosquito eradication would not adversely affect other species.
- panarky 8y agoThe 20% that survived are immune to this and will now multiply unchecked.
- iknowstuff 8y agoIt's not a virus. Rather than being immune, they might have managed to avoid mating with the altered mosquitos (by chance apparently, as there seems to be no perceptible difference) - for now. Antiretrovirals fight HIV by blocking its multiplication in multiple ways, such that the virus would have to mutate in a few particular ways simultaneously to survive, which is extremely unlikely. Perhaps the mosquitos could be altered similarly.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoWhat happens by chance in the first generation will happen by design in later generations. Unless the altered mosquitoes differ from normal ones in a new and unpredictable way every generation from now to the end of time, they will eventually be detected and avoided.
- delecti 8y agoThey didn't do anything to the existing mosquitos. They released sterile specimens. All of the fertile wild specimens were still going about their business making more Mosquitos, but the matings between the normal wild ones and the sterile lab ones didn't result in offspring. If you roll a collection of dice, and remove all of them when they roll something other than 6, the other dice haven't "evolved" to only roll 6s.
- kd5bjo 8y agoNo, but dice that roll sixes more often are contributing more offspring to the next generation. If the selection pressure keeps up, you will have most dice consistently rolling 6s.
- 8y ago
- cimmanom 8y agoHow long did they measure this for, and how long is that relative to the lifecycle / reproductive cycle of a mosquito? Is there any reason to believe the mosquito population won't quickly (or if not quickly, then eventually) bounce back?
- jazoom 8y agoConsidering this is a trial I assume they'll be monitoring that.
- gus_massa 8y agoAssuming they are like some flies that has been eradicated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique , the population would bounce back in a few years. You must repeat the treatment next year lower the population to the 5% of the initial population, and repeat the treatment the next year to reduce it to the 1% and repeat it a few years to reduce each time the population until it is completely eradicated. And then a few times to be sure. And later implement some kind of check to avoid the reintroduction. Some countries that have a nice natural barrier have checks to avoid the introduction of fruit that may have flies larva. With mosquito, I'm not sure how the larva can travel from one country to another...
- subpixel 8y agoI’m not a zealot on the subject but I do believe some form of equally-distributed sterilization is the only way the human race can be saved from itself. That’s a very hard conversation I’d like to see broached.
- everdev 8y agoI'll bite. By equally distributed, do you mean random? Sure, you can control population that way, but not without brutal authoritarianism, depriving innocent people of their reproductive rights and invasion of their body. If you mean non-random, then who decides? Morality, productivity and purpose are culturally and individually relative. Having the majority or even a powerful minority decide what future children should be born is even more authoritarian than the first approach. If you're worried about the planet not being able to support too many people, there are many other options that promote kindness, respect and privacy while promoting a sustainable environment.
- AceJohnny2 8y agoIt's tough when the cancer is sentient, distributed, and has a sense of morality.
- subpixel 8y agoI like this
- jacquesm 8y agoIt's not just a hard conversation, it is an impossible conversation. The only viable avenue is education and even then life is very much geared to beget more of it. And that's before we get into life extension. The better alternative is to get off the planet. The only reason we are exhausting the planet is because there is more of us every day and the same amount of planet to be divided. Or there might be some man made or natural disaster around the corner, one thing is for sure: it will not continue this way for much longer.
- glial 8y ago
- billions 8y agoIt is theorized there is no adverse effect from killing mosquito species. There is always a counter-effect. Typically it's unpredictable. Mosquitoes FACILITATE transmission of bad stuff. I believe that if bad stuff is not transmitted, species evolve more slowly against pathogens. Species will still be exposed, maybe generations later through a scratch or otherwise. At that point, having never evolved a strong immune system the same animals will be less prepared. It's not whether the American Indians were to die from European diseases, but when.
- everdev 8y agoI remember this was the big debate several years ago when the idea was first promoted. However, Google and some non-profits appear to be moving ahead with the blessing of local governments. I'm assuming that with the relatively short lifespan of mosquitos and birds, we'll be able to see if there's an unintended chain reaction in these local ecosystems in a few years time.
- ehsankia 8y agoIt's because the specific specie they target isn't even native to that place (it was introduced by humans), and also represent a small fraction of all musquitos in the area.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoSo, we messed with the balance before and it went badly, ... that's not logically a sufficient reason to mess with the balance in the eco-system again expecting unmitigated benefits. When one gets stabbed withdrawing the knife (which follows the same logic) can kill you. As for small fractions, ecological systems are usually pretty chaotic (in the mathematical sense of small perturbations being able to produce massive changes).
- maxerickson 8y agoWiping out malaria is likely to do just that (wipe out malaria).
- 8y ago
- jdlyga 8y agoThey should've paid for the full version to wipe out the remaining 20%
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y agoAccording to the WHO (http://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria http://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria) * Malaria killed 445,000 people in 2016. * Of those, 285,000 were children under the age of 5. * There were 216 million cases of malaria in 2016. That is a large city's worth of children dying every year, and a large country's population having severely reduced productivity. And that is just one mosquito born illness. The guaranteed human and economic benefits of wiping out mosquitoes, far outweigh any theoretical downside. This group and other groups working to wipe out mosquitoes are truly doing humanity a great service.
- BillinghamJ 8y ago> The guaranteed human and economic benefits of wiping out mosquitoes, far outweigh any theoretical downside. I don’t see how you can be so certain. We know that time and time again, the human race has thought this to be the case and ended up with serious resulting issues. That’s not to say that the potential issues would be worse than 500k people per year, but I don’t see how we can say that with any real certainty.
- gascan 8y agoThe guaranteed human and economic benefits of wiping out mosquitoes, far outweigh any theoretical downside. I like how you just state that, like it doesn't even matter what the downside was. What if bird populations crashed and a pestilence set upon crops worldwide, and caused mass starvation & millions dead- kind of exactly like what happened during the Great Leap Forward? I'm not saying that would happen, but we can't just say "lots of people die of malaria, so don't even worry about the downside"
- zaroth 8y agoThere are literally thousands of species of mosquito which don’t bite humans. Just one sub-species which kills hundreds of thousands of human babies is being targeted. It’s great to ask “what-if”?! This is a well studied problem of an invasive species where the scientific answer to your question is: there is no downside.
- 8y ago
- yazr 8y agoWhat is the probability of these sterile mosquitoes somehow evolving and reproducing on their own ?! (So most of the batch is sterile and cant reproduce so cant evolve. But maybe just a single mosquito of the batch is "faulty" and can reproduce and is released anyway etc etc ?)
- IllogicalLogic 8y agoAlways interesting when a 300,000 year old species decides a 50+ million year old species doesn't need to exist anymore. Tell me more ecologists...grabs popcorn.
- soperj 8y agoI never understood why the U.S didn't just do the same sort of thing with poppies in Afganistan. Would have completely wiped out the Taliban funding.
- adventured 8y agoIt's a big mixed bag. If you do it that way, you just massively increased the recruitment potential for the Taliban. All of those farmers are now wiped out, have nothing to do for work, and have a new sworn enemy for life. The only possible solution that might yield positive results is aggressive replacement subsidization (extremely expensive).
- soperj 8y agoThey were supporting the Taliban already...
- bigodbiel 8y agoThe Taliban prohibited poppy farms in 2001
- toomanybeersies 8y agoMost Afghans don't support the Taliban, or the USA, or even their own government. Most of them just want to make a living and put food on the table without being shot by one or the other or blown up in a drone strike.
- enneff 8y agoIt'd be a lot easier to make cheap, pure heroin available to people who choose to use it. Switzerland does just that and it seems to benefit their society while taking money out of the pockets of the drug cartels: http://drugwarfacts.org/region/switzerland http://drugwarfacts.org/region/switzerland
- soperj 8y agoPhysically easier yes, politically easier debatable.
- ape4 8y agomozzie, lol
- jmts 8y agoHere'y'are mate, if you thought that was a cracker, you're gonna have a ripper of an arvo with this: http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html/
- drb91 8y agoNow we just have to wait a few decades to see if it has sustained impact!
- ohiovr 8y agoBirds may miss a few meals.
- goda90 8y agoI'd argue that this approach is better for the food chain than any chemical sprays. This way other bugs aren't indiscriminately killed as well.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoWhat are the unintended consequences? Surely, these mosquitoes are someone's breakfast, lunch and/or dinner. What happens when that species can't eat?
- dalyons 8y agoThey are an introduced species, so are already an unintended consequence
- unsupak 8y agoThis was already done in China 3 years ago.. https://qz.com/640394/a-chinese-mosquito-factory-releases-20-million-of-the-little-buggers-into-the-wild-every-week/ https://qz.com/640394/a-chinese-mosquito-factory-releases-20...
- ggm 8y agoIIRC this is an Australian initiative: the basic work on the application of Walbachia to dengue, the formation of the world mosquito program, it's an initiative grounded in Australian science. yes, you will find "we did it" in China and Brazil and Vietnam and other places: The roots of this work go back to 2011 and before, at Monash University: https://www.monash.edu/industry/success-stories/dengue https://www.monash.edu/industry/success-stories/dengue http://www.eliminatedengue.com/about-us http://www.eliminatedengue.com/about-us
- zavi 8y agoThe article says it's "an international partnership between CSIRO, Verily and James Cook University".
- ggm 8y agoYes. this story is. It would not surprise me if there are co-collaborators in CSIRO who came from the Monash programme, or if the WMP has funded this (which is run from Monash). Verily brought mechanistic sex-sorting of mozzies. The CSIRO has a remit to get IPR into play, its government science for profit (I used to work at the CSIRO btw) and James Cook is right in the heart of the Australian mosquito belt. Maybe Monash is in a different sphere now. No matter: the groundwork on Walbachia, the fundamentals stem from what they did. The cited 'happened here before' moments in this thread? most of them are WMP initiatives.
- dfsegoat 8y agoAs good as this is for preventing the awful scourge of human disease that mosquitoes cause - I still wonder what the knock-on effects of this will be, with respect to the overall loss of biomass and mosquitoes as a food source. tldr: Mother nature does not like sudden vacuums in complex ecosystems, it gets ugly for somebody at some part of the food chain where we never expected it.
- baxtr 8y agoWhat happened to the other 20%? If this is the part of the population that is resistant to the trial, then good luck in the coming years.
- ZeikJT 8y agoWhile 20% of the population resisted the trial, it's not really because they're immune/resistant to the trial itself. It's not a viral, chemical or bacterial effect. What they're doing is a whole lot more clever, let me quote the article: "From November 2017 to June this year, non-biting male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes sterilised with the natural bacteria Wolbachia were released in trial zones along the Cassowary Coast in North Queensland. They mated with local female mosquitoes, resulting in eggs that did not hatch and a significant reduction of their population." In theory all they have to do is keep releasing these males and hopefully eventually all the female vectors will have mated with these introduced males and that's it.
- baxtr 8y agoInteresting. Do you know how and why the 20% resisted?
- trophycase 8y agoIf this isn't the peak of human hubris I'm really not sure what is. What could go wrong?
- bencollier49 8y agoOut of interest, does anyone know how this affects ecological balance. Are the insects replaced by another species? How does this affect bird populations which rely on eating the mosquitos?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- known 8y agoScent of Chicken can drive away Mosquitoes qz.com/739510
- dumbstein 8y agoLarger insects, small birds and amphibians eat mosquitoes. Shortage of food in a lower ring of the chain can escalate to the top as early as within a year and cause a severe depression in another part of the world for humans. As seen in all past instances, no matter how confident humans are, something goes awry when we try to cut something out of an ecosystem.
- dotdi 8y agoYou misread the article. They are not destroying all mosquitoes, only a specific species within that Genus. There are plenty of other mosquitoes to take the place of Ae. aegypti in the food chain.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mderazon 8y agoInitially I thought it was about using CRISPR and gene drive [1] to eliminated the gene that facilitates the infection. But looks like we're not there yet. 1. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/31/17344406/crispr-mosquito-malaria-gene-drive-editing-target-africa-regulation-gmo https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/31/17344406/cr...
- loadzero 8y agoI didn't realize that the CSIRO had its own 2LD within the .au TLD, that's neat. https://www.domainregistration.com.au/news/2014/1404-au-domain-trivia.php https://www.domainregistration.com.au/news/2014/1404-au-doma...
- hamilyon2 8y agoWill next generation of mosquitos be selected for greater fertility and more obscure sex-related features, thus making them harder to sterilize that way?