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> Who knows what chaos will be unleashed by tampering with them? It's a good question. And the same thing could be said about any disease prevention strategy.
by TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
> Who knows what chaos will be unleashed by tampering with them?
It's a good question. And the same thing could be said about any disease prevention strategy. What if the persistent presence of Polio is necessary for us to survive some future hypothesised outbreak? Imagination is the limit here.
But we certainly do know the chaos that is unleashed everyday by not eradicating viruses that use mosquitoes as a vector.
- fipar 8y ago> But we certainly do know the chaos that is unleashed everyday by not eradicating viruses that use mosquitoes as a vector. Note however that here they are erradicating mosquitoes and not the virus.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoWhat’s the point of this comment?
- fipar 8y agoErradicating a mosquito species could have negative ecological consequences unknown now, and on top of that, there’s the risk of another vector taking the mosquito’s place.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoNo one is suggesting we eradicate all mosquitoes, just the disease-vector ones in areas where they are a problem. But yes, the law of unintended consequences will probably apply. But it's worth keeping in mind that Malaria kills one child every 30 seconds.
- fipar 8y agoExactly, my concern is unintended consequences. I fully agree with you that something has to be done about these diseases. Going back to your first post I replied to: my mother had Polio and lived with minor side effects all her life, while thanks to vaccines, that disease is something from history books for myself and my children. I am just concerned that people tend to ignore the risks from things we don’t know exist and therefore don’t usually account for.
- dosy 8y agoExactly. I think we should stick with what we do know and improve less-risky strategies, rather than opting for the nuke from orbit option we don't know. Also, with polio eradicating the virus might have been our only option. Here we have others. So it's not the same thing. Plus, I feel for mosquitoes as living things. </fulldisclosure>
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoNo one is suggesting we eradicate all mosquitoes, just the disease-vector ones in areas where they are a problem. But yes, the law of unintended consequences will probably apply. But it's worth keeping in mind that Malaria kills one child every 30 seconds. As for you last comment, well even the Dahlia Lama swats mosquitoes.
- JackCh 8y agoAs far as I can tell, the eradication of hundreds of species of mosquitoes is being suggested by many.
- luma 8y agoI'm going to need a source on that. Fewer than 30 out of 3000 species of mosquito feed on humans. There is little reason for us to bother with the rest.
- JackCh 8y agoAs I've stated throughout this threat, it isn't just about mosquitoes. Honestly I would not mourn mosquitoes if every last species was exterminated. What concerns me is the social impact of further establishing humanity as the arbitrators of which species get to live and which deserve to be exterminated. It won't stop at mosquitoes; the extermination of mosquitoes will be used to justify even more exterminations in the future. (Furthermore exterminating a species just so the human population can grow even faster will lead to an incredible amount of additional extinctions due to habitat loss. Humanity is growing fast enough already; we don't need to optimize for this any further.)