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Gene Drive technology is needed for more than mosquitos/malaria. It inserts a dominant gene that impairs reproduction in future generations and collapses popul

• tptacek 8y ago
  This is the second comment on this thread suggesting that invasive species be driven to extinction through technology. We consider eradicating mosquitos because they are the cause of almost unimaginable human suffering. That is not a bar cleared by a hapless tropical bug that just happened to get shipped from Vietnam to a Pennsylvania vineyard.
  • quotemstr 8y ago
    So what if there were a third or fourth or tenth comment on this thread suggesting driving this species to extinction? Why is the comment count relevant? Is there something wrong with proposing this measure? It sounds like you think this idea is not only bad (which is fine) but that you think it should be unspeakable. Can you clarify? Thanks!
    • tptacek 8y ago
      No, I just think it's a bad idea.
      • ip26 8y ago
        A bad idea to eradicate the invasive? A bad idea to use new technology instead of pesticides? Which part is the bad idea?
  • Confiks 8y ago
    Your comment seems to be to be touching on the ethics of "eradicating" insect pests ("that is not a bar cleared"), rather than the ethics of advancing genetic engineering in general (or specifically of reproduction capabilities). Having written that first comment: I was merely wondering aloud – without doing a tour du Google myself – whether such genetic intervention would be possible at all. I cannot see many problems with sterilizing pest animals, as long as we don't define pests so strictly as to include any nuisance. For example, in cities in The Netherlands, feral pigeons are sterilized when population numbers increase too much. The article about the lanternfly also clearly specifies that small populations of lanternflies do not pose a problem. Any intervention would not need to "eradicate" lanternflies from the earth. Perhaps you are referring to the suggestion of 'improving' the to strategy to produce non-viable offspring. What is your own opinion on these matters?
  • toss1 8y ago
    I'm referring to this specifically in the context of use to eradicate invasive non-native populations. The individual bugs may be hapless, but they are obviously just at the beginning of wreaking serious havoc on their new ecosystem and local agriculture. It was technology that transplanted these populations in the first place. Eons passed without them migrating across the major oceans, then they suddenly hitch a ride on a human conveyance and arrive in a location without their natural predators, and start wreaking havoc on the native populations. It just seems to me that this targeted technological intervention will solve the problem with the fewest side-effects. Gene-Drive is limited to not only a specific species, but a specific population. Pesticides kill a broad spectrum of creatures, including many desirable species that are not invasive, such as honeybees. Biological control, importing other living organisms to depress the population of a pest, can have even more massive spillover effects, some of which were mentioned in TFA, where a wasp that normally predated on the invasive was brought in and promptly preferred to predate on the local species. So, what's your solution? Just let invasives take over and further trash ecosystems (beyond the existing human damage)?
  • scythe 8y ago
    Extinction is (much) more severe than extirpation. It's not guaranteed or even likely that using genetic engineering to eradicate a species in the US would also eradicate it in China. Suicide genes shouldn't last long in a population. If accidentally introducing one or two self-destructing lanternflies to China (via shipping) was going to kill them all, we'd probably be rid of mosquitoes already.