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It's horrible that people are dying because of malaria. I'm a bit divided on this approach though, I don't know enough about the topic at hand to suggest a dif

It's horrible that people are dying because of malaria. I'm a bit divided on this approach though, I don't know enough about the topic at hand to suggest a different approach, but let me try. Would it be feasible to suggest using CRISP to create another adaptation to the gene, one that preserves the mosquitoes but makes them unable to transfer the disease to humans? Eliminating a species because we don't like it reminds me of speciesism as Peter Singer outlines in one of his books. (Animal Liberation I believe it was). Where humans assume another species to be inferior and have less of a right to live a decent life. I do think it's a normal response to value human life more. And in fact, I also do think that in this case it makes more sense to safe the humans if no other approach is viable..

vinniejames 8y ago
Sounds like youre suggesting creating a mosquito malaria vaccine
- Insanity 8y ago
  Not entirely - I'm suggesting still altering the species but not with extinction as a consequence.
  - vinniejames 8y ago
    I agree, a vaccine would be one way to accomplish that
shireboy 8y ago
The article mentions they tried to engineer mosquitos to not carry malaria, but it made them weak and so natural selection favored the non-engineered mosquitoes. As for the rest, yeah tricky business. By all accounts we have more value than a mosquito, but as you move up the food chain what are the unintended consequences?
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  What about the effect of existing anti-mosquito measures? We aren't exactly using pleasant chemicals for that.
ahje 8y ago
It is indeed horrible, and it is fantastic that so many resources are dedicated to find a solution to this travesty! Eliminating entire species deliberately, on the other hand, isn't really better. Yes, there is the us vs. them dilemma, and of course we should favour our own species if there's no other option, but this should be used as a last resort only. I wonder if there's anyone looking into using similar methods to make humans malaria resistant instead.
- Insanity 8y ago
  You'd open up another heap of ethical issues if we were to try adapting humans in such a way. Like the CRISPR babies that were born in China.
  - ahje 8y ago
    Indeed, but which is preferable? Genetic vaccination against malaria or extinction of an entire species who are also a victim of the same parasite? Both can potentially have unintended and disastrous consequences hundreds of years into the future.
userbinator 8y ago
Where humans assume another species to be inferior and have less of a right to live a decent life. How about if you consider things like bacteria? The rabbit-hole of "speciesism" never ends...
hutzlibu 8y ago
People are also dying of war and hunger and lack of clean water and medicine. I would even argue that those are the bigger problems and the deaths of malaria are more symptoms of the former problems. Usually, it ain't the rich people who die of malaria. So I would focus in those problems instead of trying to inject suicide genes into the wild. I like the saying: the opposite of well done, is well intented.
- mrfredward 8y ago
  >People are also dying of war and hunger and lack of clean water and medicine. No one can fix this with a snap of their fingers. You have to reform (replace?) governments, change cultural standards around sanitation, build tons of infrastructure. No matter how much aid is sent, it will take a long time even in the best case. These problems won't be fixed for good in the near future. Perhaps malaria can be made a thing of the past before then. If so, don't let hundreds of thousands die because we "should" be fixing poverty instead.
  - hutzlibu 8y ago
    "Perhaps malaria can be made a thing of the past before then." Perhaps along with the last remaining shreds of intact eco systems that remained. Oh and perhaps some suicide genes end up somewhere else.
    - mrfredward 8y ago
      DDT is still being used for mosquito control, because the risks and ecological damage are deemed to be less important than the half million people per year dying of malaria. Millions of lives currently depend on reducing mosquito populations, so methods of control will be used no matter what. Targeting a specific species of mosquito rather than spraying DDT everywhere will reduce the collateral damage to the environment immensely.
      - hutzlibu 8y ago
        DDT is bad. But its effect is limited to the amount of used chemical. Altering genomes of living organisms with the intention of wiping out a species ... has a potential unlimited side effect. I especially like the second example: fighting the toad in australia. Originally the toad was brought in to mess with the local ecosystem ... then it messed too much and now the solution is altering the genome with a exponentional bigger impact. Isn't that real live satire? I mean how could that possible go wrong, since we understand everything about ecosystems and the genome today and are masters about controlling complex systems ...
mrfusion 8y ago
I like to paste this awesome response from reddit whenever someone doubts these approaches (since I couldn’t put it better myself) > Malaria is only carried by a tiny number of mosquito species. Of the thousands of species only something like a dozen actually matter to humans. We can target exactly the ones we want and even better : nothing stops us from maintaining a population in some labs somewhere. If it turns out they matter in any significant way, contrary to various impact analysis... we just release them back into the environment. > The current cost of not wiping out those few mosquito species is about half a million dead children. Imagine that someone was nuking a mid sized American city every year and you could stop it right now but you'd prefer to wait for a slightly more athsteticly pleasing solution. > How much blood would you be willing to let stain your soul . https://pay.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/9ivkka/genetic_modification_of_mosquitoes_could_provide/e6n1t0v/ https://pay.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/9ivkka/genetic_mod...
- mcguire 8y ago
  What exactly do you mean by "Of the thousands of species only something like a dozen actually matter to humans." How sure are you? Keep in mind that, in this case, extinction is a side effect of another antimalarial effort.
  - mrfusion 8y ago
    Well we know only certain species carry malaria. Is that what you’re questioning? Also Seems like you skipped over this part: > nothing stops us from maintaining a population in some labs somewhere. If it turns out they matter in any significant way, contrary to various impact analysis... we just release them back into the environment.
    - mcguire 8y ago
      I was mostly interested in the "matters to humans" part. Indirect consequences, and all that. ...Re-releasing them, after the environment has adjusted to their absence, does not return you to the original state.
arbuge 8y ago
> Eliminating a species because we don't like it reminds me of speciesism How about eliminating them because they are killing us, literally by the millions? Viewed that way, it seems more like normal self-defense to me. Currently mosquito-borne diseases kill around 700,000 people each year; this figure does not include the cost to society of the people who become ill but later recover. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito
acallahan 8y ago
Some interesting prior discussion in this older comment thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15929339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15929339 My understanding is that out of 3,500 mosquito species, only about 40 transmit malaria. Most of what I've read from experts implies they're not sure that mosquitoes play any biologically important role at all, and it seems like if there is some role (other than killing humans), the other 99% of non-eradicated mosquito species could fill in that gap. In my (decidedly non-expert) opinion, that's good enough to start making moves towards eradicating the mosquito-causing species.

vinniejames 8y ago

Sounds like youre suggesting creating a mosquito malaria vaccine

Insanity 8y ago
Not entirely - I'm suggesting still altering the species but not with extinction as a consequence.
- vinniejames 8y ago
  I agree, a vaccine would be one way to accomplish that

shireboy 8y ago

The article mentions they tried to engineer mosquitos to not carry malaria, but it made them weak and so natural selection favored the non-engineered mosquitoes. As for the rest, yeah tricky business. By all accounts we have more value than a mosquito, but as you move up the food chain what are the unintended consequences?

Nasrudith 8y ago
What about the effect of existing anti-mosquito measures? We aren't exactly using pleasant chemicals for that.

ahje 8y ago

It is indeed horrible, and it is fantastic that so many resources are dedicated to find a solution to this travesty! Eliminating entire species deliberately, on the other hand, isn't really better. Yes, there is the us vs. them dilemma, and of course we should favour our own species if there's no other option, but this should be used as a last resort only. I wonder if there's anyone looking into using similar methods to make humans malaria resistant instead.

Insanity 8y ago
You'd open up another heap of ethical issues if we were to try adapting humans in such a way. Like the CRISPR babies that were born in China.
- ahje 8y ago
  Indeed, but which is preferable? Genetic vaccination against malaria or extinction of an entire species who are also a victim of the same parasite? Both can potentially have unintended and disastrous consequences hundreds of years into the future.

userbinator 8y ago

Where humans assume another species to be inferior and have less of a right to live a decent life. How about if you consider things like bacteria? The rabbit-hole of "speciesism" never ends...

hutzlibu 8y ago

People are also dying of war and hunger and lack of clean water and medicine. I would even argue that those are the bigger problems and the deaths of malaria are more symptoms of the former problems. Usually, it ain't the rich people who die of malaria. So I would focus in those problems instead of trying to inject suicide genes into the wild. I like the saying: the opposite of well done, is well intented.

mrfredward 8y ago
>People are also dying of war and hunger and lack of clean water and medicine. No one can fix this with a snap of their fingers. You have to reform (replace?) governments, change cultural standards around sanitation, build tons of infrastructure. No matter how much aid is sent, it will take a long time even in the best case. These problems won't be fixed for good in the near future. Perhaps malaria can be made a thing of the past before then. If so, don't let hundreds of thousands die because we "should" be fixing poverty instead.
- hutzlibu 8y ago
  "Perhaps malaria can be made a thing of the past before then." Perhaps along with the last remaining shreds of intact eco systems that remained. Oh and perhaps some suicide genes end up somewhere else.
  - mrfredward 8y ago
    DDT is still being used for mosquito control, because the risks and ecological damage are deemed to be less important than the half million people per year dying of malaria. Millions of lives currently depend on reducing mosquito populations, so methods of control will be used no matter what. Targeting a specific species of mosquito rather than spraying DDT everywhere will reduce the collateral damage to the environment immensely.
    - hutzlibu 8y ago
      DDT is bad. But its effect is limited to the amount of used chemical. Altering genomes of living organisms with the intention of wiping out a species ... has a potential unlimited side effect. I especially like the second example: fighting the toad in australia. Originally the toad was brought in to mess with the local ecosystem ... then it messed too much and now the solution is altering the genome with a exponentional bigger impact. Isn't that real live satire? I mean how could that possible go wrong, since we understand everything about ecosystems and the genome today and are masters about controlling complex systems ...

mrfusion 8y ago

I like to paste this awesome response from reddit whenever someone doubts these approaches (since I couldn’t put it better myself) > Malaria is only carried by a tiny number of mosquito species. Of the thousands of species only something like a dozen actually matter to humans. We can target exactly the ones we want and even better : nothing stops us from maintaining a population in some labs somewhere. If it turns out they matter in any significant way, contrary to various impact analysis... we just release them back into the environment. > The current cost of not wiping out those few mosquito species is about half a million dead children. Imagine that someone was nuking a mid sized American city every year and you could stop it right now but you'd prefer to wait for a slightly more athsteticly pleasing solution. > How much blood would you be willing to let stain your soul . https://pay.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/9ivkka/genetic_modification_of_mosquitoes_could_provide/e6n1t0v/ https://pay.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/9ivkka/genetic_mod...

mcguire 8y ago
What exactly do you mean by "Of the thousands of species only something like a dozen actually matter to humans." How sure are you? Keep in mind that, in this case, extinction is a side effect of another antimalarial effort.
- mrfusion 8y ago
  Well we know only certain species carry malaria. Is that what you’re questioning? Also Seems like you skipped over this part: > nothing stops us from maintaining a population in some labs somewhere. If it turns out they matter in any significant way, contrary to various impact analysis... we just release them back into the environment.
  - mcguire 8y ago
    I was mostly interested in the "matters to humans" part. Indirect consequences, and all that. ...Re-releasing them, after the environment has adjusted to their absence, does not return you to the original state.

arbuge 8y ago

> Eliminating a species because we don't like it reminds me of speciesism How about eliminating them because they are killing us, literally by the millions? Viewed that way, it seems more like normal self-defense to me. Currently mosquito-borne diseases kill around 700,000 people each year; this figure does not include the cost to society of the people who become ill but later recover. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito

acallahan 8y ago

Some interesting prior discussion in this older comment thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15929339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15929339 My understanding is that out of 3,500 mosquito species, only about 40 transmit malaria. Most of what I've read from experts implies they're not sure that mosquitoes play any biologically important role at all, and it seems like if there is some role (other than killing humans), the other 99% of non-eradicated mosquito species could fill in that gap. In my (decidedly non-expert) opinion, that's good enough to start making moves towards eradicating the mosquito-causing species.