5 ms·

Enough people said this was a bad idea to expect this outcome.

juskrey 7y ago
Oh yeah, but they were so obviously anti-science!
magashna 7y ago
There was a thread the other day with outright anger that we should be doing anything to curb Malaria, including these kind of tests.
- projektfu 7y ago
  There was an equal amount of anger that anyone might suggest caution.
- corodra 7y ago
  That's the problem. A lot of people thought that saying "This won't work and could make things potentially worse" was equivalent to "I think people should die of Malaria". I remember this experiment coming out on HN (different account) and voiced that it's would more than likely not work and if we're lucky, won't have an adverse affect. I got ripped as a flat out racist because I wanted black people to die of malaria. We're better off trying to increase dragonfly populations to consume mosquitoes (which they do). But then we risk increase sparrow and other bird populations with the increase in food supply, which could then migrate to consuming more grain crops. Currently larvacide using 2 different hormones (depending on targeted breeds), not found in any other animal or insect thus far seems to be the best route in curbing mosquito populations with, after 20 years of field use, have no to little impact on the ecosystem.
  - bayesian_horse 7y ago
    The problem with those arguments is that no potential harm through such genetic modifications has been demonstrated yet. Even those mosquitoes surviving has done no harm. A downside to Hormones is that you need to find the breeding grounds. Potentially every puddle or container of water. However, the modified male mosquitoes are like homing missiles.
    - libraryatnight 7y ago
      Ah yes, because over the course of humanity the "no harm demonstrated yet" has panned out beautifully. We're compounding interest on our "Well it seems fine for now?" damages.
      - bayesian_horse 7y ago
        Well, there is a very broad search for potential mechanisms to cause harm, and nothing has been found so far. After decades of trying...
    - corodra 7y ago
      And again, just like the others in the past who I argued with, you read nothing I put down. You saw hormone and knee jerked. The hormones in question are not found in other animals, and has been widely tested for a decade prior to field use in Florida. Working off my memory from diving into this a few years ago, the hormones are what regulate the dissolve rate of the shell pupa to adult stage. It's introduced at a seasonal time for the larva to be in bodies of water, after certain storms. The hormone they put in, stop the shell/casing from softening so the adult mosquito is essentially buried alive. The reason why the gm wasn't going to work was the low affected rate of mosquitoes. In rainy areas, the breeding cycle and amount is high enough so about a few months later, they're either resistant due to evolution or the affected pools were just absolutely meaningless to begin with. Let's add in, Ae. aegypti eggs, and most aedes, for example, are recorded to survive 8-14 months dry and hatch around a week after first moisture. The whole "experiment" was already a complete waste of time from day 1. The mosquito is a resistant SOB survivor to begin with. These "homing missiles", which failed, equates to using a single shot pellet rifle against a swarm of yellow jackets. Aedes is not a genus to take lightly. And actual field scientists who deal with it on a serious basis and do actual real useful work, know that. The breeding grounds are typical too. It's only after heavy storms where people have buckets out are real problems. And new developments that displace land. But they're normally figured out in a few months and thrown on the list. My fear with gm in anything in the animalia kingdom comes to what genes become expressed more with the lack of expression in another. Especially over time if the sterilization factor didn't pane out as well as hoped. A 0.01% fail rate in sterilization to a creature like Ae. Aegypti (150-300 egg lay rate, 2-3 lay cycles, 10 day egg to adult) can be disastrous. Look, if the prior articles about the research went "We have evidence that it works, but we're afraid of unexpected fallout, thus we're testing for any potential adverse effects..." I'm chill with that. I want to see that succeed. They understand the risks and work to minimize those risks as best as possible. Cool. But every god damn time I see gene manipulators do anything with a wide scale insect like mosquitoes, they just Silicon Valley rush into it "Yea, we did it for 2 months and it works and we're going to release it into the wild". Like a Cali group wanted to do a few months ago, I want to scream. It's Mao's dumbass 4 pest crusade all fucking over again. Without a shred of thought into such a complex system that is the environment. Yea, break things fast. Who cares about consequences. Not like we have enough environmental fucking problems as is. Let's play Life on Earth on hardcore mode some more. But oh no, a program that was in lab research for a decade before actual use. University oversight and testing to make sure only minimal amounts are used so any type of kickback can be contained quickly. And after 2 decades of use. That bad. Real bad. We should do shitty testing for a few months and consider it golden. Let's not forget, there's a group of assholes doing the same by genetically modifying a fungus to produce a type of venom to kill mosquitoes. I'd laugh at that stupid idea if it was left to hollywood. But there's a research group literally trying to do that, and they're having some initial success. I am just absolutely sick and tired of people thinking 2+2+I want to save the world=22. And that's all I see in this garbage. While these red herring dumbass ideas have large sums of money thrown at them, people ARE FUCKING DYING because of this instead of that money going into either using proven methods or policies to minimize breeding rates or even just medical aid. I'm all for finding new ways. I wouldn't visit a tech news aggregate if I wasn't. But "new" doesn't automatically mean it's better. Without that respect to reality, it's doomed to fail.
human20190310 7y ago
Concern about "unknown unknowns" tends to be characterized as unscientific.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  There should be a difference, but there rarely is. There is broad search going on for potential mechanisms with which such modifications could cause harm. None have been found. At some point it is time for limited experiments in the wild. We now have evidence that the "fail-safes" don't work as intended. Maybe you need to have multiple such genes. It's a different situation with nuclear energy, with multiple theoretically impossible accidents. You could categorize those as unknown unknowns, but, I mean, they have been known to happen...
bayesian_horse 7y ago
There is no evidence of harm yet. There are only a few mosquitoes with a bit more junk-DNA.
- danShumway 7y ago
  It's not about evidence of harm, its about evidence that the safeguard didn't work. Imagine I was demoing an elevator with a backup stopping mechanism that kept it from going into free fall. So I hoist the elevator 10 feet up and cut the line, and the mechanism doesn't work, it falls immediately to the ground. Would it be reasonable for me to say, "Nobody was hurt, the elevator only dropped 10 feet, so there's no real problem"? I would want the elevator sent back to design/engineering before I was willing to put any people on it. The mosquitoes were not supposed to be able to breed, and they did. Not being able to breed was the safety valve. In this case, because the modifications were very minor, the effects of that are pretty minor, just a tiny bit of junk DNA. Because the rollout was small, the effects are small. I only hoisted the elevator 10 feet. But before we doing larger rollouts or more sophisticated modifications, we should make sure that our safety valves actually work. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that we collectively prove we can get small things right before we start doing large things.
pvaldes 7y ago
Is the common problem. Put a man in front of a clift and say "jump it". He can refuse. Now throw 200 millions in that clift. Eventually somebody will need to jump the clift to try to recover the money, and will do it At some point there was so many money spent that thinking "this was a bad idea, lets close the project and go home", is not an option over the table anymore, not unless the project is done by a government or so.

Oh yeah, but they were so obviously anti-science!

There was a thread the other day with outright anger that we should be doing anything to curb Malaria, including these kind of tests.

projektfu 7y ago
There was an equal amount of anger that anyone might suggest caution.
corodra 7y ago
That's the problem. A lot of people thought that saying "This won't work and could make things potentially worse" was equivalent to "I think people should die of Malaria". I remember this experiment coming out on HN (different account) and voiced that it's would more than likely not work and if we're lucky, won't have an adverse affect. I got ripped as a flat out racist because I wanted black people to die of malaria. We're better off trying to increase dragonfly populations to consume mosquitoes (which they do). But then we risk increase sparrow and other bird populations with the increase in food supply, which could then migrate to consuming more grain crops. Currently larvacide using 2 different hormones (depending on targeted breeds), not found in any other animal or insect thus far seems to be the best route in curbing mosquito populations with, after 20 years of field use, have no to little impact on the ecosystem.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  The problem with those arguments is that no potential harm through such genetic modifications has been demonstrated yet. Even those mosquitoes surviving has done no harm. A downside to Hormones is that you need to find the breeding grounds. Potentially every puddle or container of water. However, the modified male mosquitoes are like homing missiles.
  - libraryatnight 7y ago
    Ah yes, because over the course of humanity the "no harm demonstrated yet" has panned out beautifully. We're compounding interest on our "Well it seems fine for now?" damages.
    - bayesian_horse 7y ago
      Well, there is a very broad search for potential mechanisms to cause harm, and nothing has been found so far. After decades of trying...
  - corodra 7y ago
    And again, just like the others in the past who I argued with, you read nothing I put down. You saw hormone and knee jerked. The hormones in question are not found in other animals, and has been widely tested for a decade prior to field use in Florida. Working off my memory from diving into this a few years ago, the hormones are what regulate the dissolve rate of the shell pupa to adult stage. It's introduced at a seasonal time for the larva to be in bodies of water, after certain storms. The hormone they put in, stop the shell/casing from softening so the adult mosquito is essentially buried alive. The reason why the gm wasn't going to work was the low affected rate of mosquitoes. In rainy areas, the breeding cycle and amount is high enough so about a few months later, they're either resistant due to evolution or the affected pools were just absolutely meaningless to begin with. Let's add in, Ae. aegypti eggs, and most aedes, for example, are recorded to survive 8-14 months dry and hatch around a week after first moisture. The whole "experiment" was already a complete waste of time from day 1. The mosquito is a resistant SOB survivor to begin with. These "homing missiles", which failed, equates to using a single shot pellet rifle against a swarm of yellow jackets. Aedes is not a genus to take lightly. And actual field scientists who deal with it on a serious basis and do actual real useful work, know that. The breeding grounds are typical too. It's only after heavy storms where people have buckets out are real problems. And new developments that displace land. But they're normally figured out in a few months and thrown on the list. My fear with gm in anything in the animalia kingdom comes to what genes become expressed more with the lack of expression in another. Especially over time if the sterilization factor didn't pane out as well as hoped. A 0.01% fail rate in sterilization to a creature like Ae. Aegypti (150-300 egg lay rate, 2-3 lay cycles, 10 day egg to adult) can be disastrous. Look, if the prior articles about the research went "We have evidence that it works, but we're afraid of unexpected fallout, thus we're testing for any potential adverse effects..." I'm chill with that. I want to see that succeed. They understand the risks and work to minimize those risks as best as possible. Cool. But every god damn time I see gene manipulators do anything with a wide scale insect like mosquitoes, they just Silicon Valley rush into it "Yea, we did it for 2 months and it works and we're going to release it into the wild". Like a Cali group wanted to do a few months ago, I want to scream. It's Mao's dumbass 4 pest crusade all fucking over again. Without a shred of thought into such a complex system that is the environment. Yea, break things fast. Who cares about consequences. Not like we have enough environmental fucking problems as is. Let's play Life on Earth on hardcore mode some more. But oh no, a program that was in lab research for a decade before actual use. University oversight and testing to make sure only minimal amounts are used so any type of kickback can be contained quickly. And after 2 decades of use. That bad. Real bad. We should do shitty testing for a few months and consider it golden. Let's not forget, there's a group of assholes doing the same by genetically modifying a fungus to produce a type of venom to kill mosquitoes. I'd laugh at that stupid idea if it was left to hollywood. But there's a research group literally trying to do that, and they're having some initial success. I am just absolutely sick and tired of people thinking 2+2+I want to save the world=22. And that's all I see in this garbage. While these red herring dumbass ideas have large sums of money thrown at them, people ARE FUCKING DYING because of this instead of that money going into either using proven methods or policies to minimize breeding rates or even just medical aid. I'm all for finding new ways. I wouldn't visit a tech news aggregate if I wasn't. But "new" doesn't automatically mean it's better. Without that respect to reality, it's doomed to fail.

human20190310 7y ago

Concern about "unknown unknowns" tends to be characterized as unscientific.

bayesian_horse 7y ago
There should be a difference, but there rarely is. There is broad search going on for potential mechanisms with which such modifications could cause harm. None have been found. At some point it is time for limited experiments in the wild. We now have evidence that the "fail-safes" don't work as intended. Maybe you need to have multiple such genes. It's a different situation with nuclear energy, with multiple theoretically impossible accidents. You could categorize those as unknown unknowns, but, I mean, they have been known to happen...

bayesian_horse 7y ago

There is no evidence of harm yet. There are only a few mosquitoes with a bit more junk-DNA.

danShumway 7y ago
It's not about evidence of harm, its about evidence that the safeguard didn't work. Imagine I was demoing an elevator with a backup stopping mechanism that kept it from going into free fall. So I hoist the elevator 10 feet up and cut the line, and the mechanism doesn't work, it falls immediately to the ground. Would it be reasonable for me to say, "Nobody was hurt, the elevator only dropped 10 feet, so there's no real problem"? I would want the elevator sent back to design/engineering before I was willing to put any people on it. The mosquitoes were not supposed to be able to breed, and they did. Not being able to breed was the safety valve. In this case, because the modifications were very minor, the effects of that are pretty minor, just a tiny bit of junk DNA. Because the rollout was small, the effects are small. I only hoisted the elevator 10 feet. But before we doing larger rollouts or more sophisticated modifications, we should make sure that our safety valves actually work. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that we collectively prove we can get small things right before we start doing large things.

pvaldes 7y ago

Is the common problem. Put a man in front of a clift and say "jump it". He can refuse. Now throw 200 millions in that clift. Eventually somebody will need to jump the clift to try to recover the money, and will do it At some point there was so many money spent that thinking "this was a bad idea, lets close the project and go home", is not an option over the table anymore, not unless the project is done by a government or so.