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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 f

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.

salawat 7y ago
Hey. In the poster's defense, they stated specifically the downside of hormones was you had to treat every breeding location, which consists of every puddle or stagnant body of water, which includes the necessity of synthesizing and delivering the hormone to every candidate breeding ground. The idea behind the gene manipulation circumvented that logistical challenge since the males would do that job anyway. My major issue was the lack of equivalently extensive testing w.r.t the gene therapy and whether the first crossing offspring were guaranteed to be unviable in the lab that the hormones did. He did address your argument. I'm not one of the ones downvoting you, and I understand your irritation/frustration. Mucking around with the genome, without any proven capacity to calculate some reasonable simulation of potential ecological side effects seems fraught with danger to me as well. Whether people are dying or not doesn't detract from the fact we are trying to do something. Reality is just a real wench when she won't play ball with (elegant solution of the week). Chin up. We learned something. We regroup, reconsider the route forward, and try again. And have yet another problem created by our own hand to keep a finger on...
- corodra 7y ago
  It's a touchy subject for me because I try working on it in my spare time. My point is this, in Florida, there's a shitload of policy, gov action and procedure to keep mosquito populations at a minimum. It use to be spray trucks were a weekly thing when I was a kid in the summer (90s). It's not that way anymore. In most cases, mosquito populations are no where near as bad compared to when I was a kid. Mostly. It can still be bad if you go outside city limits. There's a long line of procedures that can be taught to other countries, which are cheap, that can already put a good dent in excessive mosquito population sizes. The hormones does another really big dent. Then there's the last resort spray trucks. The spray trucks come out when the commissioner acknowledges that failures in the chain have occurred. That's what I'm trying to get at. Different counties here consider a disease outbreak from mosquitoes at around 5-15 cases in a 2-5 mile radius within a week time span. The rest of the world does not have those numbers. They wait till the hundreds because they can't do anything. That's where we should start at before we look for miracle cures. And a lot of these are education and light field work that can be implemented cheaply. Either funded by local economies or aid. Which, we already do a fuckton of aid as it is. The one they really can't do is waterworks control which does play a major factor for us in FL. But there's still a lot that can be done before looking for unicorn farts. The disease transfer rate sort of works out like viral herd immunity (loosely). Because zika, malaria, dengue, etc, don't have a 100% incubation rate in the specific species of mosquito. However, there is a 100% transfer from mosquito to human (from what I know). But if you decrease mosquito populations around humans so the likelihood of incubation diminishes, you can see a good sized decrease in disease cases. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than what's going on now. I just wish that spreading current, effective and efficient knowledge would be the one getting funding.

salawat 7y ago

Hey. In the poster's defense, they stated specifically the downside of hormones was you had to treat every breeding location, which consists of every puddle or stagnant body of water, which includes the necessity of synthesizing and delivering the hormone to every candidate breeding ground. The idea behind the gene manipulation circumvented that logistical challenge since the males would do that job anyway. My major issue was the lack of equivalently extensive testing w.r.t the gene therapy and whether the first crossing offspring were guaranteed to be unviable in the lab that the hormones did. He did address your argument. I'm not one of the ones downvoting you, and I understand your irritation/frustration. Mucking around with the genome, without any proven capacity to calculate some reasonable simulation of potential ecological side effects seems fraught with danger to me as well. Whether people are dying or not doesn't detract from the fact we are trying to do something. Reality is just a real wench when she won't play ball with (elegant solution of the week). Chin up. We learned something. We regroup, reconsider the route forward, and try again. And have yet another problem created by our own hand to keep a finger on...

corodra 7y ago
It's a touchy subject for me because I try working on it in my spare time. My point is this, in Florida, there's a shitload of policy, gov action and procedure to keep mosquito populations at a minimum. It use to be spray trucks were a weekly thing when I was a kid in the summer (90s). It's not that way anymore. In most cases, mosquito populations are no where near as bad compared to when I was a kid. Mostly. It can still be bad if you go outside city limits. There's a long line of procedures that can be taught to other countries, which are cheap, that can already put a good dent in excessive mosquito population sizes. The hormones does another really big dent. Then there's the last resort spray trucks. The spray trucks come out when the commissioner acknowledges that failures in the chain have occurred. That's what I'm trying to get at. Different counties here consider a disease outbreak from mosquitoes at around 5-15 cases in a 2-5 mile radius within a week time span. The rest of the world does not have those numbers. They wait till the hundreds because they can't do anything. That's where we should start at before we look for miracle cures. And a lot of these are education and light field work that can be implemented cheaply. Either funded by local economies or aid. Which, we already do a fuckton of aid as it is. The one they really can't do is waterworks control which does play a major factor for us in FL. But there's still a lot that can be done before looking for unicorn farts. The disease transfer rate sort of works out like viral herd immunity (loosely). Because zika, malaria, dengue, etc, don't have a 100% incubation rate in the specific species of mosquito. However, there is a 100% transfer from mosquito to human (from what I know). But if you decrease mosquito populations around humans so the likelihood of incubation diminishes, you can see a good sized decrease in disease cases. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than what's going on now. I just wish that spreading current, effective and efficient knowledge would be the one getting funding.