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1989 California Medfly Attack
- LeoPanthera 6y agoIronically, I remember the outbreak caused an increase in Malathion spraying, and being warned not to go outside on spraying days.
- dhosek 6y agoI remember the spraying and all the containment efforts, but somehow managed to be ignorant of the claimed agro-terrorism (although this was happening during my last year of college and my access to news was limited at best at that phase of my life).
- acdha 6y agoDitto - I remember the spraying and other control efforts but nothing about it being intentional, which is odd since it seems like a detail which would have gotten a lot of attention.
- geomark 6y agoSame. And in my area we were advised to cover our cars if they were parked outside as there could be minor paint damage from droplets from the spraying.
- annoyingnoob 6y agoWas going to say that its really hard to get off of painted surfaces. What a mess.
- masonic 6y agoThat was the bait, not the malathion itself.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoI was on Stanford campus at the time. The students would hear the helicopters, and run en masse out into the streets to dance in the malathion rain.
- rrmm 6y agoThanks for the article. That's super interesting from several perspectives (eco, ethical, state response to threats). I'm curious if there was any expert speculation on the identity of the attackers and what they would have likely known wrt the damage that was possible vs the state's reaction to it.
- Gunax 6y agoI am absolutely fascinated that some evil genius is out there threatening entomological terrorism.
- b34r 6y ago“The Breeders”
- mullingitover 6y agoThat's where that band got their name from!
- rospaya 6y agoI thought that it's from a derogatory term for heterosexuals.
- djsumdog 6y agoThere's a documentary on The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) that's really interesting. Many of them had noble goals, but their message was lost in the violence/destruction they caused. The FBI ended up letting one of the worst of them go after a plea deal where he ratted out other members who had moved on with their lives.
- thisistheend123 6y agoHey, do you have a link to the documentary?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- brownbat 6y agoThis led me down a rabbit hole into the sterile insect technique, where large numbers of sterile insects are released to reduce the population. Looks like Alphabet's Verily has been testing it on mosquitoes in Fresno: https://blog.debug.com/2020/04/nature-biotechnology-features-debug.html https://blog.debug.com/2020/04/nature-biotechnology-features...
- branko_d 6y ago> large numbers of sterile insects are released to reduce the population This has been done successfully on the flash-eating screwworm: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-eating-worms-disease-containment-america-panama/611026/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...
- wil421 6y agoFlorida has been doing some form of mosquito release for a while. Here’s an example.[1] [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/miami-s-new-mosquitoes-carry-sterility-bug-n842696 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/miami-s-new-mosqu...
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago> A person or group calling itself "The Breeders" took responsibility for the bioterrorist attack,[4] as financial retaliation for the environmental damage caused by the state's Malathion aerial spraying Some of the most evil people on this planet are “good people” who believe the ends justify the means.
- gHosts 6y agoI note they never caught them. Here is a scum bag ostensibly protesting an aerial pest control program that was caught...... https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11610428 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&object... ....but read to the end to see the real reasons.
- vkou 6y ago> Some of the most evil people on this planet are “good people” who believe the ends justify the means. Are you talking about the people who were spraying Malathion?
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoNo, the eco terrorists.
- vkou 6y agoSo, the people indiscriminately mass-spraying a dangerous chemical that they don't even understand into the environment? I'm not sure I'd go as far as to call that terrorism, but I see why other people would. They do seem to be convinced that the ends justify the means, and care little for collateral damage.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoThis makes me wonder about the murder hornets showing up in the forests of Washington. Could it have been a misguided person who intentionally introduced them?
- selimthegrim 6y agoDon’t give anyone any bright ideas or we’ll end up with the sodomy geese next.
- TwoNineFive 6y agoI don't see any way those wasps got over to WA state naturally. They didn't float over on some driftwood. That being said, the reaction has been, naturally, hyperbolic. It wouldn't be that horrible if we ended up with permanent colonies of them over here. Finding them is pretty easy, given their size.
- gwbas1c 6y agoThey probably just caught a ride in some shipping container.
- mullingitover 6y agoEradicating harmful insect species using CRISPR gene drives is so tempting. We could wipe out Medflies with it (without spilling a single drop of pesticide), and even more importantly, we could drive the mosquitoes that cause malaria/yellow fever/dengue/etc to extinction. There are a lot of worries about the side effects, but I'm equally worried about the consequences of failing to use it. There's a lot of attention paid to the 100k coronavirus deaths, and not to minimize those, but they pale in comparison to the equally tragic and preventable malaria deaths which go practically unnoticed.
- 1propionyl 6y agoA genetic modification designed to spread through a population at higher-than-normal rates of inheritance, spread through a massive population of insects that act as carriers for many rapidly mutating viruses, and that feed on the blood of many different species? What could go wrong?
- mullingitover 6y agoAnopheles mosquitoes have killed more people than all the wars in human history combined, so to me the 'what could go wrong' is that we don't do anything to permanently wipe them out. I'm not saying we shouldn't be careful, but that we should carefully, deliberately drive them to extinction.
- Someone 6y agoThe goal should not be to eradicate the mosquitos, but to eradicate Plasmodium, and then even just the ones (most) responsible (if you can call an unicellular organism responsible) for malaria. Also, ‘only’ about 40 of 460 Anopheles species commonly transmit malaria (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anopheles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anopheles). We should target those, leaving the others around.
- runeks 6y ago> Anopheles mosquitoes have killed more people than all the wars in human history combined […] What makes you sure that CRISPR-gone-wrong couldn’t kill even more people?
- campallison 6y agoWhen I was a little kid in Long Beach I remember some days we couldn't use the drinking fountains at school and stuff like that because they (city? state?) had sprayed for medflies that day. I have no details, it's just a childhood memory. I had no reason to access that memory except that it's here on HN. As a kid I had no idea there was anything more to it, but thanks to this post, now I do. Neat.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoThe article wasn’t clear to me on cause and effect. Did the group really release medflies in response to spraying to contain them? Resulting in more spraying, for a few months at least? Sounds odd.
- say-vagnes 6y ago> A person or group calling itself "The Breeders" took responsibility for the bioterrorist attack,[4] as financial retaliation for the environmental damage caused by the state's Malathion aerial spraying; > It was instead ordered that, rather than 1-2 aerial sprayings of the infected communities, more than a dozen sprayings would be necessary over a period of months.[18] In addition, Malathion was no longer used alone, but mixed in a 4:1 ratio with Nu-Lure0 bait to attract insects to the area.[19] I know, I know, hindsight bias. But it is hard to imagine that an increase in the infestation would not result in an increase of the treatment for said infestation. Take note, future protestors. Outcomes are the only thing that matters.
- TrainedMonkey 6y agoSounds like it worked: > Subsequently, three months after "The Breeders" announced the medfly release, the state ended its decade-long Malathion program and sought alternate ways to handle destructive insects.
- say-vagnes 6y agoFair point, I suppose on balance their outcome was indeed successful. Thanks for pointing that out :)
- ookdatnog 6y ago> The group promised to make the aerial spraying program politically and financially impossible through the coordinated release of thousands of medflies. It's not just that "on balance" they stumbled into accidentally achieving their goal. They achieved exactly what they set out to achieve, in the exact way they planned to achieve it.
- masonic 6y agoWell, the same strategies are used (sterile flies plus pesticide bait), but spinosad replaces malathion. I don't see this being any different without the protests. Pesticides are replaced all the time, like Dursban.
- andresgottlieb 6y agoJust last week I watched the 1993 movie Short Cuts, and learned about this event. Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon at it's best.
- heavyset_go 6y agoI just watched Short Cuts, too, so imagine my surprise reading your comment.
- aaron695 6y agoThis will almost certainly NOT be done deliberately. This is a common meme. It always turns out false or not proven (because it's false). See Tasmania and foxes. It is an effective technique to harm the population, but since there is no terror it makes for crappy terrorism. You'd need an informed public for this to work.
- xtiansimon 6y ago> “...took responsibility for the bioterrorist attack,[4] as financial retaliation for the environmental damage caused by the state's Malathion aerial spraying”. Awkward— This paragraph is confusing, because it sounds like the complaint preceded the event that caused it.
- poppabox 6y agoTerrorism sort of works, I guess