4 ms·

The one plan we do have that targets a specific species is the spread of neutered males. We've done this successfully in the past with screw-worm.

• throwanem 6y ago
  The sterile-insect technique does work, but it's not going to achieve the kind of eradication people in here are talking about. Wild-eyed ideas about mass pesticide application and CRISPR gene drives are more the sort of thing that actually concern me, or would if I thought anyone talking about them was anywhere near the required levers of power to actually make them happen. As it is, I just wish people had enough sense of history to understand the import, although I suppose in the age of alternative facts that's far more than can reasonably be expected.
  • yyyk 6y ago
    Strile-insect achieves 90-95% (e.g.[1]). Sustained and combined with a bit from the other approaches (netting, drying some swamps, this article suggests a medicine to make infected biting mosquitoes die, etc.), we can at least repeat what happened in much of the West - the population was reduced so much the parasite went extinct, when the population bounced back it was 'clean' (in other places in the West these mosquito simply went extinct). [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4489809/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4489809/
    • throwanem 6y ago
      Well, hell, OK, then, let's do that.