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750M genetically modified mosquitoes to be released in Florida
- mokarma 6y agoPlease, let's not try this for another couple of years. Maybe 2025.
- jkw 6y ago2020 code freeze please
- aetherspawn 6y agoYep, this is what we need in the middle of a pandemic. A /bug/ pushed to prod.
- supernova87a 6y agoDoes this even sound right numbers-wise? On Tuesday, officials in the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD) gave final approval to release 750 million of the modified mosquitoes over a two-year period. That would mean approx. 1M mosquitoes per day by this organization. Who is cultivating (?) or growing 1M mosquitoes per day. Isn't that like a pickup truck bed cubed size of mosquitoes, every day? Or is it being done across many, many sites?
- contravariant 6y agoMaybe they're counting the offspring? Although that doesn't seem quite right either (as it's not really controllable).
- RandallBrown 6y ago750 million mosquitos would only be about 8300 pounds. Logistically it does seem pretty difficult, but I know nothing about mosquito farming.
- zelienople 6y agoIt's not the farming that's hard; it's the milking.
- CapriciousCptl 6y agoAedis aegypti go from egg to adult in about a week and lay their eggs in any standing pool of water you can find. Maybe 100 total eggs per female over several broods before they die so it’s not that hard to cultivate millions a day. Here’s a few examples— https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13071-018-2750-7.1186/s13071-018-2750-7 https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/https...
- Cogito 6y agoYour link got mangled some how, it is meant to be https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13071-018-2750-7 https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11...
- ycombinatorio 6y agoWhat could go wrong !
- GloriousKoji 6y agoDidn't they already try this somewhere else and it wasn't very effective?
- MrZander 6y agoCompletely anecdotal: They apparently did this in my area a few years back and they are still spraying in my neighborhood as of last week after detecting mosquitoes carrying diseases. And it could be all in my head, but I swear there are 10x more mosquitoes than ever before.
- ggm 6y agoDidn't they already try this somewhere else and it was very effective?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jmgao 6y agoVerily tried it in Fresno, and it kinda worked: https://blog.debug.com/2020/01/three-great-years-of-debug-fresno.html https://blog.debug.com/2020/01/three-great-years-of-debug-fr... They repeatedly released sterile male mosquitos, though, instead of a gene drive, which is better from a PR standpoint, but worse from an actual effectiveness standpoint.
- mosquitoh8 6y agoHere's the study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6 This study is interesting. It relates to the company and what happened to the mosquitoes when they tested it in Brazil, Cayman Islands and Malaysia. TLDR: Mosquito population became suppressed at first but rebounded to pre-release levels and some carried the genetics of the GM mosquitoes (3% survival rate and can reproduce), unknown implications of hybrid vigor. "However, it is clear from the data in Garziera et al.6 that the effectiveness of the release program began to break down after about 18 months, i.e., the population which had been greatly suppressed rebounded to nearly pre-release levels. This has been speculated to have been due to mating discrimination against OX513A males, a phenomenon known to occur in sterile male release programs The release strain, OX513A, was derived from a laboratory strain originally from Cuba, then outcrossed to a Mexican population7. The three populations forming the tri-hybrid population now in Jacobina (Cuba/Mexico/Brazil) are genetically quite distinct (Extended Data Fig. E2), very likely resulting in a more robust population than the pre-release population due to hybrid vigor. These results demonstrate the importance of having in place a genetic monitoring program during releases of transgenic organisms to detect un-anticipated consequences."
- Fwirt 6y agoWhenever this comes up I always find it interesting that nobody comments on the now 60-year ongoing program that eradicated the screwworm fly from the US by doing pretty much the same thing: releasing millions of genetically altered (sterilized by radiation!) screwworms that mate with the native population. I have no comment on the positive or negative outcomes of the environmental modifications that both programs cause, just that it's interesting that there's so much visible backlash against the mosquito program while nobody mentions the screwworm one.
- pabs3 6y agoI wonder what the trade-offs are for genetic engineering vs radiation sterilization for the mosquito situation.
- virtue3 6y ago"The sterile insect technique was proposed by scientists Edward F. Knipling and Raymond C. Bushland, and was rapidly adopted by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1958. The technique centers on a unique reproductive handicap that prevents female C. hominivorax flies from mating more than once." From wikipedia. So, probably not effective for mosquitos.
- scarier 6y agoTangentially related: "The Screwfly Solution" by Raccoona Sheldon is a fantastic (but pretty dark) short story.
- chrisweekly 6y agoI couldn't not look up "Racoona Sheldon" and found: Alice Bradley Sheldon (August 24, 1915 – May 19, 1987) was an American science fiction author better known as James Tiptree Jr., a pen name she used from 1967 to her death. It was not publicly known until 1977 that James Tiptree Jr. was a woman. From 1974 to 1977 she also used the pen name Raccoona Sheldon. Sheldon was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012.[2]
- strogonoff 6y agoFrom what I recall, previous experiment elsewhere (Brazil?) showed that modified mosquitoes in fact transfer genes to native population, counter to assumptions. Was that sorted out or deemed not that big of a deal?
- mosquitoh8 6y agoUnknown implications of the hybrid vigor and inadequate monitoring is still going on. We frankly do not know. We need to ask certain British companies working with the local governments in places where they tested OX513A. The last study implicates a 3% survival rate. At first the females discriminated against males with OX513A but the population quickly rebounded with a third hybrid that appears to be more "vigor" as the study indicated. Implications of this new hybrid is unknown.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoThese anti-Gentically modified people are basically equivalent to anti-vaxxers. The scientific evidence is overwhelming that mosquito borne diseases are a huge public health problem and the studies are solid that using this technology to reduce mosquito populations is safe. Yet, there is always a catastrophe in the gaps type of paranoia.
- arentyouspecial 6y agoAnd what about the animals that depend on mosquito larvae for food?
- mosquitoh8 6y agoReplace with Black Soldier Flies. But on the serious note, not all mosquitoes are 'bad'. There are over 3500 species of them. Harmless genus such as Toxorhynchites are actually helpful. The real enemies are mosquitoes from the genus Anopheles that carry Plasmodium, the parasite that causes malaria. tldr: Only a hundred or so pose a risk to humans.
- viburnum 6y agoVaccines are safe become there’s a well-established process that ensures safety. That is not the case at all for GMOs. And vaccines are reversible (they don’t escape into the wild).
- ppod 6y agoAn interesting aspect to this debate is: what kind of actions do we sort of instinctively judge to have very large tail risk, and should we trust those judgements? Of course, the argument here is about the precautionary principle. But the precautionary principle sort of assumes that we can correctly judge which actions have potentially disastrous (non-ergodic, to use Taleb's vocab) consequences. That in itself is an inexact science. Maybe these mosquitos are about to naturally cultivate some horrifying virus, and it's actually not genetically modifying them that would be catastrophic. Taleb's ilk tend to respond with a kind of Chesterton's fence conservatism: things we haven't yet done, haven't wiped us out, so lets not do too much new stuff. But that's an anthropic argument, with weird Bayesian properties.
- mosquitoh8 6y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6#Sec10 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6#Sec10 This study is interesting. It relates to the company and what happened to the mosquitoes when they tested it in Brazil and Malaysia. TLDR: Mosquito population became suppressed at first but rebounded to pre-release levels and some carried the genetics of the GM mosquitoes (3% survival rate and can reproduce), unknown implications of hybrid vigor. "However, it is clear from the data in Garziera et al.6 that the effectiveness of the release program began to break down after about 18 months, i.e., the population which had been greatly suppressed rebounded to nearly pre-release levels. This has been speculated to have been due to mating discrimination against OX513A males, a phenomenon known to occur in sterile male release programs The release strain, OX513A, was derived from a laboratory strain originally from Cuba, then outcrossed to a Mexican population7. The three populations forming the tri-hybrid population now in Jacobina (Cuba/Mexico/Brazil) are genetically quite distinct (Extended Data Fig. E2), very likely resulting in a more robust population than the pre-release population due to hybrid vigor. These results demonstrate the importance of having in place a genetic monitoring program during releases of transgenic organisms to detect un-anticipated consequences."
- neves 6y agoThis is the perfect outcome for the company profits. Now they can sell a bunch of GM mosquitos each 18 months. A bug for the consumers, a feature for the developers.
- jaspergilley 6y agoTo the geniuses protesting this: they're combating an invasive species. How's that for un-natural?
- justatdotin 6y agoimpact is independent of motive: the universe doesn't care -why- its being done.
- mosquitoh8 6y agoThere was a study done that said in South America, these mosquitoes became more "robust". A UK company tested these GMO mosquitoes on brown people first. "Oxitec conducted pilot releases of its altered mosquitoes in Brazil, Malaysia, and the Cayman Islands, it knew the inserted gene wasn’t inevitably lethal. Lab tests had shown that when the GM males mated with wild females, roughly 3% of their offspring survived." At first, the mosquito population does decrease. After the population "rebounds", some of these mosquitoes appear to be hybrids that can reproduce in nature. Yale study report notes, ‘rare viable hybrid offspring between the release strain and the Jacobina population are sufficiently robust to be able to reproduce in nature.’ Who knows what these implications have... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6#Sec10 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6#Sec10
- FatDrunknStupid 6y agoSounds like a stupid idea. tHE neutered ones worked why do this. Freaky
- vaccinator 6y agoThey should do it in Volusia county (previously known as Mosquitto county)
- dheera 6y agoAfter what happened yesterday in Florida, I fully support this release of mosquitoes
- digitaltrees 6y agoWhat are birds going to eat now? asking for a friend.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoTell your friend that there are about 5,000 known species of mosquito, of which about 100 feed on mammalian blood, and out of those 9 are disease carriers. If we can target those specific 9 or some subset thereof, like Aedes aegypti as Oxitec is doing, we at least reduce the misery index while preserving 99.9% of the prey items consumed by birds, dragonflies, and other predators. Also, there's at least one study that suggests total eradication of mosquitoes would not harm the ecosystem because of the availability of substitute food sources.
- digitaltrees 6y agoThis is why I love hacker news. Awesome response!
- gpm 6y agoI'm curious, how far do mosquitoes travel during their lifetime? If this succeeds perfectly, do we actually wipe out mosquitoes in Florida, or do we cause a short term dip in there population that mosquitoes from neighboring states quickly fill in?
- nine_k 6y agoThere are great many mosquito-like species, and only rather few of them drink blood.
- KMag 6y agoFewer species drink human blood, and only a handful carry diseases we currently worry about (West Nile, Dengue, Malaria). We're not aware of any species that feeds specifically on one of these dangerous mosquito species, and all of these dangerous species have other mosquito species in their habitats, so we're pretty sure that first- and second-order environmental impact of the extinction of these dangerous mosquito species would be minimal. Though, by greatly reducing human morbidity and mortality, wiping out these dangerous mosquito populations would increase general human environmental impact. Granted, that's a Thanos-level complaint, similar to bicycles causing pollution because exercise causes people to live longer.
- nntghost 6y agoUnintended consequences 101. Can't undo. See Brazil disaster.
- solinent 6y agoI'm sure given enough selection pressure virus's will find another vector of transmission, I don't think this will do anything except harm the ecosystem as a whole.
- SrslyJosh 6y agoThat'll teach 'em.
- ed-209 6y agoThe stupidity of smart people never ceases to amaze.
- lkuty 6y agoaka "let's play God and see what happens"
- hilbert42 6y agoTragically there have been so many instances over the years I've come to the conclusion it's part of the Human condition - even a good education doesn't eradicate it (although it helps). Take the classic example, just look at how completely bonkers millions of intelligent Germans went during the 1930s. The condition I'm afraid is incurable. What's even worse is that it seems that under the right circumstances anyone can catch it.
- Clubber 6y agoHumans are emotional creatures that can think, not thinking creatures that have emotions.
- hilbert42 6y agoDamn shame isn't it, think of the money and lives saved on not having wars and not pursuing other mad activities. Anyway, it seems we won't have to wait long, AI will managing us before long, it'll ensure our emotions are kept straitjacketed and well under its control.
- strangattractor 6y agoThese mosquitoes compel people people to vote Democratic. QAnon
- strangattractor 6y agoDo your research. These mosquitoes program people to vote for Democrats. QAnon
- strangattractor 6y agoTest
- zacharycohn 6y agoI'm generally a big fan of these programs but I really feel like they should just wait until 2020 is done. The way everything else has gone, it's not worth the risk.
- millstone 6y agoReading wikipedia, the Sterile Insect Technique seems awesome! I hope someone knowledgeable can answer some questions: 1. If a fertile female mates with a sterile male, why does she not just mate again? 2. How are males selected? 3. How are males sterilized? Wikipedia refers to "irradiation of reproductive cells" but this can't be so precisely targeted...right?
- zaarn 6y ago1. Various insects have limitations on how often they reproduce or the female always lays eggs after fertilization, regardless of if the male was fertile at all, causing infertile or inviable eggs to form. 2. Insects have chromosomes specific to their sex, similar to the XY System in Humans but the X0 System (ie, lack of an X chromosome is a male) is a bit more popular in this kingdom (IIRC). 3) Radiation can be very targeted, you just need a method of aiming, a computer can probably do it. Or you can abuse feeding habits. Ie, you make it so that the insect can only feed in a specific position, then beam radiation at a fixed spot which will be close enough.
- 4gotunameagain 6y agoRadiation cannot be targeted precisely enough to affect individual parts of a mosquito. Even if you could somehow collimate a small enough beam, controlling the energy and modelling the mosquito so that the Bragg peak (point of maximum energy deposition along the beam axis) is where it should be, is not currently possible. For example look at one of the most precise applications so far, proton beams for ocular cancers (e.g. Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland). The modelling required to calculate the correct energy is non trivial and with large uncertainties, and compare the size of an eye to a mosquito. Additionally, individually doing this for millions of mosquitoes is not possible right now
- zaarn 6y agoYou don't have to aim it at a point, a line is good enough. A cyclotron should be sufficient to generate a disk-shape of radiation, which could be aimed downwards, via Bremsstrahlung. You could aim that just outside feeding places so that the backside of the mosquittos remain exposed, should be possible to do that on a large scale to make millions of them. You can make it easier if you consider that it's sufficient if their offspring is infertile and reduce the dose for the initial generation, then just blast the followup generation with a general dose.
- juskrey 6y agoSo mosquito experiments seem to fail with dangerous consequences but we are accelerating them nevertheless? Nice https://newatlas.com/science/genetic-engineering-mosquito-experiment-goes-wrong https://newatlas.com/science/genetic-engineering-mosquito-ex... https://newatlas.com/science/gm-mosquito-study-oxitec-rebuttal https://newatlas.com/science/gm-mosquito-study-oxitec-rebutt...
- mjburgess 6y agoYou may wish to read the retraction/followup: https://newatlas.com/science/gm-mosquito-study-oxitec-rebuttal https://newatlas.com/science/gm-mosquito-study-oxitec-rebutt...
- sriku 6y agoOne of the arguments presented in the article is that the program would alter the gene pool by 1% only. I'm curious where the 1% comes from and why something that might feel "small" in another context should also apply here. What if the tolerance limit was 0.01%? How do we determine this gene pool variability tolerance?
- belzebalex 6y agoAm I the only one who instantly thought of Mao's Four Pests Campaign? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
- b0rsuk 6y agoNo, there are two of us. I know mosquitos are pollinators. Their larvae are also very good at cleaning water - they eat algae, plankton, fungi, and other microorganisms. My guess is that if they succeed in collapsing the mosquito population, we will see a meteoric rise of something else.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoYou're not alone: "Recall Mao's policy to eliminate sparrows caused 50 mil to die of famine." https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1254172926829568007?s=20 https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1254172926829568007?s=20
- InsOp 6y agoIs this comparable to what is explained in this kurzgesagt video? https://youtu.be/TnzcwTyr6cE https://youtu.be/TnzcwTyr6cE
- shellfishgene 6y agoNo, this does not involve gene drives. The mosquitos used here have to be released repeatedly to keep the natural populations down.
- JackPoach 6y agoThe headline is missing 'What could go wrong'.
- hilbert42 6y agoPresumably all the bleeding hearts who've objected have never had malaria nor have they ever seen anyone in the throwes of suffering from it. Mosquitoes are the number one killer worldwide. Can't these idiots realize that whilst there's risks that they're outweighed by the benefits. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mosquitoes-kill-more-humans-human-murderers-do-180951272/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mosquitoes-kill-mo... One of the tragedies of modern society is that the whingers and whiners usually haven't suffered from the effects of the things they're complaining about. Their political action then denies benefits to others not so ideologically disposed. We've seen how much damage they've caused over COVID-19 objecting to masks, vaccines and so on. Many thousands have died as a result who otherwise would not have had these objectors had more sense.
- ac2u 6y ago>Can't these idiots realize that whilst there's risks that they're outweighed by the benefits. Please list the extent of the risks and the impact so that we can weigh it up against the benefits. Make sure you remember every risk, no skipsies.
- hilbert42 6y agoGo and read my long extensive epistles on COVID-19 and the opioid epidemic and then you tell me what I've missed out. Please list them all carefully (I'll then add then to the list.) Incidentally, search HN and you'll find the list of relevant items available is almost inexhaustible.
- ac2u 6y ago>and then you tell me what I've missed out. You've missed my point. Asking you to list out all the risks is rhetorical because you can't list your unknown unknowns. I wasn't challenging you to actually list them but to show you that you can't claim the ability to weigh the risks against the benefits like you claimed since there might be risks you're not accounting for. So you might counter with "well then by that logic we shouldn't do anything for fear of the unknown unknowns" But to that I would say the difference here is you're playing with an system of immeasurable feedback loops too complex for anyone to model. What's being introduced here is another feedback loop with no backsies, and what if we find out later we've made a catastrophic mistake?
- pvaldes 6y agoJust when you think that 2020 couldn't be more complicated... playing with floridian ecosystems and trophic chains at large scale. If you really want to do this kind of experiments you need to assure that it happens in the context of an stable, responsible government. One able to take countermeasures quick if something fails, and able to deal with two biological emergencies at the same time. One that doesn't claim that will now follow scientific advice because "scientists are idiots and I know much better". Such stable state could not happen until December.
- pvaldes 6y ago> One that doesn't claim that will now follow... Typo. Must be: "One that doesn't claim that will noT follow..." obviously. I must admit that is a badly constructed phrase.
- jcynix 6y agoMy favorite reading tip when such experiments are reported is Edward Tenner's classic book "Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Things_Bite_Back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Things_Bite_Back
- tgv 6y agoI'll check it out. I'm also afraid that the hindsight will be blinding.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago2016: NNT warns about tail risks of GMOs https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/770966228965916672?s=20 https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/770966228965916672?s=20 2019: As predicted, the Genetically Modified Mosquito project has gone wrong with "unforeseen outcomes" https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1172864041016090624?s=20 https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1172864041016090624?s=20 Sadly this won't stop until there is a Chernobyl-level accident.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoWasn't that retracted? It was speculation, not science. And in fact it didn't happen.
- khaki54 6y agoYes of course it was retracted. The basis was "you just increased genetic diversity and therefore increased the strength of the population"
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoInteresting, there was indeed an update: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62398-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62398-w
- mavu 6y ago"Florida man releases 750M genetically modified mosquitoes"
- callesgg 6y agoGenetic modification is normally fine, but the gene drive method is a bit to risky for my liking. Nature will find a way and with something as clever as a gendrive device at its disposal. Things can go wrong a bit to fast.
- ergwwrt 6y agoThere is nobody dying of mosquito diseases in Florida. This is an unnecessary risky move with unforeseen consequences just like China's 1 child 1 family policy. Anyways, if the lab wants to sell their solution in Florida, they better live in Florida. -Floridian (University of Florida 1999')
- hikerclimb 6y agoHopefully they give malaria to population of Florida.
- robertlagrant 6y ago> One group condemned the plan as a public "Jurassic Park experiment". Exactly. I get that they might need to control the population. That's one thing. But making the mosquitoes 30ft tall and putting them on display as an amusement park is quite another.