5 ms·

I think about this a lot. What's to stop some random, non-scientist, group of people from just doing this? Mosquitos are pretty evil..

• maxerickson 6y ago
  If you make a gene drive you are a scientist. Hopefully whoever decides to just go do it has the sense to only target mosquitoes that preferentially feed on humans. Much less ecosystem impact that way.
  • danielheath 6y ago
    > If you make a gene drive you are a scientist. These days, introducing a known mutation via a CRISPR gene drive is engineering. The hard part is scaling it so your mutation doesn't die out, testing to ensure that it is actually propagating, etc. > Hopefully whoever decides to just go do it has the sense to only target mosquitoes that preferentially feed on humans. You have to repeat a considerable amount work for every single target species. I highly doubt they'd target more than one.
    • maxerickson 6y ago
      There's several species that preferentially feed on humans and we've done a banger spreading them around.