21 ms·

This seems alarmist. The citation you provided elsewhere (for Sardinia) was for some DDT spraying - which was obviously not targeted exclusively at mosquitoes,

by Jedd 6y ago

This seems alarmist. The citation you provided elsewhere (for Sardinia) was for some DDT spraying - which was obviously not targeted exclusively at mosquitoes, and explains why lots of other things died. Targeting the very small set of mosquito species (that carry malaria) with something that will wipe them out within a few generations (under 12 months) seems tremendously safe, because a) it's a small subset of the total mosquito population, b) you can test this in isolated (eg. island) environments, and c) by the very nature of this, rollback is easy -- once the species has died out locally, if needed you can quickly & safely re-populate with non-modified specimens.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
It's not alarmist. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I'm an environmental studies major and I have a genetic disorder. I'm getting healthier when that is supposed to be impossible and it's in part because I'm an environmental studies major and I think of the body as a complex ecosystem. You kill one thing or change one thing and there are always myriad knock on effects. Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. I am getting better by trading short term costs for long term gains, the exact opposite of what Western medicine typically does. We monetize disease by trading short term gains -- that doctors can claim credit for, justifying their fees -- for long term costs which we politely admit to with multi-page warning materials included with all drugs and then normalize largely ignoring that stuff and taking it anyway. Then when your condition gets worse, they blame it on your genes instead of on the side effects of the harsh drugs they have been poisoning your system with for years and years. It's possible to make targeted changes to an ecosystem, but it's not easy and even if you get it right, there are costs involved. Managing such change is hard and there tends to be hidden costs that the experts want to disavow responsibility for and they can generally get away with it because cause and effect can be hard or impossible to prove. I hope they cure Sickle Cell. I hope they eradicate malaria. Parasitic infections are pretty awful. I hope they do it in a way that doesn't involve millions of Africans being thrown under a bus so Westerners can feel like heroes while hand waving off the human costs for the locals which Westerners have a long history of running rough shod over on the excuse that we imagine we are superior to them or something.
- Jedd 6y ago
  > You kill one thing or change one thing and there are always myriad knock on effects. Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. I stand by my earlier claim. While I acknowledge the potential of unintended consequences, and the often surprising interconnectedness of many elements within an ecosystem, I further dispute the claim that any change necessitates other, exclusively bad, 'hell to pay' changes. Here I am, in rural Australia, and within a kilometre of me these are the pests that I would be ecstatic to get rid of, and that would have close to zero negative, and myriad positive, knock-on effects: prickly pear, tiger pear, heliotrope, pattersons curse, foxes, rabbits, several species of med fruit fly & mosquitoes. Almost all of these are guaranteed to have no negative knock-on effects simply because they were introduced here in the past two centuries.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    Australia is like the poster child for unintended ecological consequences. All those introduced species you cite to refute my opinion I would cite to support it. Though the camel being introduced to Australia seems like something of a silver lining. From what I gather, Australia is now like a haven for the species.
    - Jedd 6y ago
      I'm interested in how you defend (if I'm reading that correctly) retaining those pests in Australia. Further afield from my humble abode, yes, Phytophthora, lantana, black rats, blackberry, feral goats / pigs / deer, cane toads, camels, etc. The reason we can export camels to the middle east is that when we imported them from there, we didn't import the various parasites that are now rampant in that part of the world. Perversely this gives us an export trade and a massively out of control population of highly destructive and resilient beasts. If we could remove all wild camels from Australia over the space of 10 years you'd be hard-pressed to identify any net negatives, and certainly it'd be impossible to identify any negatives that were detectable when mapped onto a graph of the positive effects.

by Jedd 6y ago

DoreenMichele 6y ago

It's not alarmist. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I'm an environmental studies major and I have a genetic disorder. I'm getting healthier when that is supposed to be impossible and it's in part because I'm an environmental studies major and I think of the body as a complex ecosystem. You kill one thing or change one thing and there are always myriad knock on effects. Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. I am getting better by trading short term costs for long term gains, the exact opposite of what Western medicine typically does. We monetize disease by trading short term gains -- that doctors can claim credit for, justifying their fees -- for long term costs which we politely admit to with multi-page warning materials included with all drugs and then normalize largely ignoring that stuff and taking it anyway. Then when your condition gets worse, they blame it on your genes instead of on the side effects of the harsh drugs they have been poisoning your system with for years and years. It's possible to make targeted changes to an ecosystem, but it's not easy and even if you get it right, there are costs involved. Managing such change is hard and there tends to be hidden costs that the experts want to disavow responsibility for and they can generally get away with it because cause and effect can be hard or impossible to prove. I hope they cure Sickle Cell. I hope they eradicate malaria. Parasitic infections are pretty awful. I hope they do it in a way that doesn't involve millions of Africans being thrown under a bus so Westerners can feel like heroes while hand waving off the human costs for the locals which Westerners have a long history of running rough shod over on the excuse that we imagine we are superior to them or something.

Jedd 6y ago
> You kill one thing or change one thing and there are always myriad knock on effects. Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. I stand by my earlier claim. While I acknowledge the potential of unintended consequences, and the often surprising interconnectedness of many elements within an ecosystem, I further dispute the claim that any change necessitates other, exclusively bad, 'hell to pay' changes. Here I am, in rural Australia, and within a kilometre of me these are the pests that I would be ecstatic to get rid of, and that would have close to zero negative, and myriad positive, knock-on effects: prickly pear, tiger pear, heliotrope, pattersons curse, foxes, rabbits, several species of med fruit fly & mosquitoes. Almost all of these are guaranteed to have no negative knock-on effects simply because they were introduced here in the past two centuries.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Australia is like the poster child for unintended ecological consequences. All those introduced species you cite to refute my opinion I would cite to support it. Though the camel being introduced to Australia seems like something of a silver lining. From what I gather, Australia is now like a haven for the species.
  - Jedd 6y ago
    I'm interested in how you defend (if I'm reading that correctly) retaining those pests in Australia. Further afield from my humble abode, yes, Phytophthora, lantana, black rats, blackberry, feral goats / pigs / deer, cane toads, camels, etc. The reason we can export camels to the middle east is that when we imported them from there, we didn't import the various parasites that are now rampant in that part of the world. Perversely this gives us an export trade and a massively out of control population of highly destructive and resilient beasts. If we could remove all wild camels from Australia over the space of 10 years you'd be hard-pressed to identify any net negatives, and certainly it'd be impossible to identify any negatives that were detectable when mapped onto a graph of the positive effects.