11 ms·

First GMO Mosquitoes to Be Released in the Florida Keys

mimixco 5y ago
It is simply untrue that there are no other options. There are many options. GMO mosquitos are another unwanted product from Intrexon which specializes in GMO foods that failed in the market (GMO apples and salmon). I lived in the Keys during the first attempt at this trial and there is so much wrong with it, we put together a whole website at the time. This page talks about Wolbachia, a safer and already approved alternative: https://neveragainkw.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/wolbachia-ready-its-time-to-scrap-the-gmo-mosquito-test-now/ https://neveragainkw.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/wolbachia-read... Any mention of mosquitos in the Florida Keys should come with the disclosure that the FKMCD (Mosquito Control District) is the single best funded entity in the entire state of Florida. There is serious money to made here and Intrexon/Oxitec only has to sell to one customer at a time -- the District -- not the people who live there.
- goda90 5y ago
  From your link: "Oxitec’s GMO mosquitoes do not have any built-in disease suppression and they aren’t truly sterile, meaning Oxitec GMO mosquitoes can also bite human beings and transmit disease" But isn't Oxitec only releasing males? Male mosquitos don't bite.
  - mimixco 5y ago
    See item #2 on this page: https://neveragainkw.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/5-way-the-media-lies-about-gmo-mosquitoes/ https://neveragainkw.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/5-way-the-medi... (that version has links... here's the text) 2. The Famous “Only Male Mosquitoes” Story That may be the goal, but it’s not the reality. At best Oxitec can sort out about 99.98% of the females. That sounds terrific until you realize that even the Key Haven test requires releasing over 14 million mosquitoes. The company expects to be able to come 3x a week for 22 months to tend to the breeding containers. Even the suggestion that the GMO mosquitoes are “bred to mate females” is misleading. In actuality, the GMO mosquito, crippled as it is by artificial DNA, does a poor job of mating. Unsurprisingly, wild type female mosquitoes don’t particularly prefer it. So Oxitec has to overwhelm the natural system with 5-25 times as many artificial mosquitoes as natural ones. The company’s tests in the Cayman Islands showed an effect on population only after massive, repeated GMO mosquito releases. The Oxitec GMO mosquito is its own Neverending Story.
    - Lukas_Skywalker 5y ago
      Even with 25 times as many „artificial“ mosquitoes, the 0.02% females remaining are probably still a tiny amount compared to the naturally occurring ones.
- addison-lee 5y ago
  Why can't they do both? Seems pretty short sighted to be against new technology for no good reason.
  - mimixco 5y ago
    Because GMO mosquitos introduce unnecessary risks. This is the best summary that I wrote at the time: https://neveragainkw.wordpress.com/2016/09/05/5-things-you-must-know-about-gmo-mosquitoes/ https://neveragainkw.wordpress.com/2016/09/05/5-things-you-m... It's of note that the project is so unpopular in the Keys that they have had to move from a Keys-wide trial covering thousands of homes to an opt-in only test with 130 houses. In other words, the people who live there don't want to be part of the experiment.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - itake 5y ago
      > No one can know the effects of Oxitec’s artificial DNA entering the human bloodstream through mosquito bites I'm still not sure I understand the problem. This entire experiment feels like a much safer version of the time the USA released a massive amount of DDT to end polio transmission [0]. DDT is obviously horrible for humans, but now we also live in a country without polio. There are costs to everything. Nothing is perfect. Please provide better evidence than "having non-natural DNA in your blood is bad". [0] - https://academic.oup.com/envhis/article/22/4/696/4057684 https://academic.oup.com/envhis/article/22/4/696/4057684
      - mimixco 5y ago
        I wrote a whole website about this, so I'm not really down to debate it with you. There's a lot to read about this, including source documents from Oxitec and the FDA. You can draw your own conclusions from the evidence that's there.
        selestify 5y ago
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  AquaBounty's GMO salmon hasn't "failed in the market"... it literally hasn't hit the market yet, but is still being actively developed, despite unending environmentalist lawsuits.
  - mimixco 5y ago
    "Safeway, Kroger, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Target, and Aldi are among the retailers who will not sell [Intrexon's GMO salmon]." [0] [0] Source: https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/foodservice-retail/here-are-the-retailers-who-won-t-sell-aquabounty-s-gm-salmon https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/foodservice-retail/here-a...
    - bpodgursky 5y ago
      That article is from 2015. I would not interpret that as writ.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  To summarize your blog, your biggest gripe is that it might not work, and that doing a test that may not work isn't worth the risk because "GMO bad". Jesus Christ, millions of people have malaria, it's a life-ruining disease. This is some of the worst luddite nonsense I've ever read.
  - paul_f 5y ago
    I don't get the GMO-bad crowd. Before GMO crops, you would take seeds and irradiate them. Then plant them and see what interesting mutations happen. And somehow GMO is worse than that? SMH
  - briefcomment 5y ago
    In the Florida Keys?
    - searine 5y ago
      Malaria used to be endemic all the way up to Maine. Improved sewage and later millions of gallons of pesticide fixed that. I don't think millions of gallons of toxic pesticides is the best solution. This is worth trying, and other similar experiments have shown it has been safe and effective.
  - dang 5y ago
    You broke the site guidelines badly here. Please follow the rules, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - mgraczyk 5y ago
      Sorry about that, thanks for the warning.
      - dang 5y ago
        Appreciated!
dukeofdoom 5y ago
How long before we have lockdowns due to mutant strains of man eating mosquitos.
- outside1234 5y ago
  This is Florida -- so the rest of us will have the lockdowns because they aren't intelligent enough to do it.
  - wtf_is_up 5y ago
    Why take a shot at Florida? CDC shows 159 covid deaths / 100k. That's on par with California and much lower than New Jersey, Mass, NYC, etc.
    - zests 5y ago
      Everyone knows southern states are doing everything wrong. The state you list are doing everything right. We hate the outgroup.
      - artificialLimbs 5y ago
        Is it about the numbers or what they're doing?
        diggernet 5y ago
        It's about what group they are in.
  - dang 5y ago
    This sort of flamebait will get you banned here. Please read the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We've had to warn you about this kind of thing before. That's not cool. Note this guideline: "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." That certainly includes regional flamewar.
garyclarke27 5y ago
About time Humans eradicated mosquitoes - they are by far the number 1 animal, that kills humans and are responsible for untold misery and suffering to humans, livestock and wildlife. Of course their predators may decline somewhat but that’s a price worth paying. Humans have decimated so many ecosystems - eg in Great Britain were no large beneficial predators remain - that this change pails in comparison.
- RamRodification 5y ago
  > somewhat Can you back these numbers up?
  - jjk166 5y ago
    There are 3000 species of mosquito. Only a few dozen transmit diseases to humans, and of those just 3 are the primary spreaders. No predator feeds exclusively on the disease spreading species.
    - galago 5y ago
      (That we know of.)
    - noxer 5y ago
      The real question is which one will replace the 3 if we remove them?
- williamtwild 5y ago
  What about the impact of this food source on other animals? You are not concerned about that at all?
  - FredPret 5y ago
    I read somewhere that all the lethal-mosquito-eaters already also eat the non-lethal kinds, as well as other insects
supercon 5y ago
”Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.” -Kurt Vonnegut
varispeed 5y ago
I can't help but think that this is some kind of Nazi level of thinking. How a scientist who works on eradication of species can look themselves in the mirror? As much as I hate mosquitos, these types of intervention in eco-systems should be illegal. Today mosquitos, tomorrow maybe you and me.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  Mosquitos have killed more of your ancestors[0] than anything else. To use your Nazi metaphor they probably look at themselves in a manner similar to the people who landed on Omaha beach in 1941. [0]"The general consensus of demographers is that about 108 billion human beings have ever lived, and that mosquito-borne diseases have killed close to half—52 billion people, the majority of them young children." https://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/mosquito-killed-billions-changed-dna/ https://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/mosquito-killed-billio...
- snovv_crash 5y ago
  Go live in Mozambique. Get malaria a few times, watch children get malaria, and then tell me again of your passion for that one strain of mosquitoes out of dozens, which carries malaria.
  - jjk166 5y ago
    There are actually 3000 species of mosquito. 100 species are capable of transmitting malaria, but only 30-40 commonly do. 7 species are responsible for transmitting the most dangerous form of malaria.
mgerullis 5y ago
Why does this sound like trouble?
- mdorazio 5y ago
  It doesn't.
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  Because writers generally /hate/ to write about a better world as a result of a new technology as they see it as boring and somehow disrespectful to real problems. Look at how "cure for cancer gone wrong" is a cliché for causing undead monsters in modern times, how people missed the point of a Bond Villain plot creating a universal flu vaccine as cover for a plan to create a world devestating pandemic and concluded that a flu which contains all possible immune triggers to make a vaccine produce antibodies for all of them would be a hazard instead of a cover story. Personally I am so goddamned sick and tired of the "Frankenstein complex" where any new technology is treated as a nascent apocalypse and "they should have known better than to make an axe because somebody would use it to cleave a skull" mentality.
  - rirze 5y ago
    It began with Jurassic Park and hasn't let down since...
belzebalex 5y ago
When something like this is proposed, remember Mao's Four pests campaign. The ecosystem is way too complex for us to understand. This might finish very badly.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  It might, but I like to think we've come a little ways since the 1950s in scientific understanding of the environment.
  - ISL 5y ago
    And yet, as humans, we've found ways to repeat mistakes first made millenia ago.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      We've also managed to fix quite a few. No one's fussing much about the ecological impacts of getting rid of smallpox, polio, and guinea worm.
      - ISL 5y ago
        Agreed on those particular points! :).
  - generalizations 5y ago
    That's probably what they thought back then, too. We don't know what we don't know; this isn't some scifi story where we can make mistakes and still get a happy ending.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      > That's probably what they thought back then, too. Sure, after purging hundreds of thousands of "counterrevolutionary" scientists and other intellectuals. We're in a slightly different scenario now. Our understanding of ecological impacts from this sort of action is well advanced past that of Maoist China. It may not be perfect, but it's certainly better.
ThaDood 5y ago
Not sure if links are allowed but I think Real Science on YT has some pretty good information on GMO mosquitoes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrIS7mia36k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrIS7mia36k
- vector_spaces 5y ago
  Links are definitely allowed so long as they're topical and contribute to a thoughtful discussion (which this does, in my book). Thanks for sharing
mjfl 5y ago
"Oxitec’s mosquitoes, for instance, are genetically altered to pass what the company calls “self-limiting” genes to their offspring; when released GM males breed with wild female mosquitoes, the resulting generation does not survive into adulthood, reducing the overall population." This is incorrect and reflects the general illiteracy of the population towards this technology. They are producing "gene drive" mosquitos, which contain a genetic element that restricts the sex their offspring, and the offspring of all their descendants, to be male. Gene drive mosquitos cannot breed with each other, because they are male, reducing the total number of mosquito offspring in the next generation, but they compete with unmodified males for mates, spreading the gene drive and exponentially growing their population and repressing the total population more. People, even on hacker news, seem to think we live in a Spider Man comic book. From this thread: "How long before we have lockdowns due to mutant strains of man eating mosquitos."
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
It seems there is a lot in common with GMO FUD and anti-vaccine FUD. Both have a huge distrust of technology that has been shown by scientific study after study to be safe. Both talk about potential risk in general, especially theoretical worst case scenarios, and demand an impossible level of confidence, while ignoring the concrete trade offs and baseline risks.
jrsj 5y ago
Funny to see so many immediate uninformed negative reactions to this in this thread.
- dang 5y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals. A good critical comment teaches us something." "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you know more than others do, that's great! Please share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn. If you don't want to do that, that's fine, but in that case please don't post. Dismissive putdowns just make things worse, especially when upvoted to the top of a thread. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=share%20know%20learn%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
heyuji78 5y ago
This technology will surely benefit Florida. GMO Mosquitoes will be able to balance the ecosystem while decreasing human cases. Even though scientists state that this will be safe for our health and environment, they should still consider the community's voice because many people are doubtful about GMOs ' impact on our settings.
PEJOE 5y ago
To those who are worried about this test or concerned about ecological impacts - please let my share my context which I hope will make your position more flexible. My personal context is that my grandfather was president of the Florida mosquito control board, who sprays enormous quantities of pesticides into nature in order to protect human health, and my mother, who works for the CDC on infectious diseases in sub-saharan Africa and South America. The subset of disease carrying mosquitos are the most deadly disease vector to humans worldwide, and have no consequential energy contribution back to the bottom of the food chain. If you are worried about the food security of an animal or insect who only eats these disease carrying mosquitos, consider the magnitude greater number of insect species pushed near extinction or vastly reduced by our use of pesticides for mosquito control. With this work, we move one step closer to being able to eliminate disease carrying mosquitos, leave the rest of the mosquito species alone, and finally stop spraying so much pesticide (that causes untold ecological damage) into nature and near human habitation. While contrarianism is a valuable american (and human) trait, in this situation it is misplaced, mis-informed, and dangerous. An educated man's anti-vaxx, if you will. Imagine the equatorial portions of the world without malaria, west-nile, yellow-fever, and dengue. Eliminating the largest amount of untold human and animal misery since the invention of anti-biotics, while stopping the indiscriminate use of devastating quantities of pesticides that destroy and distort ecosystems. These diseases do not only kill, but physically main and mentally injure their hosts for the rest of their lives. In the developed world we are lucky not to have these issues due to pesticides, medicine, and a generally cold climate. The equatorial countries are often impoverished, and the people who live there suffer from these diseases much more than we do. The contribution of persistent mosquito borne diseases to poverty is enormous and difficult to quantify. I believe it is only from the most sheltered contexts and outlooks that one can oppose this measure of progress. If you oppose this test think twice - please reconsider. If your opposition is effective, people will die and suffer needlessly.
e900542 5y ago
what could possibly go wrong?

It is simply untrue that there are no other options. There are many options. GMO mosquitos are another unwanted product from Intrexon which specializes in GMO foods that failed in the market (GMO apples and salmon). I lived in the Keys during the first attempt at this trial and there is so much wrong with it, we put together a whole website at the time. This page talks about Wolbachia, a safer and already approved alternative: https://neveragainkw.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/wolbachia-ready-its-time-to-scrap-the-gmo-mosquito-test-now/ https://neveragainkw.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/wolbachia-read... Any mention of mosquitos in the Florida Keys should come with the disclosure that the FKMCD (Mosquito Control District) is the single best funded entity in the entire state of Florida. There is serious money to made here and Intrexon/Oxitec only has to sell to one customer at a time -- the District -- not the people who live there.

goda90 5y ago
From your link: "Oxitec’s GMO mosquitoes do not have any built-in disease suppression and they aren’t truly sterile, meaning Oxitec GMO mosquitoes can also bite human beings and transmit disease" But isn't Oxitec only releasing males? Male mosquitos don't bite.
- mimixco 5y ago
  See item #2 on this page: https://neveragainkw.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/5-way-the-media-lies-about-gmo-mosquitoes/ https://neveragainkw.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/5-way-the-medi... (that version has links... here's the text) 2. The Famous “Only Male Mosquitoes” Story That may be the goal, but it’s not the reality. At best Oxitec can sort out about 99.98% of the females. That sounds terrific until you realize that even the Key Haven test requires releasing over 14 million mosquitoes. The company expects to be able to come 3x a week for 22 months to tend to the breeding containers. Even the suggestion that the GMO mosquitoes are “bred to mate females” is misleading. In actuality, the GMO mosquito, crippled as it is by artificial DNA, does a poor job of mating. Unsurprisingly, wild type female mosquitoes don’t particularly prefer it. So Oxitec has to overwhelm the natural system with 5-25 times as many artificial mosquitoes as natural ones. The company’s tests in the Cayman Islands showed an effect on population only after massive, repeated GMO mosquito releases. The Oxitec GMO mosquito is its own Neverending Story.
  - Lukas_Skywalker 5y ago
    Even with 25 times as many „artificial“ mosquitoes, the 0.02% females remaining are probably still a tiny amount compared to the naturally occurring ones.
addison-lee 5y ago
Why can't they do both? Seems pretty short sighted to be against new technology for no good reason.
- mimixco 5y ago
  Because GMO mosquitos introduce unnecessary risks. This is the best summary that I wrote at the time: https://neveragainkw.wordpress.com/2016/09/05/5-things-you-must-know-about-gmo-mosquitoes/ https://neveragainkw.wordpress.com/2016/09/05/5-things-you-m... It's of note that the project is so unpopular in the Keys that they have had to move from a Keys-wide trial covering thousands of homes to an opt-in only test with 130 houses. In other words, the people who live there don't want to be part of the experiment.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - itake 5y ago
    > No one can know the effects of Oxitec’s artificial DNA entering the human bloodstream through mosquito bites I'm still not sure I understand the problem. This entire experiment feels like a much safer version of the time the USA released a massive amount of DDT to end polio transmission [0]. DDT is obviously horrible for humans, but now we also live in a country without polio. There are costs to everything. Nothing is perfect. Please provide better evidence than "having non-natural DNA in your blood is bad". [0] - https://academic.oup.com/envhis/article/22/4/696/4057684 https://academic.oup.com/envhis/article/22/4/696/4057684
    - mimixco 5y ago
      I wrote a whole website about this, so I'm not really down to debate it with you. There's a lot to read about this, including source documents from Oxitec and the FDA. You can draw your own conclusions from the evidence that's there.
      - selestify 5y ago
bpodgursky 5y ago
AquaBounty's GMO salmon hasn't "failed in the market"... it literally hasn't hit the market yet, but is still being actively developed, despite unending environmentalist lawsuits.
- mimixco 5y ago
  "Safeway, Kroger, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Target, and Aldi are among the retailers who will not sell [Intrexon's GMO salmon]." [0] [0] Source: https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/foodservice-retail/here-are-the-retailers-who-won-t-sell-aquabounty-s-gm-salmon https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/foodservice-retail/here-a...
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    That article is from 2015. I would not interpret that as writ.
mgraczyk 5y ago
To summarize your blog, your biggest gripe is that it might not work, and that doing a test that may not work isn't worth the risk because "GMO bad". Jesus Christ, millions of people have malaria, it's a life-ruining disease. This is some of the worst luddite nonsense I've ever read.
- paul_f 5y ago
  I don't get the GMO-bad crowd. Before GMO crops, you would take seeds and irradiate them. Then plant them and see what interesting mutations happen. And somehow GMO is worse than that? SMH
- briefcomment 5y ago
  In the Florida Keys?
  - searine 5y ago
    Malaria used to be endemic all the way up to Maine. Improved sewage and later millions of gallons of pesticide fixed that. I don't think millions of gallons of toxic pesticides is the best solution. This is worth trying, and other similar experiments have shown it has been safe and effective.
- dang 5y ago
  You broke the site guidelines badly here. Please follow the rules, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - mgraczyk 5y ago
    Sorry about that, thanks for the warning.
    - dang 5y ago
      Appreciated!

dukeofdoom 5y ago

How long before we have lockdowns due to mutant strains of man eating mosquitos.

outside1234 5y ago
This is Florida -- so the rest of us will have the lockdowns because they aren't intelligent enough to do it.
- wtf_is_up 5y ago
  Why take a shot at Florida? CDC shows 159 covid deaths / 100k. That's on par with California and much lower than New Jersey, Mass, NYC, etc.
  - zests 5y ago
    Everyone knows southern states are doing everything wrong. The state you list are doing everything right. We hate the outgroup.
    - artificialLimbs 5y ago
      Is it about the numbers or what they're doing?
      - diggernet 5y ago
        It's about what group they are in.
- dang 5y ago
  This sort of flamebait will get you banned here. Please read the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We've had to warn you about this kind of thing before. That's not cool. Note this guideline: "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." That certainly includes regional flamewar.

garyclarke27 5y ago

About time Humans eradicated mosquitoes - they are by far the number 1 animal, that kills humans and are responsible for untold misery and suffering to humans, livestock and wildlife. Of course their predators may decline somewhat but that’s a price worth paying. Humans have decimated so many ecosystems - eg in Great Britain were no large beneficial predators remain - that this change pails in comparison.

RamRodification 5y ago
> somewhat Can you back these numbers up?
- jjk166 5y ago
  There are 3000 species of mosquito. Only a few dozen transmit diseases to humans, and of those just 3 are the primary spreaders. No predator feeds exclusively on the disease spreading species.
  - galago 5y ago
    (That we know of.)
  - noxer 5y ago
    The real question is which one will replace the 3 if we remove them?
williamtwild 5y ago
What about the impact of this food source on other animals? You are not concerned about that at all?
- FredPret 5y ago
  I read somewhere that all the lethal-mosquito-eaters already also eat the non-lethal kinds, as well as other insects

supercon 5y ago

”Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.” -Kurt Vonnegut

varispeed 5y ago

I can't help but think that this is some kind of Nazi level of thinking. How a scientist who works on eradication of species can look themselves in the mirror? As much as I hate mosquitos, these types of intervention in eco-systems should be illegal. Today mosquitos, tomorrow maybe you and me.

willcipriano 5y ago
Mosquitos have killed more of your ancestors[0] than anything else. To use your Nazi metaphor they probably look at themselves in a manner similar to the people who landed on Omaha beach in 1941. [0]"The general consensus of demographers is that about 108 billion human beings have ever lived, and that mosquito-borne diseases have killed close to half—52 billion people, the majority of them young children." https://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/mosquito-killed-billions-changed-dna/ https://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/mosquito-killed-billio...
snovv_crash 5y ago
Go live in Mozambique. Get malaria a few times, watch children get malaria, and then tell me again of your passion for that one strain of mosquitoes out of dozens, which carries malaria.
- jjk166 5y ago
  There are actually 3000 species of mosquito. 100 species are capable of transmitting malaria, but only 30-40 commonly do. 7 species are responsible for transmitting the most dangerous form of malaria.

mgerullis 5y ago

Why does this sound like trouble?

mdorazio 5y ago
It doesn't.
Nasrudith 5y ago
Because writers generally /hate/ to write about a better world as a result of a new technology as they see it as boring and somehow disrespectful to real problems. Look at how "cure for cancer gone wrong" is a cliché for causing undead monsters in modern times, how people missed the point of a Bond Villain plot creating a universal flu vaccine as cover for a plan to create a world devestating pandemic and concluded that a flu which contains all possible immune triggers to make a vaccine produce antibodies for all of them would be a hazard instead of a cover story. Personally I am so goddamned sick and tired of the "Frankenstein complex" where any new technology is treated as a nascent apocalypse and "they should have known better than to make an axe because somebody would use it to cleave a skull" mentality.
- rirze 5y ago
  It began with Jurassic Park and hasn't let down since...

belzebalex 5y ago

When something like this is proposed, remember Mao's Four pests campaign. The ecosystem is way too complex for us to understand. This might finish very badly.

ceejayoz 5y ago
It might, but I like to think we've come a little ways since the 1950s in scientific understanding of the environment.
- ISL 5y ago
  And yet, as humans, we've found ways to repeat mistakes first made millenia ago.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    We've also managed to fix quite a few. No one's fussing much about the ecological impacts of getting rid of smallpox, polio, and guinea worm.
    - ISL 5y ago
      Agreed on those particular points! :).
- generalizations 5y ago
  That's probably what they thought back then, too. We don't know what we don't know; this isn't some scifi story where we can make mistakes and still get a happy ending.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    > That's probably what they thought back then, too. Sure, after purging hundreds of thousands of "counterrevolutionary" scientists and other intellectuals. We're in a slightly different scenario now. Our understanding of ecological impacts from this sort of action is well advanced past that of Maoist China. It may not be perfect, but it's certainly better.

ThaDood 5y ago

Not sure if links are allowed but I think Real Science on YT has some pretty good information on GMO mosquitoes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrIS7mia36k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrIS7mia36k

vector_spaces 5y ago
Links are definitely allowed so long as they're topical and contribute to a thoughtful discussion (which this does, in my book). Thanks for sharing

mjfl 5y ago

"Oxitec’s mosquitoes, for instance, are genetically altered to pass what the company calls “self-limiting” genes to their offspring; when released GM males breed with wild female mosquitoes, the resulting generation does not survive into adulthood, reducing the overall population." This is incorrect and reflects the general illiteracy of the population towards this technology. They are producing "gene drive" mosquitos, which contain a genetic element that restricts the sex their offspring, and the offspring of all their descendants, to be male. Gene drive mosquitos cannot breed with each other, because they are male, reducing the total number of mosquito offspring in the next generation, but they compete with unmodified males for mates, spreading the gene drive and exponentially growing their population and repressing the total population more. People, even on hacker news, seem to think we live in a Spider Man comic book. From this thread: "How long before we have lockdowns due to mutant strains of man eating mosquitos."

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

It seems there is a lot in common with GMO FUD and anti-vaccine FUD. Both have a huge distrust of technology that has been shown by scientific study after study to be safe. Both talk about potential risk in general, especially theoretical worst case scenarios, and demand an impossible level of confidence, while ignoring the concrete trade offs and baseline risks.

jrsj 5y ago

Funny to see so many immediate uninformed negative reactions to this in this thread.

dang 5y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals. A good critical comment teaches us something." "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you know more than others do, that's great! Please share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn. If you don't want to do that, that's fine, but in that case please don't post. Dismissive putdowns just make things worse, especially when upvoted to the top of a thread. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=share%20know%20learn%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

heyuji78 5y ago

This technology will surely benefit Florida. GMO Mosquitoes will be able to balance the ecosystem while decreasing human cases. Even though scientists state that this will be safe for our health and environment, they should still consider the community's voice because many people are doubtful about GMOs ' impact on our settings.

PEJOE 5y ago

To those who are worried about this test or concerned about ecological impacts - please let my share my context which I hope will make your position more flexible. My personal context is that my grandfather was president of the Florida mosquito control board, who sprays enormous quantities of pesticides into nature in order to protect human health, and my mother, who works for the CDC on infectious diseases in sub-saharan Africa and South America. The subset of disease carrying mosquitos are the most deadly disease vector to humans worldwide, and have no consequential energy contribution back to the bottom of the food chain. If you are worried about the food security of an animal or insect who only eats these disease carrying mosquitos, consider the magnitude greater number of insect species pushed near extinction or vastly reduced by our use of pesticides for mosquito control. With this work, we move one step closer to being able to eliminate disease carrying mosquitos, leave the rest of the mosquito species alone, and finally stop spraying so much pesticide (that causes untold ecological damage) into nature and near human habitation. While contrarianism is a valuable american (and human) trait, in this situation it is misplaced, mis-informed, and dangerous. An educated man's anti-vaxx, if you will. Imagine the equatorial portions of the world without malaria, west-nile, yellow-fever, and dengue. Eliminating the largest amount of untold human and animal misery since the invention of anti-biotics, while stopping the indiscriminate use of devastating quantities of pesticides that destroy and distort ecosystems. These diseases do not only kill, but physically main and mentally injure their hosts for the rest of their lives. In the developed world we are lucky not to have these issues due to pesticides, medicine, and a generally cold climate. The equatorial countries are often impoverished, and the people who live there suffer from these diseases much more than we do. The contribution of persistent mosquito borne diseases to poverty is enormous and difficult to quantify. I believe it is only from the most sheltered contexts and outlooks that one can oppose this measure of progress. If you oppose this test think twice - please reconsider. If your opposition is effective, people will die and suffer needlessly.

e900542 5y ago

what could possibly go wrong?