5 ms·

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 6y ago
It might, but I like to think we've come a little ways since the 1950s in scientific understanding of the environment.
- ISL 6y ago
  And yet, as humans, we've found ways to repeat mistakes first made millenia ago.
  - ceejayoz 6y 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 6y ago
      Agreed on those particular points! :).
- generalizations 6y 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 6y 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.
    - awb 6y ago
      I think the point is that every generation thinks they're smart enough to wield the powers of the day. Humans have been wrong many, many times about that presumption. We can't look into the future to realize how much or little we actually know right now. You can only look back and remark on how foolish people were a few decades or centuries ago.
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        Are there any elements of human progress that don't carry this risk?
        awb 6y ago
        No, I suppose not. But it just sets off warning bells when someone says there's "no risk" in an endeavor that hasn't been tried before. The only way to "undo" this I can think of is to introduce large enough swarms of natural mosquitos to overwhelm the population of GMO mosquitos. Now, you're worse off than before. So fingers crossed that it works. It'll be a great achievement though if it does.
kbenson 6y ago
This is not a widespread campaign, this is a test. This is, in fact, the second test. Even if the ecosystem is too complex for us to understand now, that's not to say it's to complex to ever understand, and if we're ever to understand it, how should we go about that? Tests. The human body was once considered too complex to understand. We may not know everything about the body, but we do know quite a bit, to the benefit of everyone alive today. Caution is beneficial. Immediately discarding avenues of research and testing benefits because of incautious approaches of the past is not. This is not a case of people ignoring history repeating it, this is a case of people trying to learn from history and do it better next time, which is really the story of the human race. Might this end badly? It's possible. None can say it isn't. Even if it does, I'm not sure that means this approach should be abandoned. The eventual benefit of what they are attempting, even if limiting it purely to what we might get from controlling some breeds of disease spreading mosquitos, is massive.
- poilcn 6y ago
  If it possibly might end badly, it must never happen out of lab. One can't even predict how it could end up. Low gains, gigantic risks for everyone and everything living nearby. This is an act of eco-terrorism done by corporations. It shouldn't be treated better than oil spilling.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    > If it possibly might end badly, it must never happen out of lab. This is an absurd line of thinking. You can always make up some infinitesimally unlikely outcome for any action. The fact is mosquito-transmitted diseases are a real problem, the risks you are talking about are not.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    > If it possibly might end badly, it must never happen out of lab. There are many different ways and degrees of "badly". What you you thinking of when "ending badly" is mentioned? How accurate and likely is that an outcome? Is it based on knowledge of possible outcomes based on the science, and extrapolations, or on popular science and/or cultural depictions, or something else? For many possible outcomes, we have real data. We have many cases of a species being removed from an ecosystem, and of a subspecies being removed. Some of those are because of humans causing extinctions (or near extinctions), some of it is from humans causing the removal of a species from an area, and some of it is from natural change in ecosystems that is not the cause of humans (the world is not static, species evolve, evolutions and natural phenomena such as weather patterns allow species to spread to new areas).
joshdick 6y ago
This species of mosquito isn't native to Florida in the first place, so I don't see how we can wreck the ecosystem by removed this non-native species.
say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
Don't forget that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of animal and insect species are extinct because of humanity

ceejayoz 6y ago

It might, but I like to think we've come a little ways since the 1950s in scientific understanding of the environment.

ISL 6y ago
And yet, as humans, we've found ways to repeat mistakes first made millenia ago.
- ceejayoz 6y 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 6y ago
    Agreed on those particular points! :).
generalizations 6y 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 6y 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.
  - awb 6y ago
    I think the point is that every generation thinks they're smart enough to wield the powers of the day. Humans have been wrong many, many times about that presumption. We can't look into the future to realize how much or little we actually know right now. You can only look back and remark on how foolish people were a few decades or centuries ago.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      Are there any elements of human progress that don't carry this risk?
      - awb 6y ago
        No, I suppose not. But it just sets off warning bells when someone says there's "no risk" in an endeavor that hasn't been tried before. The only way to "undo" this I can think of is to introduce large enough swarms of natural mosquitos to overwhelm the population of GMO mosquitos. Now, you're worse off than before. So fingers crossed that it works. It'll be a great achievement though if it does.

kbenson 6y ago

This is not a widespread campaign, this is a test. This is, in fact, the second test. Even if the ecosystem is too complex for us to understand now, that's not to say it's to complex to ever understand, and if we're ever to understand it, how should we go about that? Tests. The human body was once considered too complex to understand. We may not know everything about the body, but we do know quite a bit, to the benefit of everyone alive today. Caution is beneficial. Immediately discarding avenues of research and testing benefits because of incautious approaches of the past is not. This is not a case of people ignoring history repeating it, this is a case of people trying to learn from history and do it better next time, which is really the story of the human race. Might this end badly? It's possible. None can say it isn't. Even if it does, I'm not sure that means this approach should be abandoned. The eventual benefit of what they are attempting, even if limiting it purely to what we might get from controlling some breeds of disease spreading mosquitos, is massive.

poilcn 6y ago
If it possibly might end badly, it must never happen out of lab. One can't even predict how it could end up. Low gains, gigantic risks for everyone and everything living nearby. This is an act of eco-terrorism done by corporations. It shouldn't be treated better than oil spilling.
- jjk166 6y ago
  > If it possibly might end badly, it must never happen out of lab. This is an absurd line of thinking. You can always make up some infinitesimally unlikely outcome for any action. The fact is mosquito-transmitted diseases are a real problem, the risks you are talking about are not.
- kbenson 6y ago
  > If it possibly might end badly, it must never happen out of lab. There are many different ways and degrees of "badly". What you you thinking of when "ending badly" is mentioned? How accurate and likely is that an outcome? Is it based on knowledge of possible outcomes based on the science, and extrapolations, or on popular science and/or cultural depictions, or something else? For many possible outcomes, we have real data. We have many cases of a species being removed from an ecosystem, and of a subspecies being removed. Some of those are because of humans causing extinctions (or near extinctions), some of it is from humans causing the removal of a species from an area, and some of it is from natural change in ecosystems that is not the cause of humans (the world is not static, species evolve, evolutions and natural phenomena such as weather patterns allow species to spread to new areas).

joshdick 6y ago

This species of mosquito isn't native to Florida in the first place, so I don't see how we can wreck the ecosystem by removed this non-native species.

say_it_as_it_is 6y ago

Don't forget that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of animal and insect species are extinct because of humanity