4 ms·
Are any of the mosquito extinction approaches being seriously tried? Genetic engineering, etc.?
by chmod600 6y ago
Are any of the mosquito extinction approaches being seriously tried? Genetic engineering, etc.?
- Darmody 6y agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53856776 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53856776
- FredPret 6y agoI, for one, have been going at them one at a time for years now
- ska 6y agoSeriously tried, yes. Seriously effective, no (at least so far). At least that was the state of things last I looked a few years ago.
- bolangi 6y agoWidespread supply of mosquito nets treated with an insecticide is one of the more successful measures.
- User23 6y agoThe most successful measure was carpet bombing the USA with DDT for years[1]. Most people don't know this now, but malaria used to be endemic in the USA as far north as the border with Canada. DDT's environmental persistence is obviously a double-edged sword, but it made the eradication possible. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.html https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.htm...
- stuff4ben 6y agoI don't mean to be crass, but why wouldn't that have worked in Africa? Yes DDT is scary bad, but we seem to be doing ok in the US.
- elric 6y agoThe US is pretty small compared to the parts of Africa that have to deal with malaria. The sheer size of the continent might make it difficult.
- Vrondi 6y agoWeird as this seems, at the time, you had to be in a country that could _afford_ DDT. It wasn't free.
- jfk13 6y agoThe environmental impact of widespread DDT use is pretty devastating. http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx
- User23 6y agoSilent Spring isn’t a scientific work[1] and has some serious factual problems. If you want to support banning DDT in an evidence based way you need to look elsewhere. It is on the other hand observably a rhetorical masterwork. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/health/05iht-sntier.1.6003787.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/health/05iht-sntier.1.600...
- jfk13 6y agoIt wasn't written to be simply and solely a scientific work; and it's hardly surprising that over the intervening 60 years, things haven't followed exactly all the scenarios it suggested. That doesn't alter the fact that it was a seminal work that helped open many people's eyes to some very real issues; and the devastation of many ecosystems over the past half-century or more surely confirms the importance of its message.
- lazide 6y agoIf you ignore the reality of a situation in favor of rhetorical tricks to land a heavier impact - it still doesn’t make it actually true. Even if the heavier impact has some positives.
- lesuorac 6y agoAlso worth point out that DDT is not blankety banned in the US. It's just not allowed as a pesticide. You can still use it to kill mosquitos. > Although Carson never directly called for an outright ban on the use of DDT, its publication was a seminal event for the environmental movement and resulted in a large public outcry that eventually led, in 1972, to a ban on DDT's agricultural use in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
- stjohnswarts 6y agoWell I have my doubts about that because it would have come right back after the DDT bombing stopped. Mosquitos can breed exponentially with zero issues, so I think that puts a huge hole in your theory.
- icandoit 6y agoThis group Oxitec released some in Florida: https://www.oxitec.com/en/news/florida-keys-mosquito-control-district-and-oxitec-announce-site-participation-for-florida-keys-pilot-project-to-combat-disease-transmitting-mosquito https://www.oxitec.com/en/news/florida-keys-mosquito-control... They previously released some in Brazil: https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003864 https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journa... those results?: ...in the Brazilian city of Indaiatuba found that Oxitec’s mosquito suppressed disease-carrying Aedes aegypti by up to 95%* in urban, dengue-prone environments following just 13 weeks of treatment, as compared to untreated control sites in the same city. *95% was the high 2-week rolling average and the individual weekly high was 98%; the highest 4-week rolling average was 92%.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoWould mosquito extinction even be a good idea? There would be substantial impacts to ecosystems if mosquitos were completely eliminated.
- abfan1127 6y agoyes. mosquitos do quite a bit of pollination.
- stjohnswarts 6y agonot the species spreading malaria. Efforts to genetically engineer a fix are welcomed by most people I think to stop malaria. There are ongoing trials with mixed results.
- chmod600 6y agoMy understanding is that only a couple species go after humans, and they don't have any important ecological niche.
- Fomite 6y agoVector control is the primary way that epidemiology and disease ecology have been exploring reducing the burden of malaria (and Dengue, and a number of other diseases). Genetically engineered, effectively sterile mosquito breeds are part of that effort. But that is hard to do - ecological systems are hard to push off stable equilibria.