4 ms·

There is a tried and proven modern way to do what you claim moskitos are important for: vaccinations.

• graderjs 5y ago
  Mm, I agree there's overlap. But not total. Vaccines are effective tools, but we can't replicate the natural ecosystem and exposure to it, not yet anyway. I agree that vaccines are the closest tech we have to doing this...but they won't replace mozzies. If we get rid of mozzies we will then need to adopt responsibility for the role the mosquito played, and we might not be able to do that, and even if we can our solutions might cause other problems. It's sort of like saying, "fertilizer can replicate the role of funghi for plants, because fertilizer brings nutrients to plants". So if we decided to get rid of all funghi from the soil (crazy plan), we can just replace it with fertilizer. Problem solved. But not really...This is a metaphor (about the risk and difficulty of replicating a natural system we decide to remove from the ecosystem) not meant to be facsimile. Look it probably doesn't matter if they only kill aegypti (but it might, it still might be a disaster). I just think it's dangerous to play with that kind of stuff. Let's remove the pathogen, not the vector.