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Thanks for the response. Yeah, that's what I had already found out. Just trying to gain a confidence level of how likely it is female offspring of Friendly™ mal

Thanks for the response. Yeah, that's what I had already found out. Just trying to gain a confidence level of how likely it is female offspring of Friendly™ males and pest females actually survive and carry disease. If it's 100% impossible then great. If there's a small chance the self-limiting gene actually does NOT disrupt development in some mosquitos and they live on to carry disease, I'd like to form an educated opinion on how small that chance is. I also see the self-limiting gene can be turned off with tetracycline. I know they released Aedes aegypti, which typically doesn't carry malaria but seems like it can. Just trying to gain an informed opinion without swaying into absolutes one way or the other. https://www.oxitec.com/en/our-technology#:~:text=Our%20Friendly%E2%84%A2%20Aedes%20aegypti,those%20original%20mosquitoes%20ever%20since https://www.oxitec.com/en/our-technology#:~:text=Our%20Frien...!

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biofunsf 3y ago
My not at all informed opinion: You concern isn’t about some sort of side-effect of the Oxitec treatment, but rather your worry is that their solution does exactly the opposite of what it’s trying to do. Just based on this I’m skeptical. Also numbers wise, if some fraction of “Friendly Males” are actually female, or the self-limiting gene is disrupted due to environmental factors, assuming the majority of the friendly males have their self-limiting gene in tact then it’ll still have an overall positive effect. I don’t think the presence of some “defective” (or rather, not defective) mosquitos will off-set the presence of all the other ones working as intended. I’m also assuming it’s straightforward to measure the effect of this treatment on the environment. It should be easy to confirm this really is having the desired effect. I think.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

biofunsf 3y ago

My not at all informed opinion: You concern isn’t about some sort of side-effect of the Oxitec treatment, but rather your worry is that their solution does exactly the opposite of what it’s trying to do. Just based on this I’m skeptical. Also numbers wise, if some fraction of “Friendly Males” are actually female, or the self-limiting gene is disrupted due to environmental factors, assuming the majority of the friendly males have their self-limiting gene in tact then it’ll still have an overall positive effect. I don’t think the presence of some “defective” (or rather, not defective) mosquitos will off-set the presence of all the other ones working as intended. I’m also assuming it’s straightforward to measure the effect of this treatment on the environment. It should be easy to confirm this really is having the desired effect. I think.