Aedes Aegypti isn't even a species that's native to the US. It's been brought there by humans.
Even if you're convinced by arguments of naturalness (which I'm not), in this case it makes no sense, because you're not messing with nature, you're trying to return nature to a previous state before humans interfered.
> you're trying to return nature to a previous state before humans interfered
"Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men. Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts."
Portal 2 is filled to brimming with satire. However, I am inclined to agree with the above commenter: it does seem that things get more and more absurd as I get older.
Even if we succeed we can end up with more problems. Nature isn't math, if you add something, then remove it, you don't end up where you started. The ecosystem adapts to both changes separately and it's often hard to predict what will happen.
Why do some people believe that deliberately and carefully trying to fix a problem and inadvertently introducing an unforeseen side-effect is worse than deliberately choosing not to do nothing about a disease that leads to sickness and death?
It appears that a "gene drive" was introduced into the Florida Keys in this case, and that is much more targeted and specific to a species that it is intended to destroy.
Ever read on the idea that most megafauna was hunted down by men?
Yeah... that seems pretty erhm, "unnatural", therefore the entire rest of the world is "unnatural"
Supposedly the tsetse fly was local to a very small area of Africa, yet during the 1700 and 1800 during colonialism it spread onto the rest of the continent, before that the continent was quite settled with larger farm fields in respective areas, but the tzetze fly disrupted all that
Anyhow just wanted to say that "nature" and "natural" once one starts digging more are not really "useful" descriptions, because the world is complex and not an idealized scenario
The era in which we live is called "Anthropocene", which is defined so because humans are powerful enough to define the environment. Wild days were in haha.
> Isn't that what people always say before interfering with ecosystems?
We (humans) are constantly interfering with ecosystems, including wiping out species. However for some reason every single time there is a post about getting rid of this mosquito species there are comments super worried about the ecological impact. I wager the deforestation taking place in Amazon will have a much larger impact than the absence of this species of mosquito
>I wager the deforestation taking place in Amazon will have a much larger impact than the absence of this species of mosquito
That might be true but that's also not a reason to deliberately change ecosystems elsewhere.
The issue with mosquitos essentially comes down to risk management. The question is can we intentionally remove a mosquito species from the ecosystem while limiting adverse side affects. Deforestation of the amazon isn't relevant.
Do you honestly think the ecosystem or the species cares about our intent? We (humans) are literally fishing entire species to extinction because we like the taste.
My intent is, destroy mosquitoes and noseeums. Completely.
I love nature more than most I know, but if there is evil on this earth, it's the mosquito.
Here's one example. The woodpecker. Around here, its numbers swell when trees have pests under the bark.
But soon, after a few years, they eat most of the grubs, and must find other food. They do. By pecking in the dirt, for bettle grubs, and worms, and so on.
I'm sure their population will diminish, until more tree grubs appear. I'm OK with that.
And frankly, if we kill all mosquitoes and noseeums, some things will starve out, some will adapt.
But I hate mosquitoes so much, they kill so many, I am OK with some birds vanishing.
I literally, like some general sending men to die in a push, am OK with that
Die, mosquitoes. Die to extinction. Die regardless of the price, the cost.
Die, even if they cause lateral gene exchange, and their extinction means we wither, and die too.
Then again cows are pretty successful mammals if you go by population numbers because we like their milk and meat. Although I don't think there is any break-even with less shrimp and more cow.
There's definitely a difference between deliberately trying to wipe out a single invasive species, and devastating an entire ecosystem. [1]
The problem is that you are grossly mistaken in which is worse. It's the latter. Whether you do it out of purpose, accident, negligence, or apathy, the consequences don't care about your intent.
[1] Which is something we are constantly doing, all around the world, not just in the Amazon.
We've inadvertently wiped out a whole bunch of species, and nearly done so to a whole bunch more. These have had ecological impact, but one more isn't gonna make or break things, especially having specifically done the research in this case in a way we didn't for most of the extinct species.
We've got concrete examples of getting rid of some species with near-zero consequences, like the guinea worm.
"We can't ever know anything enough to do anything" isn't a very useful way to go about the world. The same vague, dark hinting can be applied in the other direction - perhaps there are consequences from introducing Aedes aegypti into the Americas via the slave trade we'll resolve by eradicating the invasive species.
Phrases like "near zero consequences" usually implicitly refer to the consequences for human populations, domestic animals, or species that have cultural value to us or are canaries in coal mines (i.e. polar bears).
As long as the macro-ecological systems we rely on continue to interface with us in mostly the same way we make the compromise that we are aware enough of the side effects. It's easier to take this perspective with disease carrying mosquitos because of the sheer quantity of human suffering and death they cause.
But this view does have pitfalls, like how we initially missed the collapse of pollinator species that we depend on, or the risks we take with genetically cloned fruit like Cavendish bananas which are a single pathogen away from being wiped out.
And that previous attempts to curb the reign of mosquitoes include things like "draining all swamps everywhere".
Take a look at the coastline of Long Island on satellite maps, and all the scars left by that time they tried to eliminate all of the salt marshes to get rid of mosquitoes near NYC.
It is unlikely that mosquitos have true agency, and we know they don't care for their children. Moreso, they are unable to develop technology to eliminate us, while we can develop technology to eliminate them.
It's actually "that's just, like, your opinion, man".
> Moreso, they are unable to develop technology to eliminate us, while we can develop technology to eliminate them.
Wow. Just, wow. I hope you realize that that's a dangerous line of thinking.
But then again it's not very surprising. Historically humans don't have a good track record of preserving the lives of other humans (in other lands). Let alone other creatures.
Also your statement isn't even really true. The reason those mosquitoes are targeted is because nature inadvertently came up with diseases that eliminate humans.
Yet I'm not entirely sure that's a justification for eradicating a sub-species of mosquitoes.
I would say, considering all the facts, Oxitec has been the least irresponsible and most thoughtful of companies addressing this and I believe they've earned their chance at this point because nobody has been able to come up with a solid prediction of negative outcomes that was accurate. This isn't an existential risk and it's worth the experimentation.
I think that's the second fact. The first fact is that this species causes an immense amount of suffering and death to humans. Not considering this ongoing harm is status quo bias.
I, too, think it's likely no ecological disaster will occur, but at the same time it's still possible. Nevertheless, from a cost-benefit perspective, for me it's a risk worth taking.
Parents compensate for child deaths by having more children. When those children don't die you end up with overpopulation. If parents know their children won't die they won't have more than three.
I think you will have to work pretty hard to pull many supporters to the 'pro-human-death' team.
Most people, I think, are in favor of protecting the ecosystem implicitly because it makes the world a more pleasant place for us to live in. There's talk about not harming the planet for philosophical reasons but that's all window dressing. Humans work for humans.
I just ignore it, we all know they don't actually believe it in their heart of hearts. It's just a failure of empathy, which is all too common nowadays.
People just like being edgy, best to give them no mind.
I view it as pointing out the irony/hypocrisy in the conversation.
Killing an entire species to save a few humans. Being concerned about the ecological disaster when we are the worst ecological disaster. Those are pretty hypocritical viewpoints although common and completely normal with the constraints of normal human behavior.
Picking the side of your children at the expense of an entire species is exactly the normal human behavior I speak of. We do any thing to better our interest even when this issue is very unlikely to impact the average human or their children.
Also It’s not as black and white as you’re painting it. I happen to see it both ways and side humans too because, why not? I am not team mosquito. (I think you’re mistaking me for someone debating with you, I just jumped in the thread to say I see there point, doesn’t mean I agree with it and it doesn’t mean they lack empathy. There is this thing called dark humor and it’s possible to hold that alternate view as a point of humor.) Also not returning to comment.
Individual humans aren't an ecological disaster, some systems weve chosen at macro scale create ecological disasters. Some humans getting maleria won't reduce that, if anything it will waste even more resources.
You are correct but I think you are discounting the scalability of this approach and tech. I view this more as a proof of concept. In many years, it will likely be trivial to expand this to all mosquito species relatively effortlessly.
Yes, but how does that contradict my statement? We would go after the biting species first and species that somehow are causing humans 'harm'. Don't think anyone wants to wipe out 800 species on a whim. IF the tool scales, we can selectively apply it
Why would you state that? That is explicitly not the goal of this effort and there is no justification for taking that approach. It sounds like fear mongering.
I'm confused. I'm not fear-mongering at all. I'm on the opposite side of fear--optimism. This is akin to a proof of concept with this mosquito species. It is likely the learnings will translate to other mosquito species. I have not stated I _want_ to eradicate this or the other species, merely that we theoretically _could_
"Theoretically could" is practically useless without providing a reasonable route to actually happening. The US could theoretically nuke ever major city in Canada, bit that possibility is ingored for almost all practical purposes (and the purposes for which it is not ignored look at the reasons why it would happen.)
Eliminating a species of mostuito is expensive and additional effort breeding and releasing mosquito's for each species you want to eliminate will always require additional work and effort. Why would we expend that effort to eliminate a species that doesn't bite us?
Yes, genome engineering is a tool that can be used for evil, no different than most other tools. I am confident your worry would be easily detected and squashed if some lab were attempting such a dreadful thing.
Thing is, smashing the existing equilibrium is not good or bad, just as nature is not good or bad. Most likely a new equilibrium will be established without checking with us, humans. We, may like it less then the original one though.
Even if you kill all species of mosquitoes that feed on humans, I doubt you have much of an impact on the ecosystem. There are still plenty that feed on other animals.
The problem with this is that is non-consensual. People have a right to decide if genetically modified organisms will be flying around in their ecosystem.
Human beings who have lived in a state of nature. When there are medical cures to mosquito-borne diseases available, the patient can choose to take it or not take it. This foisting of treatments on people without their consent creates very dangerous precedents.
There is a big difference between how ecosystems change through human and animal migration and technocratic "solutions" that usher in a whole new level of medical invasiveness.
Oh? What difference would that be? If I intend to add or remove a species from somewhere is that somehow worse than if I accidentally add or remove a species from somewhere? In what way?
Here we see a gaggle of gpt models, endlessly duking it out for the public, such that they may casually dismiss or ignore their arguments.
- HN tour guide Attenborough
No more than they have a right to decide if a chemical is applied to a water aquifer or a pesticide is sprayed in a different locale and then drifts over. Direct democracy type approaches have never been a good (or even correct) model for these kinds of decisions.
If it were, my community would prefer no synthetic chemicals come into contact with my local environment (plastics, textiles fabrics, herbicides, etc.)
It's analogous. Mao decided to eliminate a problematic species. So he started eliminating it. Nationwide. Turned out, there were consequences to eliminating that species. Consequences that would have been obvious had he consulted with scientists. Or done a limited roll-out first. Things we're doing when weighing zapping these mosquitoes.
> Do you not see how the original comment was implicitly responsive to this claim?
I do. I think the comment is a generic "but unforeseen consequences" response. The target mosquito could have some unique ecological role the other 799 can't fill that only becomes apparent ex post facto.
That's why we're conducting limited tests. To look for those. Something Mao didn't do.
This concerns an invasive mosquito (Aedes aegypti) that carries dengue/yellow fever/zika and more. Males were raised with a mutation that, passed on to offspring, kills females before reach adulthood (and have grandchildren).
They released this on 1 hectacre of land, the genes functioned as expected, and the genes didn't travel more than 400m (affected mosquitoes have a sort of fluorescence under the right light). Probably also as expected, the genes disappeared after a year (a few generations). My guess is that mostly happened from neighboring unmodified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes genes coming over to replace the modified ones.
AFAIK it'd take a monumental effort to wipe out a species this way, but suppressing or near-eliminating a population in a place you can isolate from non-modified aegypti sounds possible, particularly if you do other suppressive efforts.
Yeah it seems like a kind of contradiction if you want this to be ecologically effective. You can't simultaneously have the phenotype severely impact reproductive success and be super effective in controlling the population.
Which is great for a risk-management standpoint: the modified genes will only spread through great human effort, there's no scenario where there's unintended side-effects and we can't stop the spread.
There is a weird number of people in the replies here arguing for strange things like a fundamental right to life for individual mosquitos, against brushing teeth, in favor of preserving invasive species, in favor of the naturalistic fallacy, that diminishing the population of a particular species violates the consent of humans in the area where that species lives, etc.
Yes wanting to do the right thing mixed with very little domain knowledge and a only vague hint of what the right thing might be… is a dangerous combination, and very common among people advocating for “good” these days.
HN's Eternal September [0] seems to have started late last year. I saw this happen to Slashdot, then Reddit, and now HN. What will be the next online forum for high-quality discussion?
The main demographic of this website are very evidently not scientists or even scientifically minded. So yeah, we get junk like this rather than substantive scientific discussion.
I think the demographic is very well informed and we should praise the diversity of opinions when honestly voiced. People on this website almost always discuss the central point that was raised and rarely use rhetorical fallacies. On the other hand what you are doing is very clearly an ad hominem.
I think the most reasonable objection is that nobody can seriously claim to know the sum of repercussions of such an experiment. Otherwise this study wouldn't be needed anyway.
Personally I am fine to choose mosquitoes as a target if we really need to use techniques like this. Experiments that used natural predators to control a population also have mixed results. I assume that would be frogs or birds in case of mosquitoes.
Sounds like a great Black Mirror plot: a guy has kids with a few different women, all of the kids dying. He eventually learns that he's part of a batch of males released into society to kill off part of the human race.
If the males survive then they can pair with normal females and use up their resources. Say I have 2 boys, and 2 girls, all die that's 4 people who won't have babies. But say the boys live and marry 2 girls. Now we have 2 dead, and 4 who can't reproduce, for 6 total taken out of the healthy reproducing gene pool. Every male with the gene who finds a life partner also takes a otherwise healthy fertile female out of the gene pool as well.
Even better would be a plot about a machine that would kill those kids in the bud instead to force the society to spend valuable resources on them for several years.
As far as I can tell, the current travel recommendation is that if you visit the Caribbean you should avoid conceiving a child for 2-3 mo (the guidance would also apply to Puerto Rico except I don't think that counts as "abroad"). But surely no one is actually doing that...?
From a libertarian philosophical standpoint I like this, but I'd like to know more practical reasons. Is it just the fact that it's a massive amount of R&D that's only recouped from sales and marketing?
For me, beyond recouping the costs, I think the CDC has demonstrated that it is too tightly coupled with politics [1][2]. I believe that any government body will eventually become constrained by the politics that it exists in and is funded by. I would, naively, claim that funding more neutral researchers/companies would provide better resistance to the politics of it all.
As a counter argument, it would be easy to claim that the pharmaceutical companies are too tightly coupled to politicians. Perhaps this still results in greater efficiency, for now?
I'm disappointed this article doesn't contain a single quote from either the researchers or Oxitec (nor does the earlier article it links to).
The experiment has been underway since April 2021 in the Florida Keys ... over the course of seven months, and has now almost completed monitoring the release sites.
An obvious question would be "What are you monitoring?" and to explain why 7 months is sufficient to detect any ecological changes.
Not for or against the research, and I understand it's a magazine article not a newspaper story, but this seems like more of a PR piece than real reporting.
Completely uninformed on the topic, but what I inferred (it is strange it's never explicitly said) is they are trying to determine how well they can contain the effect of the mosquitoes to the intended area.
Like the effort to find non-toxic ways to kill mosquitoes and control their populations, however, definitely want any companies to be doing such to be highly regulated. Don't want to see any of these genetic experiments doing things they aren't supposed to or getting out of control.
Aedes aegypti is an invasive species in Florida and everywhere else in the world outside of Africa. If anything, wiping them out should reduce the pressure on the many native species of mosquito (which, in general, don't carry human diseases).
I was also thinking about that. And what if mosquitoes have important role in nature?
But Honestly I hate those bastards so much, A world without them would be a delight.
There are over 800 species of Mosquitos and only a couple of species can transmit diseases to humans. The Aegyptes species targeted in this test is invasive in the Americas and not a native mosquito. If we could eliminate this species it would prevent most cases of a deadly disease and would have little to no environmental effect. Other creatures that depend on mosquitos would continue to consume the other 799 species.
Very cool. This type of thinking and combining next-gen tools in the genome editing space will be time well spent.
Hopefully there is a future state where pesticides can ultimately be reduced because of this tech. Obviously engineering pests of agriculture/horticulture crops would be a high-value target, so curious if this research helps jumpstart those ideas and startups.
This should be a bigger story, the aedes mosquito has exploded in growth in the Los Angeles area. Horrible quality of life issue. We need to do everything we can to eradicate this invasive species.
Also we did something similar with an invasive fruit fly in the 80's I believe and it was a success.
Modify an actual creature and release it to the wild where you cannot take anything back - including the freak mutations that the new organism will receive and give due to chance. What could possibly go wrong...
why did mainstream news articles say repeatedly "GMO Mosquitos may be released in California" .. at the same time as they were being released, which was planned for years.
The dinosaurs don't escape because the mathematics of chaos theory dictate that it is inevitable, they escape because otherwise nobody would pay to see the movie.
I am still amazed that this one little piece of artistic puffery managed to singlehandedly meme "GMO bad" into prominence.
Fair, it's just a big pet peeve of mine how staff in movies is just so bare-bones.
Like with the book of bobba fett where there's a crime lord (bobba) whose "coffers are full" and just needs to hire some help and he hires nobody! His "army" was a business partner (fennac), a friend (wookie), another friend (dan), a pet, existing employees (mods), and unpaid citizens (freetown).
In the book, the park was designed to run with a skeleton crew from the very beginning, to make the park more profitable. Nedry's role of automating the entire park using computers specifically so Hammond wouldn't have to pay as many workers:
> "And the secret to making money in a park," Hammond said, "is to limit your Personnel costs. The food handlers, ticket takers, cleanup crews, repair teams. To make a park that runs with minimal staff. That was why we invested in all the computer technology-we automated wherever we could."
Virtually all of the problems with the park were caused by Hammond's profit-motivated corner cutting. The movie barely has a trace of these themes, but the book is really about the synthesis of unregulated startup capitalism with scientific research (biotech specifically.) The introduction lays it all out explicitly in the first few pages.
He spared no expenses, but only had one IT guy. They also drink champagne from water glasses even though there are champagne flutes right on the counter!
I think that Hammond didn't really know what he was doing.
I guess the way I'd put it is that in internet etiquette, asking something like
"Are you saying science should progress regardless of consequences?" isn't a reasonable response to a comment like "Nothing has held back science and progress more than that one quote in that one movie. Pretty amazing if you think about it.
"
They didn't say science should progress regardless of consequences, they didn't imply it, and the way you ask it sounds like you want to start an argument. Instead, what they said was that likely some legitimate scientific endeavours were discouraged by people quoting the movie when their concern wasn't warranted.
I say this as somebody who spend 30 years learning how to permanently modify human genomes only to conclude we're not even remotely ready to have the ethics conversations those things would lead to.
The thing is, we're already engaged in a massive ecological modification experiment that's bound to have unforeseen effects. It raises people's attention because this time it's done on purpose instead of by accident, but it's really pretty mild compared to what's already happening.
All this does is introduce novel mutations and then drive a population bottleneck. We are simply evolving the mosquito. The only way this could help is if it pushes it out of a local evolutionary maximum where it is a host for this virus. That seems unlikely as the mutation appears optimized for intragenomic conflict instead.
> Good diet (no sugars) and avoidance of broad-spectrum bactericides will allow good bacteria to thrive, pushing out the bad smelly ones.
Good luck with that! What are you going to eat? Can't have fruits, most modern fruits are very high in fructose. Definitely nothing containing starch, which will immediately break down in your mouth. Meat? It has some sugar too (largely responsible for the barbecue taste).
Its not wise to assume that mechanical (and perhaps even chemical) teeth cleaning wasn't practiced by our ancestors every since they evolved hands.
Sure, reducing sugars goes a long way in keeping your mouth healthy. But we can't rely solely on that.
Bacteria (even good ones) will ultimately form biofilms that need to be disrupted, otherwise they calcify and become tartar, then start accumulating down the gums, until they are mostly shielded from the air and the 'bad' anaerobic bacteria proliferate. You then get periodontitis and eventually start losing bone and then teeth (something accepted by society as a consequence of growing old, when it's in fact a disease).
No sugars might have been better said as “less sugars” for the pedantic amongst us.
Never said there was no mechanical cleaning. But they certainly didn’t have our “advanced” toothbrushes, toothpastes and mouthwashes. In fact, I’d say “mechanical washing” was an unavoidable aspect of eating harder foods rather than the soft, sticky processed items we tend towards today. And furthermore, with less stickiness (gluten and sugars) they would have needed less mechanical washing.
Anyways, lifestyle changes don’t need to be all or nothing to have a measurable effect
And yes even good bacteria can/will be bad at some point. Nonetheless they are still better than most others and will help maintain homeostasis for as long as time allows. We haven’t yet found a cure for time-related degeneration/accumulation, have we? But again, maybe I should have said “better bacteria” rather than “good”
I’ve seen evidence for this in the gut, WRT digestion and such.
What possible basis could exist for there being “good” bacteria in your mouth? It’s still going to do damage even if it doesn’t offgas sulfur.
Long term I imagine we’ll genetically engineer our offspring to produce all the required enzymes for healthy digestion without reliance on 3rd party organisms.
There’s good (and bad) bacteria all over our bodies. Our skin is coated with them and needs to be coated with them. Without the good ones on our skin, bad ones take over, and then any cuts become more likely to get infected.
I’ll update later with a source reference or two. But I’m willing to bet that Wikipedia‘s “skin flora” page has good info. Im not sure of the term for the mouth’s flora though…but I have zero doubt that it exists, simply because bacteria is everywhere. And gut bacteria get there via the mouth.
Long story short, there’s no such thing as a pure human. We exist only because we are colonized by bacteria. We’re kind of like the earth in that regard. We house living organisms and they make us what we are, without them homeostasis crumbles and so do we. So, with that in mind, we should be selectively helping the good ones and killing the bad, instead of wiping them all out.
Regarding replacing the gut bacteria with suitable enzymes for digestion, that would probably be misguided. The bacteria do more than just help digestion… they also keep bad bacteria out. And furthermore, they actually affect our mental health, keeping depression at bay for instance. Whether that’s indirectly via suppressing inflammation or some more direct means, I don’t recall.
Edit: Looks like it’s a much more direct means of influence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31100533 (There doesn’t seem to be much about this here on HN already, so I’m providing a source via HN submission in hopes of generating some discussion…)
You are correct re: evidence for connections between inflammation and depression. There's a robust literature on the subject. Here are just 2 articles. [0][1]
([1] specifically addresses gut flora and inflammation.)
These all seem like problems we can solve via genetic engineering. Our bodies should produce immune system cells capable of fighting off any foreign organism, be that on our skin or in our mouths.
We’re still so far from a complete understanding, but I suspect one day we’ll be able to “clean up” a lot of evolution’s mess. For example, imagine introducing entirely new systems of cells that attack and break down excess arterial plaques?
This is all true. We aren't immune to all their effects long term, though. The mouth is the best example. Bacteria will release all sorts of compounds as they have to eat.
The enamel is able to resist (and reform) but it needs help if you have any hope of maintaining all your teeth past your prime reproductive age.
While there have been a couple of good replies to your perspective already, I’ll just point out it appears you forgot to introduce a novel mutation in them first.
> You joke, but it’s reasonable to not brush. Sugar causes cavities, not lack of fluoride. Try a year without brushing; see for yourself.
DONT DO THAT. If you do decide to follow this crazy advice, please keep flossing. And keep going to the dentist every 6 months. I wouldn't want to get a freaking root canal (or lose teeth) from a misguided experiment like this.
Fluoride is just to help strengthen the enamel. You can brush your teeth without it. In fact, there were some amazon tribes that used a kind of tree bark. Works fine, I tried it.
How shall this genetic mutation that they are doing induce other genetic mutations in relation to that most femals die and in generall? Or do you meant the virus is mutating for a new host? If not, is there some genetic math that could explaine your point? I am courios :)
Edit: because muation is more or less random and is expressed with new generations. So if they die and there is less the chance of mutation or am i wrong??
Genes often bring along adjacent unrelated genetic information when they mutate because heritability for various reasons does not always respect the integrity of a gene.
Usually populations evolve resistance to pathogens or toxins via intermediate steps where some mutation delivers partial protection and the organism can build on that to higher and higher doses. Expose a population of bacteria to a large dose of antibiotics and they all just die, it's when you give them a small but increasing dose that they develop resistance. By contrast having children of both sexes or just one is binary (at least among those that will go on to create a third generation) so there really isn't that same potential for intermediate steps.
Plus, we can look into the fossil record and see species die out from causes sort of like this. Many species have evolved pure asexual reproduction. This provides a fitness boost to the individuals who no longer have to spend energy on mating, but the lack of genetic recombination inevitably causes extinction in a million years or so. Not exactly the same as what we're trying to do here but it's still the closest analogy available.
Would you say that dumping disinfectant in a petri dish is just selecting for bacteria resistant to disinfectant? If a mutation arises that prevents the sex selection process then sure, the mosquito populations can recover. But whether such a mutation arises before the species is wiped out is an open question. And we can put multiple different gene drive mechanisms into the males requiring multiple simultaneous mutations to evade which aren't selected for until all are present, making the chance of such an evasion as unlikely as we need if we're willing to put the effort in.
Wait a minute, they decided just to kill that insects? Not just to modify them for being not virus-carrying? And nobody is afraid of Chinese-sparrow problem or Australian problem with frogs or cats?
I am not a real scientist to have something to say about it, but from history no experiment like that has a successful result.
edit I understood it is an invasible specie exactly as Australian cats and frogs.
As long as those little bastards are around, I'm going to keep using a broad-spectrum pesticide that wreaks a ton of collateral damage. As the saying goes, pick your poison.
Also, the species they're doing this with is an invasive species. Assuming that they haven't completely supplanted the natives ones (and I think this holds true), there shouldn't be any impact on the ecosystem.
If the specie is invasive that means it exists on that area for not an evolutional reason but because of people. Sorry for starting this branch of comments without any investigation.
1. I agree that we never learn, and that every time we've tried to do this sort of thing there has been unintended consequences.
2. You likely live in an area without mosquitoes. They are one of the largest vectors for disease on the planet, and I wouldn't feel bad if they ceased to exist.
> And nobody is afraid of Chinese-sparrow problem or Australian problem with frogs or cats?
I know we're not perfect at planning and analyzing these sorts of things, but I do like to think we've advanced a little past Maoist China's knowledge of science and ecology.
Alternative view: infectious diseases have been around throughout the entire history of humanity, and have played an important ecological role in human history, namely controlling population size (particularly under famine conditions, when humans become more susceptible to disease) and maintaining genetic diversity (since a more homogenous population may be more susceptible to epidemics).
If we're going to use technology to eliminate infectious disease (and to increase food production) then an absolute necessity will be for humans to control their population growth by other means, perhaps legal (as with the China one-child policy, etc.).
Yes, that's all very controversial, but it should really be discussed.
> If we're going to use technology to eliminate infectious disease (and to increase food production) then an absolute necessity will be for humans to control their population growth by other means, perhaps legal (as with the China one-child policy, etc.).
> Falling fertility rates mean nearly every country could have shrinking populations by the end of the century. And 23 nations - including Spain and Japan - are expected to see their populations halve by 2100.
> It has nothing to do with sperm counts or the usual things that come to mind when discussing fertility. Instead it is being driven by more women in education and work, as well as greater access to contraception, leading to women choosing to have fewer children.
I'm not clear on the point being made here. These are extreme outliers, yes? Of essentially zero statistical value on the overall world population level?
> I'm not clear on the point being made here
> Instead it is being driven by more women in education and work, as well as greater access to contraception, leading to women choosing to have fewer children
Whilst extreme, having large families was a way of life in order to survive because the rate of attrition was high until hygiene & sanitation became more common place, its not just access to contraception or women in education because OnlyFans negates the latter point succinctly!
There are ~800 mosquito species. This is about removing 1 of them which can and do carry diseases that kill people.
If this is successful, the ecological niche left by Aedes aegypti will be filled by other mosquito species, and no ecological disaster will occur.