Reminds me of the novel Everything is Tuberculosis, which explores the idea that we have a cure for the leading cause of death from infectious disease and "that the disease is no longer primarily caused by the bacteria, but instead by human choices."
My family lives in a country aboard where malaria isn't rare, and I and my sisters got malaria when we were visiting that place. I'm also very happy to hear about these new technologies and i really cant wait for them to be deployed
The technology to eradicate Aedes mosquitoes exists. Time to use it ruthlessly. There's no good reason not to do it and at least a million reasons per year to do it.
Mosquito dunks kill larvae. It's used as a mosquito population control in warmer areas. Me and a few neighbors used it this year with good results.
Get a 5 gallon bucket, add water/grass/leaves/dunk and let it sit for a few weeks. Every few weeks add more dunks. Put a stick in there so small animals don't get stuck when trying to get a drink.
> Mosquitofish were introduced directly into ecosystems in many parts of the world as a biocontrol to lower mosquito populations which in turn negatively affected many other species in each distinct bioregion. Mosquitofish in Australia are classified as a noxious pest and may have exacerbated the mosquito problem in many areas by outcompeting native invertebrate predators of mosquito larvae.
- Depending on where you live, it could decimate the food source of other animals
- It attacks all mosquito's not just blood suckers
- I understand that there are conflicting reports on its effects on amphibians. I'm not sure how reliable the negative reviews are, or if it is "big citronella" sourced scare, but you may want to be cautious of which water sources you use them in.
I did some research over the summer on Anopheles gambiae, a mosquito that spreads malaria, and I was stunned to learn how many diseases are spread by mosquitoes. There are tons of viruses (yellow fever, dengue, West Nile), protozoa (like malaria), and even parasitic worms (lymphatic filariasis--the pictures of this are awful). Hundreds of millions of people are infected with these diseases every year, and I'm a bit shocked of how ignorant I was to this. Malaria eradication has stalled over the last decade [0], and I hope that we can resume it.
The tools available for these biological operations are fascinating. OP's article links this other one, which explains everything that can be done in practice with today's tech and reads like science fiction : https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-ultra-selfish-gene/
The proposal is only to eliminate the disease born mosquitoes, letting the other mosquitoes take over. So if your polity has eliminated mosquitoes it's likely using chemicals rather than a more environmentally sound choice.
It's not that it eliminated mosquitoes entirely but rather that it effectively eliminated mosquitoes in the genus Aedes.
These are some of the most problematic/disease causing of the mosquitoes but also notably mosquitoes in the Aedes genus are essentially the only mosquitoes that are "hunting" during the day. All the other mosquitoes operate almost exclusively in the evening and at nighttime.
So by eliminating these mosquitoes a major disease vector is eliminated but at the same time it completely eliminates mosquitoes during the day (i.e. the main time when you are out and about trying to enjoy the summer).
Most mosquitoes are not the blood-sucking kind. It is possible to replace the blood-suckers with other species which still mostly fill the appropriate niches, like the birds' food chains, etc.
TLDR for this link is that they release male mosquitoes carrying a bacteria called Wolbachia. So this only affects the one species of mosquito they're targeting: Aedes aegypti.
The article contains the following sentence: "In a randomized trial in Singapore, releases of Wolbachia-infected males cut mosquito populations by 85 percent compared to control areas and dengue infections by roughly 70 percent."
There are different things you can do to mosquitos with different techniques. The article discusses several different techniques. Some eliminate disease-spreading mosquitos, some eliminate the mosquitos. In Singapore, the latter was tried out. It is not the case that Singapore used chemicals.
lets say on the order of 1 billion, and let's assume the effectivity doesn't change when considering the 30% unaffected population
it would need to be applied to the surviving 30% repeatedly:
0.3 ^ N = 1 / 1B
so N = log(1B)/log(10/3) = ~17.2 times.
I predict nature protects itself with diversity: some of the male and female wild type will have natural aversion from, attraction to or neutral stance the modified Wolbachia carriers.
I predict that those mosquito family lines that happen to be more Wolbachia-carrier averse become enriched over time.
There is an energetic cost to maintaining a parasitic lifeform, and that energetic term will always favor immunity against the parasite.
The article discussed alternative methods that have succeeded in being deployed:
> The approach has succeeded at the scale of cities. In a randomized trial in Singapore, releases of Wolbachia-infected males cut mosquito populations by 85 percent compared to control areas and dengue infections by roughly 70 percent.
(mosquitos infected with Wolbachia are both more resistant to diseases, and fail to reproduce in the case of infected male x uninfected female)
Do they achieve it by regularly spraying poison on the air like they do in Malaysia? Feels like a pyrrhic victory to me. I know they were trialing genetic modification but I don't know how successful that was and I'm certain it's not the only thing they're doing.
I did read the article, actually. It says they did a randomized trial of wolbachia infected mosquities, presumably on a small area, while the person I was replying to was implying that all mosquitos in Singapore have been eradicated. So presumably they're also using other methods like DDT spraying.
If the various regulatory bodies are disclaiming jurisdiction over the matter, then what is preventing these companies from proceeding without their blessing?
The avalanche of lawsuits that every NGO that hadn't been paid off would file within minutes that'd extract the same toll in terms of years, plus potentially even higher legal fees.
I guess we have the capability to change a lot (from the technology we posess), but what would be the consequences of such impact on the rest of the ecosystem?
I mean, we eliminated smallpox viruses, and the impact was that humans no longer die from smallpox. We have almost eliminated polio, which has the impact that nobody needs an iron lung any more. We have massively reduced the incidence of a whole range of other pathogens. Are you concerned about that, too?
I'd be much more concerned about the changes humans do to our ecosystems that we know cause harm, but aren't stopping (like filling the atmosphere with CO2 and other greenhouse gases) than about changes that would, almost certainly, reduce harm and have only extremely unlikely and hypothetical risks.
Well, one notable difference between your examples of eliminated pathogens is that there is a food chain built on top of mosquitos. There are plenty of animals that eat both mosquito larvae (ex: tadpoles, some fish) and adults (ex: bats, dragonflies). I don't believe there is a similar food chain built on top of viruses.
I agree that many of the risks are hypothetical, but I disagree that we can simply dismiss them. Taking a decent amount of time to understand cause and effect on ecosystems seems like a perfectly prudent thing to me.
While they don't age like living organisms, their outer protein coating wears away due to temperature and UV light, so like you said they sort of "degrade".
We wouldn't have to destroy all mosquitos, though. Only a few species that are carriers of human pathogens. Once they are gone, other, benign mosquitos will occupy their spot, and will be eaten by the same animals as before.
Such a vague blanket statement sounds like an article of faith and not an actual informed opinion about the specific species of mosquitos, the animals that eat them, and the fungibility of their food sources. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
The mosquito species in question is native to northern Africa, and is an invasive species pretty much everywhere else in the world, having only arrived 300-400 years ago.
Kind of, because every time you stomp out one of Mother Nature's ways to keep the human population in check, you contribute to letting the population exceed carrying capacity, which leads to things like:
> changes humans do to our ecosystems that we know cause harm, but aren't stopping
Basically 0, there are only a few species of mosquito that carry disease. Other species fulfill all other ecological roles without spreading horrible diseases.
Famous last words... (Edit typo:) Till we find out when its too late that they had a genuine purpose in a very specific ecosystem after we've eradicated them?
Growing up my sister got dengue, so I hate mosquitoes, she was fine, I know dengue was no joke, but I always worry we make too many assumptions as humans, only to be proven wrong by nature somehow.
Do you have the same level of concern for all other recently-extinct species, widespread habitat loss, and overall large decline in insect biomass?
Or do you reserve most of your concern for just the few species of human disease-carrying mosquito?
Kind of a genuine question, because I've observed over the years people popping in to this topic to exclaim deep concern for the potential ecological impacts of intentionally extincting a couple of species -- that most biologists reportedly agree aren't keystone species. Meanwhile, species loss continues to occur globally for a variety of reasons and yet it's still really difficult to get the average person to care very much about that.
The psychology here is peculiar and I don't understand it.
I'm much more puzzled by the many retorts to people asking about the unforeseen consequences of eradicating a whole species given how little we know about ecosystems.
Many such comments are very dumb, asking 'and how do you feel about viruses, screwworms, etc.?', but since you say this is a genuine question: mosquitoes are numerous and we know that they represent a source of food for many species (bats, birds, other insects). As far as I know, there is genuine debate among scientists about the role that mosquitoes play in their ecosystems. Everyone here has seen species of animals and plants eradicated and then being reintroduced or replaced, when we realise what role they were playing.
Again, assuming you're asking in good faith: you're asking why these commenters are so concerned while humanity is eradicating species all the time anyway: these are not the same populations... I'd wager there is a big overlap between those wondering about consequences and those taking action for the planet (not eating animal products, not flying, etc.). Similarly, I'd wager there's overlap between those posting such illogical retorts, and those eating animals at every meal and driving their car daily.
I see the same ridiculous retorts in HN debates about the condition of animals.
Okay, but we aren't talking about the eradication of all mosquitos. Approximately 10% of known mosquito species are potential carriers of human disease (https://entomologytoday.org/2022/07/26/less-than-10-percent-...), and discussions about eradication efforts generally revolve around just the Anopheles genus.
There's an excellent book on the impact of the mosquito on humanity, and a brief overview of some of that subject here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/05/how-mosquitoes.... These species of mosquito are and have been one of the most significant threats to human health for all of our existence.
I don't think argument-from-ignorance should be more convincing here than it would be on any other subject. There is some debate among researchers, sure, but published biologists have been making arguments in favor of eradication for over 20 years (https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/opinion/a-bug-s-death.htm...). If someone is being intellectually honest in objecting to this on the grounds of the fragility of ecosystems, then they must also be an equally loud voice against the use and manufacture of glyphosate. That one chemical alone is already having a far greater impact on insect populations, yet you can buy it at your local hardware stores.
So yeah, I genuinely don't understand the reasoning here. It feels like a dumber version of the trolley problem, where a perceived inaction that has far larger negative consequences is preferable to an action with more limited ones -- except in this case, it's not even right to describe our current impacts on ecosystems as "inaction".
I suspect that if an article were published tomorrow that found that, through some previously-unknown mechanism, the expected rise in global temperatures over the next 10 years would have a side-effect of killing all mosquito populations, that article wouldn't even make the front page of HN. Nobody much would care, aside from those few recurring voices mourning our future.
More cynically, I also suspect that since the worst impacts on human health are occurring in tropical populations, westerners find it much easier to argue in favor of protecting this particular pest.
Do you think animals pick their food source based on whether humans have taxonomized them under a similar heading, like "mosquito?"
Would an alien species contemplating the eradication of wheat be correct to think "that won't hurt Homo sapiens much, wheat makes up <1% of our taxonomic category 'things that grow in dirt!'?
Again: the effect you're referring to here, food chain collapse, is already occurring, but on much larger and more indiscriminate scales. Meanwhile, there is scant real evidence that Anopheles is a critical component of the food chain. Here's the most fair treatment on the subject that I could find: https://archive.ph/h12qU
I've been following this subject since at least Olivia Judson's article was published back in 2003. Over the last 23 years, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has yet made a strong case that Anopheles was a necessary part of the ecosystem. If your alien species were unable to identify wheat as an important food source, one would question how they managed to figure out interstellar travel.
The most vocal arguments against are all of the kind we're seeing here: "we don't know what might happen" (a statement of the unintended consequences of science meddling with nature that goes back in fiction to at least Mary Shelley), "we should assume they're necessary" (and yet all other necessary critters seem to be optional), "something needs them, we just don't know what" (in 23 years, biologists have so far identified a single spider that maybe or maybe not depends on them).
And these are the arguments that condemn a million people a year to death.
I would be easily swayed by evidence of large-scale ecosystem destabilization if Anopheles were eradicated. To date, not only is there no such evidence, but there is some evidence to the contrary (species of mosquito have been introduced to island habitats where they went on to have significant effects on local animal populations).
Food chain collapse happening elsewhere is a reason not to risk creating more of it. It makes ecosystems more fragile, not less.
> If your alien species were unable to identify wheat as an important food source, one would question how they managed to figure out interstellar travel.
Per your prior point: we are causing food chain collapse all over the globe. We are not an alien species with a good track record on this.
> "we don't know what might happen" (a statement of the unintended consequences of science meddling with nature that goes back in fiction to at least Mary Shelley)
Per your prior point: the unintended consequences of science meddling with nature also goes back in reality to the widespread food chain collapse that our science is already unintentionally causing all over the globe.
The following two arguments are not ones that I've made, and aren't necessary to justify extreme caution.
> And these are the arguments that condemn a million people a year to death.
Obviously the people arguing against you believe there's a chance that altering course would be far, far worse than this already-not-good outcome.
> I would be easily swayed by evidence of large-scale ecosystem destabilization if Anopheles were eradicated. To date, not only is there no such evidence, but there is some evidence to the contrary (species of mosquito have been introduced to island habitats where they went on to have significant effects on local animal populations).
Yes I'm in the same boat as you. But note that this is a fundamentally different position than "other things eat things that humans call 'mosquitos' so it should be fine."
> Food chain collapse happening elsewhere is a reason not to risk creating more of it.
Granted, but also food chain collapse has been happening for a while now and yet Anopheles is still not anything's preferred food source. It really seems to fit the definition of a strictly non-beneficial parasite.
> ...science meddling with nature also goes back in reality to the widespread food chain collapse that our science is already unintentionally causing all over the globe.
There's a whiff of "science causes bad things" here, which is what I keep hoping isn't the unstated foundation of the pro-mosquito argument.
> > And these are the arguments that condemn a million people a year to death.
> Obviously the people arguing against you believe there's a chance that altering course would be far, far worse than this already-not-good outcome.
I seriously, seriously doubt the people making this argument have thought all that hard about this. The more likely scenario is that the millionish dead per year is happening in other people's countries and therefore it's not thought about at all.
I wonder what the factor-of-10 scale would be for the number of Zika-affected births in the US before Americans suddenly became overwhelmingly in favor of eradicating these mosquito species. 100? 1,000? 10,000? Over-under at 10,000, I guess?
I don't think I got much in the way of any new insight to how other people think about this, but thanks for the discussion, anyway.
> yet Anopheles is still not anything's preferred food source. It really seems to fit the definition of a strictly non-beneficial parasite.
... to our knowledge. Obviously the entire disagreement is about how complete our knowledge is and how much we can trust our understanding of how complete it is.
> There's a whiff of "science causes bad things" here, which is what I keep hoping isn't the unstated foundation of the pro-mosquito argument.
No, there's not. I literally work in drug development and use science every day to improve people's lives. Respond to the arguments leveled instead of trying to conjure up a backing "origin of opinion" that you can dismiss more easily.
> I seriously, seriously doubt the people making this argument have thought all that hard about this.
Huh? I would bet the people who are skeptical of this idea are, on average, more informed than the people who love it. Because obviously the pitch of "want to eradicate mosquitos?" is: fuck yes absolutely please, fuck mosquitos they suck. Regardless of one's understanding of their truly horrible health effects elsewhere. The starting position is: get rid of them. The 2nd order consideration is "hmm, what problems might that cause?"
> I don't think I got much in the way of any new insight to how other people think about this, but thanks for the discussion, anyway.
And likewise, I came in requesting evidence for your assumptions and you've confirmed you do not have any.
I replied to the words you wrote. If what you wrote doesn't say what you meant to say, fine, but don't come at me for it.
> The starting position is: get rid of them. The 2nd order consideration is "hmm, what problems might that cause?"
Alright, I can go along with that. Then the 3rd order consideration would have to be, "okay, here are the possible problems it could cause, and here is the evidence for and against."
And that is where I've been working this subject from from the beginning of this thread.
> I came in requesting evidence for your assumptions and you've confirmed you do not have any.
...other than the multiple links to discussions, books, papers, and opinion pieces from subject matter experts, you mean? I notice none of your comments happened to come with any supporting evidence for your argument. We're supposed to just believe that eradicating these pests would cause a worse outcome than the current amount of human misery they cause worldwide because... why? Because of your hypothetical aliens and because humans use science to cause ecological harm?
You literally said it was unstated. I.e. not responding to what was stated.
> There's a whiff of "science causes bad things" here, which is what I keep hoping isn't the unstated foundation of the pro-mosquito argument.
Yes, absolutely agreed we're talking about the 3rd order of questioning. In particular the question: can eradicating these mosquitos destroy a food chain that we end up caring about?
Not one of the links you've posted actually addresses this question, except maybe the Archive.ph link which is broken for me (feel free to re-post if you can).
The supporting argument for food chain effects is that when a food source is in an ecosystem for long enough, it will be exploited by something. This is a basic feature of natural systems: free energy doesn't just go sitting around for long.
The question is then if you remove this particular food source over the course of a few years, will alternatives take its place fast enough? You have not posted any evidence of this.
The null hypothesis should be no, since evolution does not typically operate on timescales like this. If 1) all the animals that eat these mosquitos just as easily eat other mosquitos and 2) those other mosquitos can easily breed to make up the difference, then sure! But again: you have not posted any evidence of this claim and it is not at all obvious it should be assumed.
Here are the arguments you and your posted links have made:
1. Mosquitos are bad (agreed)
2. We can kill just the ones that hurt humans (agreed)
3. There are other mosquitos (agreed)
4. Those other ones will take their place in the food chain (not evidenced)
5. Other food chain disruptions are happening anyway (agreed)
6. Therefore this one is probably fine (not evidenced)
You have not addressed the specific point of contention.
I don't want any species to go extinct if I can help it, but I also understand that sometimes nature finds a way in some cases.
I'm not versed in everything with all these species, but I believe everything has a purpose, look if someone goes all out into mosquitoes and proves they had absolutely no purpose, I'll concede, I just think its worth studying these types of things. For example, some years I fight wasps near my house, then the following year, I'm fighting fire ants. If I don't eradicate one or the other, they show up the next year, every year I fight one or the other, I assume they compete with one another. I wish I could curb stomp both from ever coming back, fire ants make me bust out with sores all over, however, I know me killing them from my lawn / property isn't killing ALL of them.
In that case, it would be a very niche/small ecosystem if we're don't know about it. OTOH, the benefits of eliminating malaria and dengue are massive to ecosystems we do know about.
My fear is, what comes out of the woodworks once mosquitoes are gone? Because nature finds a way... Will it be drastically worse? Will we wish we never messed with mosquitoes afterwards?
> My fear is, what comes out of the woodworks once mosquitoes are gone?
Well, what would come out of the outback once the rabbits are gone? Since we know the state of Australian wildlife before the rabbits, the answer is "nothing".
It's already happened. The concern is always about changes from the present state, no matter what the present state is. Once screwworms have already been eradicated from North America, there is concern about the impact of bringing them back.
I think it warranted extreme caution back then just as the opposite would now. Humans made a lot of ecosystem changes in the past and the results of some of them are the reason that we think we should apply extreme caution now.
All ecosystems are local, and local eradication has been a thing since the first shovel was invented, and nothing too bad has happened.
If there's an abandoned lot and you eradicate the mosquitoes by removing the water filled abandoned car tires, the existing ecosystem does pretty well. In a similar way you can willfully decide to make a livestock pond either a mosquito factory or mosquito free and mosquito free has not resulted in any problems.
Local eradication programs have successfully worked for centuries, at least. What makes this story interesting is its very wide ranging and likely very expensive.
From memory, mosquitos are a food source for some birds and bats, pollinate some plants, and, most uniquely, help drive wild cattle migration (to keep them from overgrazing areas into barren mud-fields).
YSK, there are like 4000 species of mosquito and this is talking about getting rid of only a small number of them. There would still be lots of mosquitoes.
Humanity is eradicating entire species left and right. Mosquitoes are our worst enemies. Can we have a deal to save some little poor amazonian frog (the doomed one which has only ~100 animals and 1 location left) and after we accomplish that, in return wipe out one species of mosquitoes?
I hope the Amazonian frog doesn't depend too much on mosquitos as food. Or that by eradicating mosquitoes, insectivorous animals don't eat more of other, less abundant and fast-breeding, insects as a replacement and it starved the Amazonian frog.
(I don't know what the Amazonian frog eats; my point is that biotopes are complex and second- and third-order effects need to be monitored. That's why smaller interventions - e.g. making humans poisonous to mosquitoes, pushing them to the evolutionary path of avoiding humans - would be better than whole eradication.)
Note that these specific mosquito species are invasive in most of the world after they escaped their native ecosystems and proceeded to spread like wildfire so arguably eradicating them would be a net benefit for most ecosystems.
That's what we thought about all the other species we intentionally eradicated, both the ones that turned out to be unimportant, and the ones that turned out to be very important.
Great article, I really like the writing style as well.
Anyone knows more about the author? The info there is a bit scant and I'd like to read more from her.
I found one Maya Rosen online[1] but she seems to be devoted to Jewish texts, Judaism, and all that. Does not seem related to this, but it might be her?
In certain parts of the world an entire lifestyle has been built on the logistics of the old pesticide methods. Good luck getting rid of them. Furthermore, and this matters enormously, Walbachia is still a nuisance. If Walbachia replacement is deployed, a resident can quite reasonably say: “Great, dengue risk is lower, but why am I still getting eaten alive in my backyard?”. That resident may continue demanding spraying, larvicides, traps, pest control, etc.
Use genetic engineering to extinct a species... what could go wrong?
Not to mention the many species of, e.g., birds, etc., that rely either heavily, or almost entirely, on mosquitoes, as a food source. One does not simply eradicate an entire species, through genetic sorcery, for the entire planet, without causing negative side effects.
This is just like cloud seeding. A few powerful idiots ruin it for everyone else, in the service of accomplishing a specific goal. We are likely experiencing major changes in the regional climates, as a result of cloud seeding. For example, right here in Idaho we are stealing water from clouds floating overhead, through a cloud seeding program primarily driven by Idaho Power. Do I benefit from this? Of course. We use the irrigation water and benefit from the cheap electricity rates. At what expense? Who knows. Somewhere east of us is likely getting royally screwed. As long as we have what we need here, though, who cares about anybody else or the rest of the planet's ecosystem, right?
The hilarious part, to me, is the fact that those who get excited by this idea (obliteration of entire species through genetic engineering) are the selfsame supposed champions of the climate when it comes to "GlObAl WaRmInG", asking for us to send our money to the Guberment to fix the problem. I guess it's not too surprising, since these people don't think for themselves; they are simply following with the TV told them to think.
Mosquitoes control human populations, an invasive species. Removing mosquitoes will make humans proliferate, which is known to be environmentally damaging.
Joking aside, the consensus seems to be that the effect of removing disease-carrying mosquitoes (not all mosquitoes) from the environment is minor compared to how many lives it can save.
Aedes aegypti is an invasive species native to Africa so removing it from the environment everywhere else in the world that it has been spread to would benefit the local mosquito species which don't spread the same diseases and are less of a nuisance to humans.
Lots of animals eat mosquitos, but they really aren't the primary food source of any species, especially this particular type of mosquito. It would have a very minimal effect on food supply.
There are still a lot of other mosquito species. removing just the few that carry human disease will not have a major impact on creatures that eat mosquitoes.
The mere existence of other things that we call mosquitos does not mean they are all interchangeable as a food source for the animals that eat them.
Is your level of knowledge on this just "there are other things called mosquitos ergo it's not a problem," or do you have deeper affirmative knowledge that the animals that eat these mosquitos also eat those other mosquitos, and that those other mosquitos can increase their population to replace the lost food source?
Most things that eat mosquitoes are actually in the business of eating any flying insect that fits in their mouth. I'd be a bit more worried about, e.g. a species being the only pollinator for some plant, but that's pretty unlikely. Do the studies, sure, but don't expect any bombshells. And if aedes aegypti or any of the other big disease-causing mosquitoes had such a role, I'm pretty sure it would have already been found and trumpeted to the heavens.
The fact you can't even confidently say whether one of those species is a sole pollinator of a plant or not indicates that your comment is still just a stack of assumptions.
And yours is still just fearmongering supposition, with, in my opinion, even less basis in reality. Go find some actual research on the ecological roles of aedes aegypti and anopheles if you want to get out of the loop. :)
Do we not know because people haven't gone looking, or because they did go looking and didn't find it? I'm guessing it's the latter, in which case it kinda strengthens the case that there probably isn't some critical role. These are some of the more-studied animals on the planet.
Pointing out risk is a kind of fearmongering when it's technically real but too small to be worth worrying about. Asteroid impact is a real risk too.
In places where it's been living for hundreds of years, that's a legitimate concern.
In Europe though, where aedes aegypti didn't exist 20 years ago, it's probably the other way around: what did the introduction of this new species damage? (apart from making the summer unbearable outside if any of your neighbour isn't very strict with standing water elimination)
A billion human lives, or some sad trout who have to eat fruit flies instead. For me, it’s an obvious choice.
I just can’t understand the level of smugness it must take to insist that we must force another billion people to die of horrible diseases like malaria, because you want the moral high ground. How do you even tell yourself that killing all those people is the moral high ground?
> "Your saying we do things that save human lives, irrespective of the outcome?"
In fact, no, they did not say that. They said that the considered balance of the merits strongly favors eradicating the 2% of mosquito species that carry human diseases for someone who gives greater weight to the benefit of saving a billion human lives[0] than to the cost of some trout eating the thousands of other mosquito species instead.
[0] - 700 million contracted mosquito-borne illnesses each year worldwide. Death isn't the only consequence of significance.
"Invasive" is a made up human concept. The question is whether there are species that now rely on these as a food source. The entire natural world is a hodge-podge of "invasive" species coming from some nearby land, disrupting the ecosystem, then the ecosystem evolving around it – typically a gradual process over thousands of years.
If it took a couple hundred years for this species to proliferate, it's absolutely plausible that eradicating it in a few years will have surprising second- and third-order effects.
“Invasive” is a useful concept to describe species that spent millions (sometimes hundreds of millions) of years evolving in one environment and then moving to a new one in the last few thousand years.
Do you understand that time scales are important here?
There are also species that have invaded areas that are totally impossible for them to reach without seafaring or airfaring human civilizations to carry them.
All terms are made up. Some are useful and some are not. This one is useful.
The usefulness of the term to this conversation is as described: is this species systemically critical to its current ("invaded") ecosystem?
Merely calling it invasive does not answer that question, ergo it is not a useful term in this conversation.
And yes, timescales do matter. A species can become critical to its new ("invaded") ecosystem within a few hundred years such that removing it within a few years will cause catastrophe.
Are you proposing that it would be infinitely bad? That somehow extincting a few varieties of mosquitoes could cause the collapse of all life on earth?
I don't get the "but what if it's somewhat - not infinitely - bad" argument? The known good is so dramatically good that we'd need a shocking amount of unknown bad to have made it not worth it. But if I'm choosing between mosquitoes, and say... fish, frogs, and a variety of birds, yes, get rid of the mosquitoes.
I am merely suggesting we don't really understand the consequences and things may not be as simplistic that everyone thinks. i.e. kill "bad guy" mosquitos, save a billion people.
We start spraying crops so we can end world hunger (or just make more money) and screwing around with other things and now we're killing bees and other things. This will ultimately come to haunt us.
The death of all bees would count as infinitely bad (in terms of crop pollination) and we're doing a very good job in making that happen.
There are many mosquito species in competition for the same resources, only a few (iirc 10% in the US) of which sting humans and carry diseases. Wiping out the ones that attack people would allow other mosquitoes to take over the ecological niches.
I totally understand there's a massive amount of unknowns about this. Let's continue analyzing what's the right course of action as we go, and ensure we're taking that understanding into account of what we do in the future.
In the end, whose lives do you prioritize given the lack of information today, and the lives at risk today? Deciding to do nothing still costs lives, and potentially drives us further into the bad state area.
Something about mosquito-borne diseases lands on HN every year or so, resulting in hand-wringing about whether we should deliberately cause species extinction. I have seen the suffering they cause firsthand, and so my response has become rather consistent:
Do we want to eradicate mosquitoes?
Yes; fuck them.
We (intentionally or no, mostly not) cause the extinction of hundreds to thousands of species every year for much more mundane reasons: deforestation is the big one, climate change another. And that buys us arguably nothing but enriching people that benefit from the process of deforestation and climate change--folks that're economically desperate enough to log illegally, and energy barons. These extinctions are mostly tragic, and the net benefit to human societies is likely negative.
Mosquitoes are fucking evil. They kill more humans every year than any other animal. Malaria is only the most well-known disease they spread; see also dengue ("breakbone fever", named for what it feels like), West Nile virus, and more. Those that malaria doesn't kill are frequently left with a low-level chronic infection that makes them less effective as people. Malaria and mosquitoes kill children, disable the working population, and economically cripple entire nations.
As best we can tell, things that eat mosquitoes also eat other things. But I'd vote for nuking the mozzies from orbit even if that weren't the case. They're such an unmitigated cause of human suffering and hardship.
They're not evil, they have zero idea about the consequences of their actions. I think this viewpoint is why people are hesitant to just make things go instinct because people don't like them. Yes there might be good scientific / humanitarian reasons for it, but mosquitoes "being evil" isn't one of them.
Aedes aegypti are container breeders, you can totally eliminate them from an environment through diligent removal of standing water left in buckets, tires, pots, etc. This has been done before but the effort wasn't properly sustained so they've made a major comeback in disease prone areas. Killing a lot of them does have a substantial effect because they don't easily travel long distances by themselves so if the remaining resistant population is small enough it might just as easily end up dying out due to its breeding cycle being interrupted through other means. The part that should be criticized here is that any eradication campaign should also involve efforts to eliminate their breeding environments by removing junk and unattended containers that collect water.
Sterile insect releases are a tool for suppressing populations and have been used for about a century. This is not really a new suppression technique but a novel way of producing the sterile insects.
It has been used to suppress screw worm in the United States for decades until the administration cut the funding.
These are almost always a temporary solution that need constant funding and seasonal releases to work. The populations will surge back as soon as it's stopped.
The idea is to hit the population with a cataclysm so sudden that it goes extinct before it can adapt. We can calculate mutation rates and reproduction dynamics, so we know how to predict whether this is likely or not.
If it's one-and-done, everywhere on Earth (eg smallpox), it can work. If it drags on for decades or isn't rolled out globally (eg malaria) then it won't work.
>Sustained releases cut a wild Aedes aegypti population in the Cayman Islands by 80 percent, and in a field trial in Juazeiro, Brazil by about 95 percent.
Female mosquitos mate once and only once. When they mate with a sterile male, none of her eggs will hatch.
Several insects are like this. In the species I'm familiar with, the male member breaks off inside the female locking all other males out.
Releasing sterile screwworms in Panama has been the main method of protecting US beef/cattle production from the insects spreading north out of South America.
Penicillin used to kill 100% of Staphylococcus aureus. My point still stands - even if a selective sweep takes out 99% of the population, they will recover.
The gene gives a sizable advantage to mosquitoes that don't carry disease. Those mosquitoes will then take over the niche making it very difficult for disease carrying mosquitoes to come back.
I think you’re right. I’d want to pair this approach with introducing a replacement species that can hopefully out compete the one we’re eliminating. No idea what that looks like, though.
The US has been funding spraying of coca farms in South America. Roundup is one of the major herbicides. "Roundup Ready" crops are genetically modified to make them resistant to glyphosate. Samples of roundup resistant coca plants had been found in Colombia & Bolivia. It was thought that someone put a lot of effort into genetically modifying the plants, but it turns out that the samples were not GMO but rather mutants. Collaboration between coca growers spread the resistant plants.
I hate all the glib wordplay that reframes a policy decision and turns it on its head to make it seem like a different kind of policy decision. Nobody is “choosing” to have mosquitos. Mosquitos exist naturally. Maybe we can undertake a large scale intervention in the environment and wipe them out, but it that’s different than “choosing” to have them. Just say what you mean.
It's a choice to wipe them out or let them continue to exist. We were on our way to doing that using DDT until the unfortunate side-effects of that chemical were understood.
The pesticide levels built up in the insect predators of mosquitos (and other bugs) which tended to kill the predators and let the mosquito population explode.
If we are "choosing" to live with mosquitoes, then we also are "choosing" to let people starve, die of cancer, etc.
We could in one stroke take half of what multi-billionaires and quasi-trillionaires have hoarded. If they didn't have personal accountants, they wouldn't even notice it, as they have far more money than what they manage to burn through - and we would have the means to "choose" to solve real problems affecting hundreds of millions of people.
> we also are "choosing" to let people starve, die of cancer, etc.
It's debatable whether taking half of billionaires' wealth would materially advance the efforts in those areas.
What seems far less debatable is the political consequences of the accummulation of so much wealth — coupled with essentially zero legal restrictions on the use of that wealth in the quest for (governmental) power.
I'm reminded of the horror movie Mimic, in which a genetically modified bugs are deployed to deal with a rampant cockroach population. Once the cockroaches are taken care of, the mutant bugs focus on the next disasterous infestation...humans!
Bats in the US are dying from a fungal disease. I suspect something similar is happening in Australia.
> White-nose syndrome (WNS) is a fungal disease killing hibernating bats in North America. The fungus, named Pseudogymnoascus destructans (or Pd for short) likely originated in Europe or Asia. Sometime in the early 2000's Pd arrived in North America and attacked vulnerable bat species, resulting in unusual and large die-offs of bats first observed in New York in 2006. Since then, the disease has spread to most US states and Canadian provinces, leaving millions of dead bats in its path. WNS causes high death rates and fast population declines in the species affected by it.
The mosquito is part of the ecosystem, and remove that and you remove the food source for many creatures including bats, frogs, swallows/swifts and many others.
I agree they are a nuisance but they do not exist on their own. Many of them spend their time feeding on plants rather than blood.
Bill Gates is involved in this. Always a red flag.
Aedes aegypti aren't native to anywhere outside of Africa. Native mosquito species in most other continents don't spread the same diseases that infect humans. Aedes aegypti mostly breed around where humans live since they lay their eggs in containers of stagnant water, other mosquito species live primarily in wetlands and areas that stay moist due to thick vegetation or soil conditions. The native species of mosquitos are a much larger food source than Aedes aegypti for that reason.
I'd say paranoid-by-default folks are a huge red flag on any agenda. Something about disservice to the cause and all that.
Anyway since they kill north of half a million folks yearly and infect couple of hundred millions as official minimums, I am more than happy with some other species of small insects take their empty spot. Of course not everybody cares much about poor folks dying quietly half around the world, but some do. One of very few benefits of global warming is the migration of these bastards more north so rich folks in US and Europe will have more personal stake in this topic rather than usual 'oh that's so horrible, next'.
Some minor re-adjustement of ecosystem is more than fine, anyway we do it constantly for rather pathetic reasons if any. I would add ticks, all forms, to the effort.
>It shouldn’t have to take fifteen years to deploy effective products that can save lives.
I completely disagree. This is a reasonable and responsible timeline to look for unintended consequences. Some things, you simply cannot undo.
What if the bacteria (somehow) jumped to monarch butterflies and killed them off? Controlled releases and multi-year environmental studies are the correct and responsible course of action. In fact, when the injected insects are released into an area, the entire thing should be monitored carefully, as each ecosystem might respond differently.
All of that being said, excited to see this adopted more broadly. It's time these fuckwit insects die.
I can imagine a scenario where the testing takes 15 years, and a scenario where the testing is done in 1 year. I think it's probably wrong to look at it purely as "we should wait X years". The author describes the 15 years as "regulatory limbo" implying that it was known as safe before that, but I have no idea whether that's the case.
In general, you have to weigh the irreversible cost of unintended consequences with the irreversible cost of known human death from mosquitoes.
From what I understood, they didn't spend 15 years collecting data on the efficacy and risks of the product. Much of it was spent just waiting for regulators to respond.
Obviously we should pass a law so that only mosquitoes that have undergone a full medical examination and are certified free of diseases are allowed to bite humans.
Reminds me of the novel Everything is Tuberculosis, which explores the idea that we have a cure for the leading cause of death from infectious disease and "that the disease is no longer primarily caused by the bacteria, but instead by human choices."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Is_Tuberculosis
I've had Dengue fever, it's no joke, this is great news.
I'm super prone to getting bitten so having to apply insect repellent and restrict myself to wearing certain clothes is such a pain.
My family lives in a country aboard where malaria isn't rare, and I and my sisters got malaria when we were visiting that place. I'm also very happy to hear about these new technologies and i really cant wait for them to be deployed
The technology to eradicate Aedes mosquitoes exists. Time to use it ruthlessly. There's no good reason not to do it and at least a million reasons per year to do it.
Does anyone know if this is possible to DIY? I live in an area where dengue is endemic on a substantial land area and would be interested.
Mosquito dunks kill larvae. It's used as a mosquito population control in warmer areas. Me and a few neighbors used it this year with good results.
Get a 5 gallon bucket, add water/grass/leaves/dunk and let it sit for a few weeks. Every few weeks add more dunks. Put a stick in there so small animals don't get stuck when trying to get a drink.
Some horse barns put little fishes in the drinking water troughs. The fish eat the larvae. The horses ignore the fish.
They just started doing this in Florida to deal with dengue cases this year. Mosquito fish!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquitofish
I guess lets see how it goes in Florida then :)
> Mosquitofish were introduced directly into ecosystems in many parts of the world as a biocontrol to lower mosquito populations which in turn negatively affected many other species in each distinct bioregion. Mosquitofish in Australia are classified as a noxious pest and may have exacerbated the mosquito problem in many areas by outcompeting native invertebrate predators of mosquito larvae.
I've read this is safe for animals and bees.
Yes, the bacteria target mosquito larve.
Though:
- It won't stop breeding in other standing water
- Depending on where you live, it could decimate the food source of other animals
- It attacks all mosquito's not just blood suckers
- I understand that there are conflicting reports on its effects on amphibians. I'm not sure how reliable the negative reviews are, or if it is "big citronella" sourced scare, but you may want to be cautious of which water sources you use them in.
Before your local government rolls on you for bio-terrorism you should probably look into other options.
https://store.photonmatrixlab.com/
Only $988 for a gadget that probably doesn't work. Nice!
These are such a cool, fun, wonderful idea right up until you try to put them anywhere that shares space with a human eyeball.
Yeah that's the main drawback for these, very dangerous. I believe there are several DIY projects but I wouldn't trust them.
[1]. https://github.com/Ildaron/Laser_control [2]. https://github.com/tanakasan3/mosquito-laser
Positioning the death ray's UI so you have to stand in front of the death ray to use it is a design choice worthy of ACME.
I’m not sure this is a real product.
You are correct.
> This item is currently available for pre-order. Orders will be shipped within 120 calendar days after payment confirmation.
I believe it is. I have seen research for this on this site since at least 2015. The technology exists it's probably legit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser
“A mosquito laser is a proposed device[…]”
[...] the device was still under development as of 2017.
It's been nine years since that blurb was updated supposedly.
The company linked supposedly will start shipping the first units this month.
https://www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/jimwong-38623042/world...
I did some research over the summer on Anopheles gambiae, a mosquito that spreads malaria, and I was stunned to learn how many diseases are spread by mosquitoes. There are tons of viruses (yellow fever, dengue, West Nile), protozoa (like malaria), and even parasitic worms (lymphatic filariasis--the pictures of this are awful). Hundreds of millions of people are infected with these diseases every year, and I'm a bit shocked of how ignorant I was to this. Malaria eradication has stalled over the last decade [0], and I hope that we can resume it.
[0] https://anopheles-genomic-surveillance.github.io/home.html
The tools available for these biological operations are fascinating. OP's article links this other one, which explains everything that can be done in practice with today's tech and reads like science fiction : https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-ultra-selfish-gene/
having spent the summer in Singapore I can confirm its a delight to enjoy hot weather's outdoor activities without any mosquito to be found
The proposal is only to eliminate the disease born mosquitoes, letting the other mosquitoes take over. So if your polity has eliminated mosquitoes it's likely using chemicals rather than a more environmentally sound choice.
It's not that it eliminated mosquitoes entirely but rather that it effectively eliminated mosquitoes in the genus Aedes.
These are some of the most problematic/disease causing of the mosquitoes but also notably mosquitoes in the Aedes genus are essentially the only mosquitoes that are "hunting" during the day. All the other mosquitoes operate almost exclusively in the evening and at nighttime.
So by eliminating these mosquitoes a major disease vector is eliminated but at the same time it completely eliminates mosquitoes during the day (i.e. the main time when you are out and about trying to enjoy the summer).
Most mosquitoes are not the blood-sucking kind. It is possible to replace the blood-suckers with other species which still mostly fill the appropriate niches, like the birds' food chains, etc.
Why speculate? https://www.nea.gov.sg/corporate-functions/resources/researc...
TLDR for this link is that they release male mosquitoes carrying a bacteria called Wolbachia. So this only affects the one species of mosquito they're targeting: Aedes aegypti.
The article contains the following sentence: "In a randomized trial in Singapore, releases of Wolbachia-infected males cut mosquito populations by 85 percent compared to control areas and dengue infections by roughly 70 percent."
There are different things you can do to mosquitos with different techniques. The article discusses several different techniques. Some eliminate disease-spreading mosquitos, some eliminate the mosquitos. In Singapore, the latter was tried out. It is not the case that Singapore used chemicals.
How many simultaneous mosquitos in Singapore?
lets say on the order of 1 billion, and let's assume the effectivity doesn't change when considering the 30% unaffected population
it would need to be applied to the surviving 30% repeatedly:
0.3 ^ N = 1 / 1B
so N = log(1B)/log(10/3) = ~17.2 times.
I predict nature protects itself with diversity: some of the male and female wild type will have natural aversion from, attraction to or neutral stance the modified Wolbachia carriers.
I predict that those mosquito family lines that happen to be more Wolbachia-carrier averse become enriched over time.
There is an energetic cost to maintaining a parasitic lifeform, and that energetic term will always favor immunity against the parasite.
The article discussed alternative methods that have succeeded in being deployed:
> The approach has succeeded at the scale of cities. In a randomized trial in Singapore, releases of Wolbachia-infected males cut mosquito populations by 85 percent compared to control areas and dengue infections by roughly 70 percent.
(mosquitos infected with Wolbachia are both more resistant to diseases, and fail to reproduce in the case of infected male x uninfected female)
Do they achieve it by regularly spraying poison on the air like they do in Malaysia? Feels like a pyrrhic victory to me. I know they were trialing genetic modification but I don't know how successful that was and I'm certain it's not the only thing they're doing.
I humbly propose you simply read the article
I did read the article, actually. It says they did a randomized trial of wolbachia infected mosquities, presumably on a small area, while the person I was replying to was implying that all mosquitos in Singapore have been eradicated. So presumably they're also using other methods like DDT spraying.
If the various regulatory bodies are disclaiming jurisdiction over the matter, then what is preventing these companies from proceeding without their blessing?
The article features multiple examples of the EPA actively regulating in the area, including allowing some deployments to proceed with their blessing.
Who's going to fund that?
The avalanche of lawsuits that every NGO that hadn't been paid off would file within minutes that'd extract the same toll in terms of years, plus potentially even higher legal fees.
I guess we have the capability to change a lot (from the technology we posess), but what would be the consequences of such impact on the rest of the ecosystem?
I mean, we eliminated smallpox viruses, and the impact was that humans no longer die from smallpox. We have almost eliminated polio, which has the impact that nobody needs an iron lung any more. We have massively reduced the incidence of a whole range of other pathogens. Are you concerned about that, too?
I'd be much more concerned about the changes humans do to our ecosystems that we know cause harm, but aren't stopping (like filling the atmosphere with CO2 and other greenhouse gases) than about changes that would, almost certainly, reduce harm and have only extremely unlikely and hypothetical risks.
Well, one notable difference between your examples of eliminated pathogens is that there is a food chain built on top of mosquitos. There are plenty of animals that eat both mosquito larvae (ex: tadpoles, some fish) and adults (ex: bats, dragonflies). I don't believe there is a similar food chain built on top of viruses.
I agree that many of the risks are hypothetical, but I disagree that we can simply dismiss them. Taking a decent amount of time to understand cause and effect on ecosystems seems like a perfectly prudent thing to me.
Im curious about the food chain part, what happens to individual viruses over time, do they ‘die’ or degrade somehow?
Viruses are bundle of DNA with an attitude. Lacking any active metabolism, they just denature with time.
While they don't age like living organisms, their outer protein coating wears away due to temperature and UV light, so like you said they sort of "degrade".
We wouldn't have to destroy all mosquitos, though. Only a few species that are carriers of human pathogens. Once they are gone, other, benign mosquitos will occupy their spot, and will be eaten by the same animals as before.
Such a vague blanket statement sounds like an article of faith and not an actual informed opinion about the specific species of mosquitos, the animals that eat them, and the fungibility of their food sources. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
The mosquito species in question is native to northern Africa, and is an invasive species pretty much everywhere else in the world, having only arrived 300-400 years ago.
"Invasive" is a made-up human concept that has pretty much no bearing on local dependence after a couple hundred years.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49967028
A virus isn't an insect. This comparison is pointless.
> Are you concerned about that, too?
Kind of, because every time you stomp out one of Mother Nature's ways to keep the human population in check, you contribute to letting the population exceed carrying capacity, which leads to things like:
> changes humans do to our ecosystems that we know cause harm, but aren't stopping
We have a lot of experience in what happens when mosquito species are removed!
Mostly because the rich world eradicated a lot of them to stop malaria.
Of course, once we were safe we told the rest of the world they had to live (and die) with with malaria, because we had discovered environmentalism.
few people know that mosquitoes are also pollinators for some plants
In this case not significant since we're talking about eradicating an invasive species that isn't the majority population.
Basically 0, there are only a few species of mosquito that carry disease. Other species fulfill all other ecological roles without spreading horrible diseases.
Famous last words... (Edit typo:) Till we find out when its too late that they had a genuine purpose in a very specific ecosystem after we've eradicated them?
Growing up my sister got dengue, so I hate mosquitoes, she was fine, I know dengue was no joke, but I always worry we make too many assumptions as humans, only to be proven wrong by nature somehow.
Do you have the same level of concern for all other recently-extinct species, widespread habitat loss, and overall large decline in insect biomass?
Or do you reserve most of your concern for just the few species of human disease-carrying mosquito?
Kind of a genuine question, because I've observed over the years people popping in to this topic to exclaim deep concern for the potential ecological impacts of intentionally extincting a couple of species -- that most biologists reportedly agree aren't keystone species. Meanwhile, species loss continues to occur globally for a variety of reasons and yet it's still really difficult to get the average person to care very much about that.
The psychology here is peculiar and I don't understand it.
I'm much more puzzled by the many retorts to people asking about the unforeseen consequences of eradicating a whole species given how little we know about ecosystems.
Many such comments are very dumb, asking 'and how do you feel about viruses, screwworms, etc.?', but since you say this is a genuine question: mosquitoes are numerous and we know that they represent a source of food for many species (bats, birds, other insects). As far as I know, there is genuine debate among scientists about the role that mosquitoes play in their ecosystems. Everyone here has seen species of animals and plants eradicated and then being reintroduced or replaced, when we realise what role they were playing.
Again, assuming you're asking in good faith: you're asking why these commenters are so concerned while humanity is eradicating species all the time anyway: these are not the same populations... I'd wager there is a big overlap between those wondering about consequences and those taking action for the planet (not eating animal products, not flying, etc.). Similarly, I'd wager there's overlap between those posting such illogical retorts, and those eating animals at every meal and driving their car daily.
I see the same ridiculous retorts in HN debates about the condition of animals.
Okay, but we aren't talking about the eradication of all mosquitos. Approximately 10% of known mosquito species are potential carriers of human disease (https://entomologytoday.org/2022/07/26/less-than-10-percent-...), and discussions about eradication efforts generally revolve around just the Anopheles genus.
There's an excellent book on the impact of the mosquito on humanity, and a brief overview of some of that subject here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/05/how-mosquitoes.... These species of mosquito are and have been one of the most significant threats to human health for all of our existence.
I don't think argument-from-ignorance should be more convincing here than it would be on any other subject. There is some debate among researchers, sure, but published biologists have been making arguments in favor of eradication for over 20 years (https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/opinion/a-bug-s-death.htm...). If someone is being intellectually honest in objecting to this on the grounds of the fragility of ecosystems, then they must also be an equally loud voice against the use and manufacture of glyphosate. That one chemical alone is already having a far greater impact on insect populations, yet you can buy it at your local hardware stores.
So yeah, I genuinely don't understand the reasoning here. It feels like a dumber version of the trolley problem, where a perceived inaction that has far larger negative consequences is preferable to an action with more limited ones -- except in this case, it's not even right to describe our current impacts on ecosystems as "inaction".
I suspect that if an article were published tomorrow that found that, through some previously-unknown mechanism, the expected rise in global temperatures over the next 10 years would have a side-effect of killing all mosquito populations, that article wouldn't even make the front page of HN. Nobody much would care, aside from those few recurring voices mourning our future.
More cynically, I also suspect that since the worst impacts on human health are occurring in tropical populations, westerners find it much easier to argue in favor of protecting this particular pest.
Do you think animals pick their food source based on whether humans have taxonomized them under a similar heading, like "mosquito?"
Would an alien species contemplating the eradication of wheat be correct to think "that won't hurt Homo sapiens much, wheat makes up <1% of our taxonomic category 'things that grow in dirt!'?
Again: the effect you're referring to here, food chain collapse, is already occurring, but on much larger and more indiscriminate scales. Meanwhile, there is scant real evidence that Anopheles is a critical component of the food chain. Here's the most fair treatment on the subject that I could find: https://archive.ph/h12qU
I've been following this subject since at least Olivia Judson's article was published back in 2003. Over the last 23 years, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has yet made a strong case that Anopheles was a necessary part of the ecosystem. If your alien species were unable to identify wheat as an important food source, one would question how they managed to figure out interstellar travel.
The most vocal arguments against are all of the kind we're seeing here: "we don't know what might happen" (a statement of the unintended consequences of science meddling with nature that goes back in fiction to at least Mary Shelley), "we should assume they're necessary" (and yet all other necessary critters seem to be optional), "something needs them, we just don't know what" (in 23 years, biologists have so far identified a single spider that maybe or maybe not depends on them).
And these are the arguments that condemn a million people a year to death.
I would be easily swayed by evidence of large-scale ecosystem destabilization if Anopheles were eradicated. To date, not only is there no such evidence, but there is some evidence to the contrary (species of mosquito have been introduced to island habitats where they went on to have significant effects on local animal populations).
Food chain collapse happening elsewhere is a reason not to risk creating more of it. It makes ecosystems more fragile, not less.
> If your alien species were unable to identify wheat as an important food source, one would question how they managed to figure out interstellar travel.
Per your prior point: we are causing food chain collapse all over the globe. We are not an alien species with a good track record on this.
> "we don't know what might happen" (a statement of the unintended consequences of science meddling with nature that goes back in fiction to at least Mary Shelley)
Per your prior point: the unintended consequences of science meddling with nature also goes back in reality to the widespread food chain collapse that our science is already unintentionally causing all over the globe.
The following two arguments are not ones that I've made, and aren't necessary to justify extreme caution.
> And these are the arguments that condemn a million people a year to death.
Obviously the people arguing against you believe there's a chance that altering course would be far, far worse than this already-not-good outcome.
> I would be easily swayed by evidence of large-scale ecosystem destabilization if Anopheles were eradicated. To date, not only is there no such evidence, but there is some evidence to the contrary (species of mosquito have been introduced to island habitats where they went on to have significant effects on local animal populations).
Yes I'm in the same boat as you. But note that this is a fundamentally different position than "other things eat things that humans call 'mosquitos' so it should be fine."
> Food chain collapse happening elsewhere is a reason not to risk creating more of it.
Granted, but also food chain collapse has been happening for a while now and yet Anopheles is still not anything's preferred food source. It really seems to fit the definition of a strictly non-beneficial parasite.
> ...science meddling with nature also goes back in reality to the widespread food chain collapse that our science is already unintentionally causing all over the globe.
There's a whiff of "science causes bad things" here, which is what I keep hoping isn't the unstated foundation of the pro-mosquito argument.
> > And these are the arguments that condemn a million people a year to death.
> Obviously the people arguing against you believe there's a chance that altering course would be far, far worse than this already-not-good outcome.
I seriously, seriously doubt the people making this argument have thought all that hard about this. The more likely scenario is that the millionish dead per year is happening in other people's countries and therefore it's not thought about at all.
I wonder what the factor-of-10 scale would be for the number of Zika-affected births in the US before Americans suddenly became overwhelmingly in favor of eradicating these mosquito species. 100? 1,000? 10,000? Over-under at 10,000, I guess?
I don't think I got much in the way of any new insight to how other people think about this, but thanks for the discussion, anyway.
> yet Anopheles is still not anything's preferred food source. It really seems to fit the definition of a strictly non-beneficial parasite.
... to our knowledge. Obviously the entire disagreement is about how complete our knowledge is and how much we can trust our understanding of how complete it is.
> There's a whiff of "science causes bad things" here, which is what I keep hoping isn't the unstated foundation of the pro-mosquito argument.
No, there's not. I literally work in drug development and use science every day to improve people's lives. Respond to the arguments leveled instead of trying to conjure up a backing "origin of opinion" that you can dismiss more easily.
> I seriously, seriously doubt the people making this argument have thought all that hard about this.
Huh? I would bet the people who are skeptical of this idea are, on average, more informed than the people who love it. Because obviously the pitch of "want to eradicate mosquitos?" is: fuck yes absolutely please, fuck mosquitos they suck. Regardless of one's understanding of their truly horrible health effects elsewhere. The starting position is: get rid of them. The 2nd order consideration is "hmm, what problems might that cause?"
> I don't think I got much in the way of any new insight to how other people think about this, but thanks for the discussion, anyway.
And likewise, I came in requesting evidence for your assumptions and you've confirmed you do not have any.
> Respond to the arguments leveled
I replied to the words you wrote. If what you wrote doesn't say what you meant to say, fine, but don't come at me for it.
> The starting position is: get rid of them. The 2nd order consideration is "hmm, what problems might that cause?"
Alright, I can go along with that. Then the 3rd order consideration would have to be, "okay, here are the possible problems it could cause, and here is the evidence for and against."
And that is where I've been working this subject from from the beginning of this thread.
> I came in requesting evidence for your assumptions and you've confirmed you do not have any.
...other than the multiple links to discussions, books, papers, and opinion pieces from subject matter experts, you mean? I notice none of your comments happened to come with any supporting evidence for your argument. We're supposed to just believe that eradicating these pests would cause a worse outcome than the current amount of human misery they cause worldwide because... why? Because of your hypothetical aliens and because humans use science to cause ecological harm?
Maybe take a step back and reassess.
You literally said it was unstated. I.e. not responding to what was stated.
> There's a whiff of "science causes bad things" here, which is what I keep hoping isn't the unstated foundation of the pro-mosquito argument.
Yes, absolutely agreed we're talking about the 3rd order of questioning. In particular the question: can eradicating these mosquitos destroy a food chain that we end up caring about?
Not one of the links you've posted actually addresses this question, except maybe the Archive.ph link which is broken for me (feel free to re-post if you can).
The supporting argument for food chain effects is that when a food source is in an ecosystem for long enough, it will be exploited by something. This is a basic feature of natural systems: free energy doesn't just go sitting around for long.
The question is then if you remove this particular food source over the course of a few years, will alternatives take its place fast enough? You have not posted any evidence of this.
The null hypothesis should be no, since evolution does not typically operate on timescales like this. If 1) all the animals that eat these mosquitos just as easily eat other mosquitos and 2) those other mosquitos can easily breed to make up the difference, then sure! But again: you have not posted any evidence of this claim and it is not at all obvious it should be assumed.
Here are the arguments you and your posted links have made:
1. Mosquitos are bad (agreed)
2. We can kill just the ones that hurt humans (agreed)
3. There are other mosquitos (agreed)
4. Those other ones will take their place in the food chain (not evidenced)
5. Other food chain disruptions are happening anyway (agreed)
6. Therefore this one is probably fine (not evidenced)
You have not addressed the specific point of contention.
I don't want any species to go extinct if I can help it, but I also understand that sometimes nature finds a way in some cases.
I'm not versed in everything with all these species, but I believe everything has a purpose, look if someone goes all out into mosquitoes and proves they had absolutely no purpose, I'll concede, I just think its worth studying these types of things. For example, some years I fight wasps near my house, then the following year, I'm fighting fire ants. If I don't eradicate one or the other, they show up the next year, every year I fight one or the other, I assume they compete with one another. I wish I could curb stomp both from ever coming back, fire ants make me bust out with sores all over, however, I know me killing them from my lawn / property isn't killing ALL of them.
In that case, it would be a very niche/small ecosystem if we're don't know about it. OTOH, the benefits of eliminating malaria and dengue are massive to ecosystems we do know about.
My fear is, what comes out of the woodworks once mosquitoes are gone? Because nature finds a way... Will it be drastically worse? Will we wish we never messed with mosquitoes afterwards?
The mosquitoes won't be gone. Just the disease carrying ones.
> My fear is, what comes out of the woodworks once mosquitoes are gone?
Well, what would come out of the outback once the rabbits are gone? Since we know the state of Australian wildlife before the rabbits, the answer is "nothing".
It's not like aedes has been so widespread all around before the last decades of wild exchanges worldwide.
How do you feel about getting rid of screwworm?
It's already happened. The concern is always about changes from the present state, no matter what the present state is. Once screwworms have already been eradicated from North America, there is concern about the impact of bringing them back.
Okay but do you think it was a bad idea at the time?
I think it warranted extreme caution back then just as the opposite would now. Humans made a lot of ecosystem changes in the past and the results of some of them are the reason that we think we should apply extreme caution now.
All ecosystems are local, and local eradication has been a thing since the first shovel was invented, and nothing too bad has happened.
If there's an abandoned lot and you eradicate the mosquitoes by removing the water filled abandoned car tires, the existing ecosystem does pretty well. In a similar way you can willfully decide to make a livestock pond either a mosquito factory or mosquito free and mosquito free has not resulted in any problems.
Local eradication programs have successfully worked for centuries, at least. What makes this story interesting is its very wide ranging and likely very expensive.
> we've been doing local eradication for a long time without much visible downside
(aside: There are lots of visible downsides to lots of local eradications of lots of things)
> this effort is interesting because it's much less local
So in other words it's very different from all the success cases you're alluding to?
If the documentary mimic (1997) is to believed we will be looking at 6 foot mosquitos in 3 to 5 years.
From memory, mosquitos are a food source for some birds and bats, pollinate some plants, and, most uniquely, help drive wild cattle migration (to keep them from overgrazing areas into barren mud-fields).
we are already wiping out many species, wiping out one that's basically always bad both for humans and other animals is probably net positive
Completely illogical argument. Our destruction of other parts of an ecosystem makes it more fragile, not less.
No chance this is bungled and causes problems worse than the ones we are hoping to fix.
How does this affect fish that eat mosquitos like trout? Do they have enough food without mosquitos? Just wondering.
YSK, there are like 4000 species of mosquito and this is talking about getting rid of only a small number of them. There would still be lots of mosquitoes.
Humanity is eradicating entire species left and right. Mosquitoes are our worst enemies. Can we have a deal to save some little poor amazonian frog (the doomed one which has only ~100 animals and 1 location left) and after we accomplish that, in return wipe out one species of mosquitoes?
I hope the Amazonian frog doesn't depend too much on mosquitos as food. Or that by eradicating mosquitoes, insectivorous animals don't eat more of other, less abundant and fast-breeding, insects as a replacement and it starved the Amazonian frog.
(I don't know what the Amazonian frog eats; my point is that biotopes are complex and second- and third-order effects need to be monitored. That's why smaller interventions - e.g. making humans poisonous to mosquitoes, pushing them to the evolutionary path of avoiding humans - would be better than whole eradication.)
Note that these specific mosquito species are invasive in most of the world after they escaped their native ecosystems and proceeded to spread like wildfire so arguably eradicating them would be a net benefit for most ecosystems.
Human-biting mosquitoes aren't necessary for the ecosystem and we should remove them.
https://www.orkin.com/pests/mosquitoes/what-eats-mosquitoes
What part of that requires that they specifically be the human-biting ones?
That's what we thought about all the other species we intentionally eradicated, both the ones that turned out to be unimportant, and the ones that turned out to be very important.
Great article, I really like the writing style as well.
Anyone knows more about the author? The info there is a bit scant and I'd like to read more from her.
I found one Maya Rosen online[1] but she seems to be devoted to Jewish texts, Judaism, and all that. Does not seem related to this, but it might be her?
1: https://jewishlearningcollab.org/educator-bio/?id=272
In certain parts of the world an entire lifestyle has been built on the logistics of the old pesticide methods. Good luck getting rid of them. Furthermore, and this matters enormously, Walbachia is still a nuisance. If Walbachia replacement is deployed, a resident can quite reasonably say: “Great, dengue risk is lower, but why am I still getting eaten alive in my backyard?”. That resident may continue demanding spraying, larvicides, traps, pest control, etc.
I thought only male Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes were released, and only females bite?
Larvicides can still be a thing though. No benefit in keeping those around.
The female mosquito (like female bedbugs) does the biting to provide food/energy to make the eggs she lays.
She mates only once, which is why releasing sterile males works to reduce mosquito populations.
https://www.rockefeller.edu/news/38495-what-we-got-wrong-abo...
the paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098222...
Use genetic engineering to extinct a species... what could go wrong?
Not to mention the many species of, e.g., birds, etc., that rely either heavily, or almost entirely, on mosquitoes, as a food source. One does not simply eradicate an entire species, through genetic sorcery, for the entire planet, without causing negative side effects.
This is just like cloud seeding. A few powerful idiots ruin it for everyone else, in the service of accomplishing a specific goal. We are likely experiencing major changes in the regional climates, as a result of cloud seeding. For example, right here in Idaho we are stealing water from clouds floating overhead, through a cloud seeding program primarily driven by Idaho Power. Do I benefit from this? Of course. We use the irrigation water and benefit from the cheap electricity rates. At what expense? Who knows. Somewhere east of us is likely getting royally screwed. As long as we have what we need here, though, who cares about anybody else or the rest of the planet's ecosystem, right?
The hilarious part, to me, is the fact that those who get excited by this idea (obliteration of entire species through genetic engineering) are the selfsame supposed champions of the climate when it comes to "GlObAl WaRmInG", asking for us to send our money to the Guberment to fix the problem. I guess it's not too surprising, since these people don't think for themselves; they are simply following with the TV told them to think.
Isn't there a knock on effect of removing them?
Does anything eat them as food? Wouldn't it be environmentally damaging to remove a source of food for X?
Mosquitoes control human populations, an invasive species. Removing mosquitoes will make humans proliferate, which is known to be environmentally damaging.
Joking aside, the consensus seems to be that the effect of removing disease-carrying mosquitoes (not all mosquitoes) from the environment is minor compared to how many lives it can save.
Aedes aegypti is an invasive species native to Africa so removing it from the environment everywhere else in the world that it has been spread to would benefit the local mosquito species which don't spread the same diseases and are less of a nuisance to humans.
Lots of animals eat mosquitos, but they really aren't the primary food source of any species, especially this particular type of mosquito. It would have a very minimal effect on food supply.
There are still a lot of other mosquito species. removing just the few that carry human disease will not have a major impact on creatures that eat mosquitoes.
The mere existence of other things that we call mosquitos does not mean they are all interchangeable as a food source for the animals that eat them.
Is your level of knowledge on this just "there are other things called mosquitos ergo it's not a problem," or do you have deeper affirmative knowledge that the animals that eat these mosquitos also eat those other mosquitos, and that those other mosquitos can increase their population to replace the lost food source?
Most things that eat mosquitoes are actually in the business of eating any flying insect that fits in their mouth. I'd be a bit more worried about, e.g. a species being the only pollinator for some plant, but that's pretty unlikely. Do the studies, sure, but don't expect any bombshells. And if aedes aegypti or any of the other big disease-causing mosquitoes had such a role, I'm pretty sure it would have already been found and trumpeted to the heavens.
The fact you can't even confidently say whether one of those species is a sole pollinator of a plant or not indicates that your comment is still just a stack of assumptions.
And yours is still just fearmongering supposition, with, in my opinion, even less basis in reality. Go find some actual research on the ecological roles of aedes aegypti and anopheles if you want to get out of the loop. :)
I have done actual research on their roles! The answer is: "we don't really know."
That's called risk.
Pointing out risk is not "fearmongering" lmao
Do we not know because people haven't gone looking, or because they did go looking and didn't find it? I'm guessing it's the latter, in which case it kinda strengthens the case that there probably isn't some critical role. These are some of the more-studied animals on the planet.
Pointing out risk is a kind of fearmongering when it's technically real but too small to be worth worrying about. Asteroid impact is a real risk too.
In places where it's been living for hundreds of years, that's a legitimate concern.
In Europe though, where aedes aegypti didn't exist 20 years ago, it's probably the other way around: what did the introduction of this new species damage? (apart from making the summer unbearable outside if any of your neighbour isn't very strict with standing water elimination)
There isn’t, but why would I care?
A billion human lives, or some sad trout who have to eat fruit flies instead. For me, it’s an obvious choice.
I just can’t understand the level of smugness it must take to insist that we must force another billion people to die of horrible diseases like malaria, because you want the moral high ground. How do you even tell yourself that killing all those people is the moral high ground?
Your saying we do things that save human lives, irrespective of the outcome? Let's start by removing cars [0], that would save ~37K people.
Yeah, it gets a bit silly real fast. I've never been accused for forcing a billion to die, so thanks for that.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
> "Your saying we do things that save human lives, irrespective of the outcome?"
In fact, no, they did not say that. They said that the considered balance of the merits strongly favors eradicating the 2% of mosquito species that carry human diseases for someone who gives greater weight to the benefit of saving a billion human lives[0] than to the cost of some trout eating the thousands of other mosquito species instead.
[0] - 700 million contracted mosquito-borne illnesses each year worldwide. Death isn't the only consequence of significance.
I believe the argument is the dominant mosquito species are themselves invasive to the continent
"Invasive" is a made up human concept. The question is whether there are species that now rely on these as a food source. The entire natural world is a hodge-podge of "invasive" species coming from some nearby land, disrupting the ecosystem, then the ecosystem evolving around it – typically a gradual process over thousands of years.
If it took a couple hundred years for this species to proliferate, it's absolutely plausible that eradicating it in a few years will have surprising second- and third-order effects.
“Invasive” is a useful concept to describe species that spent millions (sometimes hundreds of millions) of years evolving in one environment and then moving to a new one in the last few thousand years.
Do you understand that time scales are important here?
There are also species that have invaded areas that are totally impossible for them to reach without seafaring or airfaring human civilizations to carry them.
All terms are made up. Some are useful and some are not. This one is useful.
The usefulness of the term to this conversation is as described: is this species systemically critical to its current ("invaded") ecosystem?
Merely calling it invasive does not answer that question, ergo it is not a useful term in this conversation.
And yes, timescales do matter. A species can become critical to its new ("invaded") ecosystem within a few hundred years such that removing it within a few years will cause catastrophe.
Are you proposing that it would be infinitely bad? That somehow extincting a few varieties of mosquitoes could cause the collapse of all life on earth?
I don't get the "but what if it's somewhat - not infinitely - bad" argument? The known good is so dramatically good that we'd need a shocking amount of unknown bad to have made it not worth it. But if I'm choosing between mosquitoes, and say... fish, frogs, and a variety of birds, yes, get rid of the mosquitoes.
I am merely suggesting we don't really understand the consequences and things may not be as simplistic that everyone thinks. i.e. kill "bad guy" mosquitos, save a billion people.
We start spraying crops so we can end world hunger (or just make more money) and screwing around with other things and now we're killing bees and other things. This will ultimately come to haunt us.
The death of all bees would count as infinitely bad (in terms of crop pollination) and we're doing a very good job in making that happen.
There are many mosquito species in competition for the same resources, only a few (iirc 10% in the US) of which sting humans and carry diseases. Wiping out the ones that attack people would allow other mosquitoes to take over the ecological niches.
The swallows love mosquitoes. When I get bit by mosquitoes I often joke I am feeding the birds.
What's the ratio of frogs lives to human children spared from disease that's acceptable to you, assuming we had a clear answer?
If 20,000 humans weren't significantly harmed from disease because of this release, but 70,000 frogs faced starvation, which would you choose?
I was suggesting that it's rarely that simple.
If we lose those frogs, it most likely would cause a cascade across other species. There are lots of things that eat frogs.
I'm not a fan of "you never know" arguments.
They're only applied to thing we don't want to do.
In reality, it's always true that we don't fully know, so applying the argument always means "let's not do this".
I totally understand there's a massive amount of unknowns about this. Let's continue analyzing what's the right course of action as we go, and ensure we're taking that understanding into account of what we do in the future.
In the end, whose lives do you prioritize given the lack of information today, and the lives at risk today? Deciding to do nothing still costs lives, and potentially drives us further into the bad state area.
Something about mosquito-borne diseases lands on HN every year or so, resulting in hand-wringing about whether we should deliberately cause species extinction. I have seen the suffering they cause firsthand, and so my response has become rather consistent:
Do we want to eradicate mosquitoes?
Yes; fuck them.
We (intentionally or no, mostly not) cause the extinction of hundreds to thousands of species every year for much more mundane reasons: deforestation is the big one, climate change another. And that buys us arguably nothing but enriching people that benefit from the process of deforestation and climate change--folks that're economically desperate enough to log illegally, and energy barons. These extinctions are mostly tragic, and the net benefit to human societies is likely negative.
Mosquitoes are fucking evil. They kill more humans every year than any other animal. Malaria is only the most well-known disease they spread; see also dengue ("breakbone fever", named for what it feels like), West Nile virus, and more. Those that malaria doesn't kill are frequently left with a low-level chronic infection that makes them less effective as people. Malaria and mosquitoes kill children, disable the working population, and economically cripple entire nations.
As best we can tell, things that eat mosquitoes also eat other things. But I'd vote for nuking the mozzies from orbit even if that weren't the case. They're such an unmitigated cause of human suffering and hardship.
Mosquitoes are fucking evil.
They're not evil, they have zero idea about the consequences of their actions. I think this viewpoint is why people are hesitant to just make things go instinct because people don't like them. Yes there might be good scientific / humanitarian reasons for it, but mosquitoes "being evil" isn't one of them.
Oh come on. Does anyone actually believe gene drives will work? This fundamentally goes against the principles of natural selection.
A gene which incurs a fitness cost will be purged from the population under selection!!
Aedes aegypti are container breeders, you can totally eliminate them from an environment through diligent removal of standing water left in buckets, tires, pots, etc. This has been done before but the effort wasn't properly sustained so they've made a major comeback in disease prone areas. Killing a lot of them does have a substantial effect because they don't easily travel long distances by themselves so if the remaining resistant population is small enough it might just as easily end up dying out due to its breeding cycle being interrupted through other means. The part that should be criticized here is that any eradication campaign should also involve efforts to eliminate their breeding environments by removing junk and unattended containers that collect water.
Sterile insect releases are a tool for suppressing populations and have been used for about a century. This is not really a new suppression technique but a novel way of producing the sterile insects.
It has been used to suppress screw worm in the United States for decades until the administration cut the funding.
These are almost always a temporary solution that need constant funding and seasonal releases to work. The populations will surge back as soon as it's stopped.
The idea is to hit the population with a cataclysm so sudden that it goes extinct before it can adapt. We can calculate mutation rates and reproduction dynamics, so we know how to predict whether this is likely or not.
If it's one-and-done, everywhere on Earth (eg smallpox), it can work. If it drags on for decades or isn't rolled out globally (eg malaria) then it won't work.
>Sustained releases cut a wild Aedes aegypti population in the Cayman Islands by 80 percent, and in a field trial in Juazeiro, Brazil by about 95 percent.
Female mosquitos mate once and only once. When they mate with a sterile male, none of her eggs will hatch.
Several insects are like this. In the species I'm familiar with, the male member breaks off inside the female locking all other males out.
Releasing sterile screwworms in Panama has been the main method of protecting US beef/cattle production from the insects spreading north out of South America.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/what-to-know-about-the-n...
Penicillin used to kill 100% of Staphylococcus aureus. My point still stands - even if a selective sweep takes out 99% of the population, they will recover.
This is at best a temporary solution.
The remaining 5% and their adapted mutation will eventually repopulate the local population.
Humanity seems pretty good at driving animal populations to extinction. We're on our best run yet.
Plus, the animals that eat those mosquitos will decline in the meantime...
The gene gives a sizable advantage to mosquitoes that don't carry disease. Those mosquitoes will then take over the niche making it very difficult for disease carrying mosquitoes to come back.
I think you’re right. I’d want to pair this approach with introducing a replacement species that can hopefully out compete the one we’re eliminating. No idea what that looks like, though.
That may very well mean the eradication of the population. Also we can do the gene drive repeatedly reintroducing the gene. Or modified genes.
Depends how fast the gene drive works. Natural Selection is slow.
In a diverse population, the mutations that will drive the selection have in fact already happened. It doesn't matter how fast you move.
> have in fact already happened
The US has been funding spraying of coca farms in South America. Roundup is one of the major herbicides. "Roundup Ready" crops are genetically modified to make them resistant to glyphosate. Samples of roundup resistant coca plants had been found in Colombia & Bolivia. It was thought that someone put a lot of effort into genetically modifying the plants, but it turns out that the samples were not GMO but rather mutants. Collaboration between coca growers spread the resistant plants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_Ready
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boliviana_negra
https://web.archive.org/web/20050205025108/http://www.wired....
there are latches in designspace
I hate all the glib wordplay that reframes a policy decision and turns it on its head to make it seem like a different kind of policy decision. Nobody is “choosing” to have mosquitos. Mosquitos exist naturally. Maybe we can undertake a large scale intervention in the environment and wipe them out, but it that’s different than “choosing” to have them. Just say what you mean.
It's a choice to wipe them out or let them continue to exist. We were on our way to doing that using DDT until the unfortunate side-effects of that chemical were understood.
Hm, rather, as soon as (some) mosquitoes became resistant to DDT, eradication became a lost cause.
The pesticide levels built up in the insect predators of mosquitos (and other bugs) which tended to kill the predators and let the mosquito population explode.
The resistance was (perhaps counterintuitively) caused by overuse in agricultural applications.
I agree. The precautionary principle applies to novel actions we take, not to leaving the status quo in place.
We are choosing to not undo the harm we caused by spreading Aedes aegypti all over the world in the first place.
If we are "choosing" to live with mosquitoes, then we also are "choosing" to let people starve, die of cancer, etc.
We could in one stroke take half of what multi-billionaires and quasi-trillionaires have hoarded. If they didn't have personal accountants, they wouldn't even notice it, as they have far more money than what they manage to burn through - and we would have the means to "choose" to solve real problems affecting hundreds of millions of people.
> we also are "choosing" to let people starve, die of cancer, etc.
It's debatable whether taking half of billionaires' wealth would materially advance the efforts in those areas.
What seems far less debatable is the political consequences of the accummulation of so much wealth — coupled with essentially zero legal restrictions on the use of that wealth in the quest for (governmental) power.
I'm reminded of the horror movie Mimic, in which a genetically modified bugs are deployed to deal with a rampant cockroach population. Once the cockroaches are taken care of, the mutant bugs focus on the next disasterous infestation...humans!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimic_(film)
About the mosquito release in Australia. I wonder, since of course bats love mosquito's, if this could be related?
The population of an endangered Australian bat suddenly dropped by up to 16%. No one knows why
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/30/southern...
Bats in the US are dying from a fungal disease. I suspect something similar is happening in Australia.
> White-nose syndrome (WNS) is a fungal disease killing hibernating bats in North America. The fungus, named Pseudogymnoascus destructans (or Pd for short) likely originated in Europe or Asia. Sometime in the early 2000's Pd arrived in North America and attacked vulnerable bat species, resulting in unusual and large die-offs of bats first observed in New York in 2006. Since then, the disease has spread to most US states and Canadian provinces, leaving millions of dead bats in its path. WNS causes high death rates and fast population declines in the species affected by it.
https://www.nps.gov/articles/what-is-white-nose-syndrome.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-nose_syndrome
we should genocide mosquitoes, period
The mosquito is part of the ecosystem, and remove that and you remove the food source for many creatures including bats, frogs, swallows/swifts and many others.
I agree they are a nuisance but they do not exist on their own. Many of them spend their time feeding on plants rather than blood.
Bill Gates is involved in this. Always a red flag.
Aedes aegypti aren't native to anywhere outside of Africa. Native mosquito species in most other continents don't spread the same diseases that infect humans. Aedes aegypti mostly breed around where humans live since they lay their eggs in containers of stagnant water, other mosquito species live primarily in wetlands and areas that stay moist due to thick vegetation or soil conditions. The native species of mosquitos are a much larger food source than Aedes aegypti for that reason.
Aedes aegypti most likely spread to the US via the slave trade.
Why is Bill Gates a red flag? I am under the impression that he's done a lot of good for the world, especially around AIDs research.
You can read about some of the claims about Gates here:
https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/list-of-claims-ab...
You could ask her wife, she divorced him right when the Epstein scandal came to light.
His business practices have been despicable and that is just in computing.
I'd say paranoid-by-default folks are a huge red flag on any agenda. Something about disservice to the cause and all that.
Anyway since they kill north of half a million folks yearly and infect couple of hundred millions as official minimums, I am more than happy with some other species of small insects take their empty spot. Of course not everybody cares much about poor folks dying quietly half around the world, but some do. One of very few benefits of global warming is the migration of these bastards more north so rich folks in US and Europe will have more personal stake in this topic rather than usual 'oh that's so horrible, next'.
Some minor re-adjustement of ecosystem is more than fine, anyway we do it constantly for rather pathetic reasons if any. I would add ticks, all forms, to the effort.
>It shouldn’t have to take fifteen years to deploy effective products that can save lives.
I completely disagree. This is a reasonable and responsible timeline to look for unintended consequences. Some things, you simply cannot undo.
What if the bacteria (somehow) jumped to monarch butterflies and killed them off? Controlled releases and multi-year environmental studies are the correct and responsible course of action. In fact, when the injected insects are released into an area, the entire thing should be monitored carefully, as each ecosystem might respond differently.
All of that being said, excited to see this adopted more broadly. It's time these fuckwit insects die.
I can imagine a scenario where the testing takes 15 years, and a scenario where the testing is done in 1 year. I think it's probably wrong to look at it purely as "we should wait X years". The author describes the 15 years as "regulatory limbo" implying that it was known as safe before that, but I have no idea whether that's the case.
In general, you have to weigh the irreversible cost of unintended consequences with the irreversible cost of known human death from mosquitoes.
There are many things for which a 1-year time horizon is too short, especially in large scale ecologies.
From what I understood, they didn't spend 15 years collecting data on the efficacy and risks of the product. Much of it was spent just waiting for regulators to respond.
The bacterial solution was the one that was fast tracked, while the safer genetic modification was delayed more.
Midwit article.
People like the author actually belive that there is no chance of real world interactions happening.
Eg what is the bacteria jumps to some other organism? What if it mutates? What if the birds eat the mosquitoes and carry a mutated bacteria elsewhere?
There is a reason why you need autistic level safety for such projects, and even then things like this might happen.
It's completely impossible to guarantee theses things, no matter how long you study it in a lab.
Some people just aren't capable of thinking more than 1 step ahead.
Obviously we should pass a law so that only mosquitoes that have undergone a full medical examination and are certified free of diseases are allowed to bite humans.
What’s this have to do with TFA?