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Nuclear Mutant Flies Are Good For Africa?
D\monix writes "According to this article in Reuters, the International Atomic Energy Agency is going to start releasing massive numbers of tsetse flies "sterilized by a burst of radiation" into sub Saharan Africa in order to outnumber and thus eradicate the local fly population. My favorite quote? "The impact of the fly is difficult to exaggerate." You're damn right it is. Anyone else out there think pumping large numbers of mutant insects into the environment might be a bad idea?"
I couldn't agree less with your claim that preservation of wildlife is more important than human lives. One of the main reasons sub-Saharan Africa is so poor is because of problems like the tsetse fly. The article points out that they cost the region about $4.5 billion a year and these are people who can't afford that kind of loss.
If science and technology can succeed in hauling these countries into the 21st century you will see the same kinds of voluntary population control that you see in Europe, for example. Many wealthy European countries have a declining native population and it is directly related to economic wellbeing.
The suggestion that the tsetse fly, HIV, etc are helping to deal with population problems in Africa is abhorrent. We need to help solve these problems and make Africa wealthy - then the population problem will solve itself and there will be room for wildlife as well.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
What do you mean by "constructive"? Does this mean doing something "good" for the planet?
If this is your definition, then I submit that no organism on the planet has ever done anything constructive, with the exception of humans.
Organisms are inherently selfish. Why is it such a surprise that humans are to? Do you think that the "goal" of an antelope is to feed the lion so that beautiful species can live on? Do you think that the lion, given the chance, wouldn't kill every antelope in Africa? If you do then you are quite simply wrong. The antelope wants to eat, sleep, not die; the lion wants the same things.
Only humans have the capacity to self sacrifice. It is this ability, over any other that should define what it means to be a "human". No, not every human would sacrifice him(her)self, but for most there is a reason. (morals, offspring, mate, country, god)
What you must realize is humans are part of the ecosystem. Therefore our actions are as much the actions of the ecosystem as are the antelope and lion. Species Die Period. Climates Change Period. What humanity will (and should) do is attempt to control these vast systems for our benefit. If that happens to assist the fly, then so be it.
Nice attitude...
Africa is not some park, it is a continent where thousands, perhaps millions of people are malnourished or suffering from disease. The fact that the people are blacks living in third-world nations does not make them lower than wild animals.
If killing some insects allows more cattle to be raised and gives people access to safe water supplies, I'm all for it.
Yes it will kill wildlife -- but I could give a damn about wildlife when human beings are at stake.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Hell, I love the environment, but I realize the need to save human life & livelihood when I see it. Too many of you seem too comfortable with sitting in front of your computers in your cubicle this morning with a coffee & bagel, deciding that Africans should continue to get sick & lose livestock because you don't want them to "harm the ecosystem".
For all of the environmentalists lamenting the horrible, cataclysmic attack upon the Tstetse fly, consider for a second if it were YOU and YOUR family's health & livelihood that took a constant beating because of these little boogers, if it was your kid almost dead with sleeping sickness, or your cattle you've spent the last 2 years raising that're fast becoming worthless. If there was an infestation by an insect that made people sick and destroyed fiber-optic cable in the SF bay area or New York City you would all shut the fsck up so fast it'd make John Muir's corpse spin.
For fsck's sake, if you want to preserve the environment deal with the planks in your own eyes before pointing out the motes in the African's.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
"Life will find a way"? Christ, that's barely sufferable pablum in a crappy book/movie series, let's not try to act like it's an axiom of truth.
If life has such a hard-on for "finding a way", then why have millions of species gone extinct over the years? Why didn't that life "find a way"?
Jurassic Park is a story. Here's the tricky part: it never actually happened. Let's not quote it like it's an article from a scientific journal.
The odds that one of the irradiated flies will develop a useful adaptation that is dangerous to humans and doesn't reduce the fly's ability to survive AND slip through the cracks while still fertile AND mate with another fly AND produce viable offspring that aren't in turn eaten by predators is so vanishingly small as to be laughable. Please.