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?"

Comments

Re:Bad for wildlife

[JohnPM]

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.

Re:Bad for wildlife

[duffbeer703]

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.

African/Western hyposcrisy

[gdyas]

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.