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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?"
Now .... if one just bites a person....
Cruise TT
They might reproduce and produce more sterile insects!
Of course these arent /mutant/ flys. theve just been sterilised. No more radioactive than usual, and cetainly not going to pass in theyre sterility to the next generation :).
I for one do NOT A think pumping large numbers of mutant insects into the environment might be a bad idea.
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"Almost isn't good enough - but it's almost good enough."
-Me
Anyone else out there think pumping large numbers of mutant insects into the environment might be a bad idea?
Comic books and technophobic hysteria notwithstanding, exposing something to radiation doesn't make it a mutant. If it reproduces and produces weird offspring, that's mutation. If the radiation sterilizes the flies, there's not much to worry about.
-- Sigs are for losers
The original poster does not understand the issue.
These are flys that have been sterilized by radiation. They are not genetic mutants. If they will live their little lifetime, and then die. Their genes will not be passed on to another generation.
"Mutants" are offspring which have different characteristics to their parents because genetic mutation has occurred.
I am against releasing genetically modified organisms into the environment. But this is not what they are talking about. These are sterilized files. Not mutants. There is no danger here.
If it reduces the number of disease carrying files, then this is a very good thing.
The article referenced does NOT say "The impact ON the fly is difficult to exaggerate." it actually says, ""The impact OF the fly is difficult to exaggerate." Not a quick commentary on how bad the radiation is for the fly, but on how bad the fly is for Africa.
:)
...just saying.
The tsetse fly is a very important element in the preservation of wildlife in Africa - wherever there are large concentrations of the tsetse, farmers will not bring in their herds of cattle. If the tsetse was eliminated a major impediment to African farmers overrunning the natural habitat of indigenous African wildlife would be removed, and biodiversity of the region put at further risk. Anyone willing to accept for five seconds that the environment is not a simple system???
Here's another paper in PDF format.
Here's a very interesting excerpt, for all those who can't figure out why this might actually work:
Tsetse life-cycle. The tsetse is a unique insect. It gives birth every 9-10 days to a full-grown larva, which immediately burrows into the soil andforms a pupa. Thus the egg and larval stages of tsetse are notsubject to the usual hazards and losses experienced by otherinsects.Female tsetse produce at most nine larvae. Tsetse fliesunquestionably have the lowest reproduction potential of anyinsect, and this fact makes them a good target for SIT. A single mating provides sufficient sperm for fertilizationthrough the female's 90-100-day lifespan. Since females usuallymate only once, if they are mated by a sterile male they will notproduce any offspring.
Sorry, but the over the top claim that these are mutant flies begs a response.
The idea is that after the attempt to eradicate with pesticide is used these sterile flies are released to compete with non-sterile flies for mating privledges. Since the mating window is short the time occupied by these sterile flies should help reduce the reproductive capability of the swarms.
Too many people die from the disease they carry, and ignorant ranting about it does these people a big disservice.
Unfortunately it is a very common tactic of the eco-terrorist groups to portray something in the harhest possible light even when they know they are lieing. Seems that sometimes they think their view is more important than the lives of the people who could be saved.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
When i lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba (somewhere in Canada, for all you Americans) they did the same thing to mosquitoes. Sterilize millions (males, mostly), send 'em out to mate (they mate only once) and then watch the population plummet. It's a trillion times safer than DDT and the other killer poisons they like to fill the air with during skeeter season.
I can buy a carton of milk and keep it un-opened for 1.5 months
So can I, and I live in the US.
Of course, after 2 or 3 days the smell might start getting to me...
The non-sterilized (genetically engineered is something entirely different) flies chance to find each other to mate amongst massive number of sterilized flies is drastically reduced. Thus also the amount of offspring.
Moreover, if only 2 flies were left on, say, 100 square kilometer, what do you think the chance is that they meet?
Until the population reaches 0...
So basically they've decided to erradicate an entire species because they 'got in our way'. Noone else have a problem with this? I just hope we don't meet any aliens who decide that we are getting in the way of their population of earth and steralize my ass.
Let's start taking some god damn responsibility and stop fucking with nature like this. There must be some natural predators for these flys that will also be dying down, at least until their population can survive on other prey. Those other prey will in turn increase because of the decrease in predators....
This is what we call a good idea gone bad. Fine, trim down their populations, but don't god damn kill off the entire race. It will likely have consequences that we haven' thought of.
Oh, and these aren't mutants. The DNA probably isn't being modified at all. If it were, they would be mutants, kinda. Chances are that not all of their DNA would be mutated, like not in every cell and definately not mutated the same in every cell. If they could reproduce and pass on sperm with mutated DNA then yes, you would have mutant offspring. But they're infertile so that isn't going to be happening either.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Amazing, I thought whales had the longest gestation period. 910 days, thats nearly 3 years.
:-)
Wow, they live for 246 years too, imagine sperm that will live that long - girls wouldn't even be able to lie on your bed without getting pregnant, makes the giant condoms out of Naked Gun 2.5 seem sensible precautions
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
As said in the article, the first step is to reduce the number of flies drastically by using pesticides. Depending on the sort of pesticide (resistance) and the geographical situation (exchange of flies between different populations), a fraction of the flies might survive and keep the fly-population from being exterminated. Theoretically, subsequent release of sterile flies will eventually do the job right permanently. A bigger concern however is the use of the pesticide: in order to let this strategy succeed, they will have to use a very big amount of hardcore pesticide. The release of vast amounts of a very toxic compound will not only affect insects, but also plants and even mammals. Ecological impact of the disabled flies won't be that big, unless the flies have a grudge for mankind because of their impotency..
You do not exist. Go away.
Basically.
The sterile flies with compete with the non-sterile flies for resources. So some sterile flies will die. This will leave a lot more than 2 sterile flies left.
It won't screw up natural selection one bit. The most fit will still pass on their genes. It might actually improve it. Remember, natural selection isn't the survival of the strongest, but of the fittest. So the flies most fit for thier environment will reproduce. Yeah, there will be some blanks in there when the fit but sterile flies try to mate. But fit non-sterile flies will still reproduce, breeding a larger percentage of 'more fit' flies for the next generation.
That's bad.
This is what happens with antibacterial stuff. So the weak bacteria get killed, but the fit reproduce, and the fit are the ones that resisted the antibiotics in the first place. And now antibacterials don't work as well. Go figure.
Those opposed might do the same, before their ill founded fears keep the world from using a 40 year old, tested and verified idea to spare some 400,000 lives and untold livestock a year. Yes, ludites piss me off.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
When you look at the context (you *did* read the article, right), they are talking about the current effects of the tsetse fly in general, not the potential effects of the mutated one.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Using precisely this method. See
This U.S. Department of Agriculture web page
"The sterile flies with compete with the non-sterile flies for resources. So some sterile flies will die. This will leave a lot more than 2 sterile flies left."
That's not how it works. It works like this: The sterile flies compete for MATES, not resources. These boys are sterile, but still have all their natural instincts. Lots of mating takes place, but no fertilization. Satisfied but deceived she-flies lay eggs that will never hatch.
And, the way to tell if it'll never work, is to look at where it's been tried. This technique has worked very well over the last 40 or 50 years in screwworm eradication.
I know this post is going to be buried but I'll say it anyway:
/. FUD on this one. These flies aren't 'nuclear' or 'radioactive'. They've been steralized (by radiation) the idea being that there will be so many sterile flies that populations of flies will decrease as ones 'in the wild' mate with the sterile ones and don't produce offspring.
As someone who lived in Africa I can tell you first hand how nasty those flies are. Their huge and they hurt when they bite you. Fortunatly I was vaccinated against some of the nasty diseases they carry such as Yellow Fever and African Sleeping Sickness. Unfortunatly most of the population of Africa is too poor to even know what a vaccine is much less afford one. So any idea to get rid of the flies is a good one.
I'm ashamed by the
The Anti-Blog
OK, they give birth to larvae, not lay eggs like ordinary respectable arthropods. Principle is the same, anyway. Here is all you probably want to know about sleeping sickness with large drawings of the brain-eating microbes, from a professor at Tulane.
The World Health Organization's page on trypanosomiasis.
For population control, predators (including parasites) don't work nearly as well as the demographic transition. Learn about this concept, because it controls your future. Definition with nice graph.
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.
If someone wanted to really make a difference in world healthcare, they'd refocus half of the current HIV money on prevention and throw the rest into malaria research. If I recall correctly, more people die of malaria every month than die of AIDS every year. But malaria doesn't really affect rich people in the West and is therefore ignored.
On second thought, scratch that. Take the money and devote it to getting potable water to 100% of the population. Goodbye cholera, typhus, tapeworms, and river blindness, not too mention childhood diarhea. It boggles the mind that we can't accomplish this seemingly simple task. Then I realize that it ain't all that simple.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
In California, I'd say releasing the sterile (by irradiation) Med Fly was preferable to spraying the entire human populations with Malathion. And apparently much more successful.
cat