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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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
[Sarcasm=1]
let's see - the Tsetse Fly is responsible for disease in millions of people, causing untold suffering. If we spread millions of Sterile (unable to reproduce = no offspring) flies, this means that the population will not suffer the disease rate, and so the native african population will not suffer the diseases and increased death rates associated with it. As a result the population will boom, and many more people will die for other reason, such as Aids.
So I guess you are right, we should not sterilize the flies and release them into the wild, crashing the fly population, and attempting fly genocide, because the sterile (unable to reproduce flies = no offspring) might cross breed producing dangerous young, spreading their infertility to lots of other species.
[Sarcasm=0]
you get the idea
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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
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.
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
Didn't you see the SNL with Jeff Goldblum that came on shortly after JP came out? After his monologue, he took questions from the audience. People kept asking, "What did they feed the dinosaurs," and he kept trying to tell them that the dinos weren't real. Laura Dern was in the audience too, and she asked, "Jeff, weren't you afraid in that scene where the T-rex chased the jeep?" And he had to give in and say, "Yes Laura, I sure was."
Clearly it was a huge coverup, but Goldblum cracked under pressure and the truth is out.
Dinosaurs are real.