Glowing Mosquitos Aid Malaria Battle

kfz.versicherung writes "The glowing mosquitos were created by attaching a gene for fluorescence found in jellyfish to a gene expressed only in a male mosquito's sexual organs. Even if this sounds funny, this technique is used to collect all males which are then sterilized and released in areas plagued by malaria flies. While sterile female mosquito can still transmit malaria, the sterile males will mate with the females but produce no offspring, so the insect population drops. An automated machine, capable of sorting 18,000 larvae per hour, detects fluorescence inside the larvae and a puff of air will divert the males into a separate area."

Comments

So the conversation went something like this...

[tansey]

Scientist 1: "Ok here's the thing: we need to kill off these mosquitos."
Scientist 2: "Right, so how do we kill em?"
Scientist 1: "Well first we round up as many as we can possibly find."
Scientist 2: "Ahhh...then we kill em."
Scientist 1: "No no no, then we make their privates glow--but just the males."
Scientist 2: "Uh....why?"
Scientist 1: "So that they won't breed."
Scientist 2: "Right....but won't killing them also have the same effect?"
Scientist 1: "Sorry, can't hear you, this machine is busy sorting the 50,000 larvae I gathered this morning into male and females!"

Seriously, why would you spend all that time and money building a machine to sort 18,000 larvae per hour instead of just building an equally impressive FLY KILLING MACHINE.

I. for one

[Anonymous Coward]

welcome our glowing insect overlords

This just wont work!

[BottleCup]

Once the female mosquitos see the male mosquito gonads glowing, wont they suspect something is wrong??? I know my wife would never have sex with me if mine were glowing.

Re:I don't get it

[Romancer]

So what if we diverted all the funds from these people who are insane and just let out a couple highschool kids with freakin' flamethrowers and told them it was a game to wipe out the mosquito population.

Cost analysis:

genetically engineering mosquito for glowing gonad "feature" 5 million

cytometer detection machine that sorts mosquito larve gonad "feature" 8 million

sterilization machine to put the hate down on millions of mosquitoes 4 million

or

Flamethrowers and cheetoes for a weekend: 500 bucks

(plus the cost of tape and postage to send it in to AFHV later)

And to those who would rise up and argue that the mosquito shouldn't be killed off, just remember that a male mosquitos' diet consists of plant nectar, and they don't really need to suck your blood and give you, oh say: west Nile, encephalitis, yellow fever, dengue, malaria, etc..
It's the females that need the protein for reproduction and can piss you off or kill you to get it.

So instead of giving them glowing gonads, why aren't these guys altering the wingspan so they don't present a threat of contaigen or removing the gene that generates the "itchy chemical" gland? or I don't know, just killing them all off and accepting the fact that they were all living in standing water areas that didn't have an ecological influence on the world greater than the thousands of animals we've killed off already.