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GM Mosquito Could Fight Malaria
qw0ntum writes "The BBC is reporting that a genetically modified (GM) variety of mosquitoes could be effective in combating the spread of malaria to humans. These GM insects carry a gene that prevents them from being infected by the malaria parasite and has the added benefit of providing a fitness advantage to the mosquitoes. From the article: 'In the laboratory, equal numbers of genetically modified and ordinary wild-type mosquitoes were allowed to feed on malaria-infected mice. As they reproduced, more of the GM, or transgenic, mosquitoes survived. According to the researchers, whose results appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, after nine generations, 70% of the insects belonged to the malaria-resistant strain. [...] The modified mosquitoes had a higher survival rate and laid more eggs.' This has major implications for the billions of people living in areas with endemic malaria. The question in my mind, though, is what effects on the ecosystems of these areas will replacing an organism low on the food chain with a GM version? Between the news we saw last week and biomagnification, could this wind up substituting one problem for another?"
I smell a trademark lawsuit coming from Detriot..
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
This is exactly what we need: mosquitoes that are more likely to survive longer. Now I need to go buy a better bug spray. Thanks, science!
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
I, for one, welcome our new bloodsucking overlords. But, seriously folks, those new GM mosquitoes will probably just cross breed with Africanized honeybees and take over the planet.
... what could possibly go wrong??
Alright! It's about time we found a way to fight Malaria! Up until now there have been no treatments for it. Next stop, mosquitos that fight smallpox!
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
Who would have thought that we would build a better mosquito rather than continuing to try and control/eradicate them. I am concerned about unintended consequences, but this is fundamentally a new approach to modifying our environment... rather than trying to kill them off and ending up hurting food chains, we just "tweak" them to keep millions of people from dying from them...
I think it is a good thing.
//now, let the killer bee comparison commence
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
This has got to hurt the already beleagured Ford Motor Company.
Skinner: Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
This is a really risky move. Sure, the mosquitoes are now immune to Malaria and will no longer carry it. But what if this immunity protects them from some other virus that is capable of surviving in the mosquito for longer? Now you have suddenly increased the mosquito population, made it harder to kill the population and made them carriers for some new pathogen that may be just as deadly as Malaria. Genetically modifying something that low on the food change can and will have dramatic effects on the rest of the environment. Why would we run that risk for a problem that can be handled through immunization and treatment? Sure, medical coverage sucks ass in the jungle, but things could get a lot worse if the new mosquitoes carry a new problem into all of the local villages.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Given, this will go a long way toward *preventing* future cases of malaria.
But there is still no cure for it. People who contract malaria keep it for a lifetime. It would be nice to find a way to *cure* malaria in addition to *preventing* it.
Been there, Done that, Sold the t-shirt to the next idiot in line
Surely the better solution is to use drugs etc to control Malaria instead of make some superbug that will eventually have some supermalaria? It's not as if controlling Malaria is an expensive or unknown problem.
I knew someone else would use that predictable, overused meme before I could!
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
that's cool
Now just need to modify the mosquitoes more to only use rodents as their food source (and not as resistant to malaria or some disease that's fatal to rodents) so that they will help reduce the rodent population.
Read up on malaria before making dumb jokes, m'kay?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Why do we have to create mutant mosquitos when we can use good old DDT? All we have to do is get rich, white people to get off their high horses at cocktail parties so the rest of the world can be saved from this horrible disease. Too many people have died from malaria because of Silent Spring.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
My question is "what about the other major mosquito-transmitted illnesses carried by the same type(s)? AKA yellow fever, west nile, etc.?" as I assume there is a limit to how many disease vectors could be prevented by this technique without introducing unintended and perhaps unstoppable effects later on.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
... "could"
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
There was an old lady who genetically modified a fly
I don't know why she modified a fly - perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who modified a spider,
That wriggled and wiggled and tiggled around her;
She modified the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she modified a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who modified a bird;
How absurd to modify a bird.
She modified the bird to catch the spider,
She modified the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she modified a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who modified a cat;
Fancy that to modify a cat!
She modified the cat to catch the bird,
She modified the bird to catch the spider,
She modified the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she modified a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady that modified a dog;
What a hog, to modify a dog;
She modified the dog to catch the cat,
She modified the cat to catch the bird,
She modified the bird to catch the spider,
She modified the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she modified a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who modified a cow,
I don't know how she modified a cow;
She modified the cow to catch the dog,
She modified the dog to catch the cat,
She modified the cat to catch the bird,
She modified the bird to catch the spider,
She modified the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she modified a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who modified a horse...
She's dead, of course!
The PNAS study shows an additional effect that isn't quite covered by the blurb above: heterozygous mosquitos (those with only one copy of the gene) are more fit than homozygous mosquitos (those with two copies). This means that there is pressure to retain a large number of heterozygous individuals, which means there will be a mixed population of transgenic and non-transgenic mosquitos. While this might help humans in the short run (a smaller fraction of the mosquitos you're bitten by would carry Plasmodium, the malaria parasite), in the long run it pretty much guarantees that people will still get malaria, and the malaria parasite will have lots of opportunities to develop resistance to the introduced gene.
So it's a nice idea--and it would be more effective than releasing low-fitness transgenic mosquitos--but it's not quite there yet.
As to fears of biomagnification, mosquitos generally don't deal with stress by producing toxic compounds (unlike plants, who only have that option), and the transgenic protein is a protein and hence digestable. So it's very unlikely that there would be anything to magnify. Instead of worrying about creating toxic mosquitos, we should make sure that when we actually hit Plasmodium with drugs and modified mosquitos and so on, that we make things so difficult for it that it really devastates its population. Otherwise, we're just conducting a transgenic-mosquito-resistant Plasmodium breeding experiment. (Plasmodium has already developed at least some resistance to most common anti-malarial drugs).
...why not just make Malaria-resistant humans?
For this story, Soviet Russia joke makes itself!
The only reason it hasn't been applied to malarial mosquitoes in Asia and Africa is that there are something like two dozen species to deal with, and each one would require its own entire eradication program and on a much larger scale (it turns out that Asia is really big). That's what's cool about this idea -- it's a slightly more subtle variant of what the US has been doing for decades now. It's just more targetted -- eliminating the particular genes that allows malaria to be carried rather than the entire insect. And it avoids the need to breed millions or billions of the bugs yourself and releasing them every year -- the insects do it all for you, as long as the new alleles really are favourable.
Very clever -- IF it actually works. Goodness knows the people in the third-world don't need to have Malaria keep kicking them while they're down. Any chance to reduce the size of Malaria's bootprint is definitely worth a serious look.
Unless you still live in a red state that denies evolution happens, you will have to come to grasp about the fact that the malaria will adapt to the new super mosquitoes. Not only will scientists have produced a more robust mosquito that multiplies faster, but we'll also find new strains of malaria living in them and passing on. This isn't a maybe, it's going to happen. When you leave an opportunity open for malaria to find a better host for transmission, you better bet it will evolve to fill that niche.
Am I the only one who thought General Motors had created a mosquito?
So, the bug now has less of a chance of passing on it's disease, but it still behaves in such a way to make it possible.
Why not make a super blood sucker that just thinks humans are the worst food choice on the menu? If the things didn't bit people, the problem is not just solved, but quality of life goes up too.
PR wise, which GM skeeter wins, the hearty disease free kind, or the just as likely to die but not bite people kind?
If they're trying to supplant existing mosquitoes with a breed more suited to survival, can't they just make them NOT feed on humans, for example? That'd be infinitely preferable, surely.
Meta will eat itself
You missed his point, completely. According to the link you posted, the current malaria treatments are often regarded as a complete cure. There're also preventative drugs.
This is a case of fucking with an ecosystem to fix a "problem" where none exists. More specifically, this is treating a social/economic problem as an engineering one. You don't cure poverty by finding new, efficient ways to print paper money, and you don't cure a people's inaccess to treatment by making different treatments.
The research is really cool, I just hope this one stays on paper.
At first glance this seems like it could be an advanced benefit to the human race. The thing I am worried about are the repercussions that will be introduced by this, however slight, mutation.
Mosquitoes are a major food source for other creatures. What are the steps being taken to understand the implications that could be caused by this experiment? It is possible for something of this nature to seriously effect us in a variety of ways (i.e. the food chain, extended lifespans, more harmful diseases, etc).
Confucius say: "Man who associates with smarter men than himself is smarter than the men he associates with."
Because there is no immunization for malaria, and it kills some three million people annually.
There is also no risk of a mosquito population boom, as their population is predictor limited. Mosquitoes also have a fixed life cycle length (4 days to 1 year) so there isn't a risk of them living longer and propagating some other epidemic.
I'm personally worried about a different problem. Introducing genetic information through such a rapid process would dramatically decrease the genetic diversity of the mosquito population. There could be some epidemic which would wipe out the mosquito population which would cause an ecological catastrophe.
However, I know very little about genetics and ecology so perhaps my fears are unwarranted. Does anyone out there know more?
As someone who lived in malaria endemic region, I understand the issue.
Happily, I seemed fairly immune to it, but vividly remember monitoring my neighbor's 106 fever through the night (more than once)
I have no idea whether I had any real "immunity," whether I had better habits, or whether the mosquitoes just liked my neighbor more than me. In any case, he got it (repeatedly) and I never did.
Yes, I know what malaria is.
I also know that there are (imperfect) drugs, (imperfect) practices to minimize exposure, and (imperfect) mosquito abatement programs.
The thing is, while these existing methods are imperfect, it really doesn't matter, since they aren't widely enough deployed.
It would seem that getting the methods that we KNOW can help to everyone would be a better investment than releasing mutant insects.
Google Australia and rabbits for a lesson on unintended consequences.
...same researchers found that their Ubermosquito had developed a capability of transmitting AIDS now. That was an en even worse disappointment than when Malaria had developed a resistence and was spreading as before...
And: Ask our Australian friends about what people thought when they released a new species into their country versus what happened really. And scientists really claim they understand ecosystems? That's what I call dangerous.
> The question in my mind, though, is what effects on the ecosystems of these areas will
> replacing an organism low on the food chain with a GM version?
Could be serious. The malaria parasite is a major factor in the control of the endemic species homo sapiens. Its elimination could result in a population bloom and habitat destruction.
> Between the news we saw last week and biomagnification, could this wind up substituting
> one problem for another?
Frankenbugs! Frankenbugs! Giant, 100' frankenbugs rampaging through the landscape!
Might help control the homo sapiens overpopulation problem resulting from the elimination of malaria, though.
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Imagine something going horribly wrong here... Instead of of wiping Malaria, a new gentically engineered super virus is spread.
Hmmmmmmm...
I kind of think if you live in a densly populated area, and right next door someone has TB or worse, and a mosquito bites the infected person and in a matter of a minute you get bit by the same insect, I believe you can get infected.
Viruses are not living things. It's genetic code with a protein coating. You can oblitorate it by destroying it, microwave it,
burn it, so my question is... how long can a virus stay intact when it's been ingested by a parasitic insect? And... under the
right condition can that virus be transmitted? I really think so.
...with the little bastards, why don't they add a gene that makes them consider humans unbearably repulsive?
Forward-thinking Coca Cola company unveiled a new Coke flavor to target this new and upcoming atomic monster mosquito. Dubbed "Coke Blood", the drink incorporates human blood. Also introduced was "Coke Blood AB-", and "Diet Coke Blood", made with protomater (Coke disputes the assertion that protomater is unstable).
Because the malaria-resistant mosquitoes will survive and reproduce more than the non-resistant ones. Eventually all the mosquitoes will be resistant to malaria.
Technoli
GM mosquito has a 10 foot wingspan and can drain an adult human dry in under 30 seconds.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"The lysine contingency - it's intended to prevent the spread of the mosquitoes in case they ever got off the continent, but we could use it now. Dr. Wu inserted a gene that makes a single faulty enzyme in protein metabolism. Mosquitoes can't manufacture the amino acid lysine. Unless they're continually supplied with lysine by us, they'll slip into a coma and die."
So isn't the malaria resistance enough of an advantage, why do they have to make it even more robust?
... so that people will both get malaria from the old ones PLUS have to battle the new and improved non-malaria type?
Genius.
I mean... just watch Mimic with the GM Cockroaches? That would surely make them think. heh
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
It got 30 miles per gallon (of blood), but the build quality was just awful-- the thing literally fell apart.
Um, insightful?
The big problem with DDT is that while it may save humans, it makes it so that predator birds can't have baby predator birds. Bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and pelicans were nearly wiped out because of DDT.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Sci-Fi could make a movie out of it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Because malaria infection is not a survival disadvantage to the mosquito as it is in humans.
-Nick
You fail to understand the controversy.
"Following World War II the worlds public health community mounted two ambitious campaigns to eradicate microbes from the planet. One effort would succeed, becoming the greatest triumph of modern public health. The other would fail so miserably that the targeted microbes would increase both in number and in virulence, and the Homo sapiens death toll would soar. Humanity's great success story would be smallpox... On May 8, 1980, the World Health Assembly formally declared that "the World and all its peoples have won freedom from smallpox, which was a most devastating disease sweeping in epidemic form through many countries since earliest times, leaving death, blindness, and disfigurement in its wake and which only a decade ago was rampant in Africa, Asia, and South America.".
A very different outcome awaited those who fought to eradicate malaria worldwide. Between 1958 and 1963 alone, $430 million was spent on a series of failed attempts to eliminate malaria. In 1991 dollars that consituted an expenditure of over $1.914 billion. Between 1964 and 1981, the United States spent an additional $793 million."
"The Coming Plague" Laurie Garrett (page 30-47)
DDT was, at first, a very effective fight against the malaria carrying mosquitoes.
"In 1956, malarioligist Paul Russell, then at Harvard's University's School of Public Health, authored a report for the International Development Advisory Board recommending the immediate global eradication of malaria.
Generally, it takes four years of spraying and four years of surveillance to make sure of three consecutive years of no mosquito transmission in an area. After that, normal health department activities can be depended upon to deal with occasional introduced cases.... Eradication can be pushed through in a community in a period of eight to ten years, with not more than four to six years of actual spraying without much danger of resistance. But if countries, due to lack of funds, have to proceed slowly, resistance is almost certain to appear and eradication will become economically impossible. Time is of the essence[his emphasis] because DDT resistance has appeared in six or seven years."
"The Coming Plague" Laurie Garrett (page 48)
Unfortunately, around 1963, when malaria control efforts were just beginning to break down due to the sudden drop of funding from Congress, agricultural use of DDT and its sister compounds were soaring. Resistant mosquito populations appeared all over the world. At the same time Russel was worrying over his new resistant pest problem, two people who were taking chloroquine(the current very effective treatment to malaria) developed malaria in South America. Almost instantly chloroquine-resistant strains appeared all over the world. Soon resistances to all forms of quinine were appearing as well as other drugs introduced in the 1960's.
"In 1975 the worldwide incidence of malaria was about 2.5 times what it had been in 1961, midway through Paul Russell's campaign. In some countries the disease was claiming horrendous numbers of people. China, for example, had an estimated 9 million cases in 1975, compared to about 1 million in 1961. India jumped in that time period from 1 million to over 6 million cases...
A new global iatrogenic form of malaria was emerging-"iatrogenic" meaning created as a result of medical treatment. In its well-meaning zeal to treat the world's malaria scourge, humanity had created a new epidemic."
"The Coming Plague" Laurie Garrett (page 52)
So at the same time while this is a huge opportunity to complete what we started in our original goal of eradicating malaria, it is also a huge risk, the problem we caused by trying to eradicate it in the first place will plague us for some time.
How about a GM mosquito that displaces the natural pest, and then dies out entirely in a 100 generations. Or is this starting to sound like Bladerunner?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
...is outbreeding the non-GM version, why? Perhaps we should understand that for an absolute certainty before introducing a 'hardier' version of the mosquito that just happens to also be malaria (or a version of it) free...? I'm no Luddite but that's a bit scary, eh? Laid more eggs than the non-GM? Great... That's wonderful ;).
Loading...
Saying your "phone ran out of batteries" is like saying your "car ran out of gas tanks".
On top of that, there is no mention of yellow fever, dengue fever, epidemic polyarthritis, Rift Valley fever, Ross River Fever, and West Nile virus that mosquitos are also known to carry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito
There is no way of predicting how these GM mosquitos will interact in the wild. There is the distinct possibility that they may breed hybrids with wild species and regain their malaria carrying capability, effectively becoming supercarriers of the disease.
Personally I think this is another silly attempt of man trying to play God. We don't understand the entire DNA sequence, yet we are chopping and changing the very few known genes with the vauge hope that a desired effect will be acheieved, instead of being able to accurately predict what will happen. While it is a nice exercise in a lab, and helps us understand more about genetics, it has no place in the real world until we can do it accurately.
Surely, instead of spending millions developing a new mosquito (that could potentially carry other diseases if not malaria), a better solution to the malaria problem would be to develop some kind of vaccine.
you don't cure a people's inaccess to treatment by making different treatments.
Of course you do. This new treatment is not a new pill and does not necessarily have the same accessibility problems.
It may be more accessible because we don't need to distribute the cure to each individual person (you underestimate this cost). It may be a good idea and it may not be, but this development is exciting because it provides a new way to save the lives of millions of people from a horrible disease.
Your argument is no different from saying that cheaper clean water and food aren't necessary because we already have those things. Surely you wouldn't deny a clean water system and better agricultural methods to a poor region? You might as well tell them to hold their breath, because you're working on ending world poverty (clearly, you're working against ending world poverty).
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
They just said that the population of GM mosquitoes increased relative to the non GM mosquitoes. I don't think anything was implied that the overall population of mosquitoes would increase, but maybe I misread it. I think the bigger issue will be when the religious whackos get involved saying that the scientists are playing God and if we tinker with his creations for our benefit we're damned to hellfire and brimstone. Boogey boogey boogey!! This does sound very interesting, but the questions it raises - cause and effect, not religious ones - might outweigh the benefit.s They should probably do a couple/few years of testing in a controlled environment before unleashing them on the 3rd world, though that's never stopped the pharmaceutical companies.
The people developing these mosquitos need to prove that it will not have any negative side effects on the ecosystem. It is extremely unwise to think that we will be able to control the GM mosquitos. I have the feeling that we should not attempt this kind of solution.
Because if you produce a mosquito that does not feed on humans then you are doing nothing to prevent the 'unfit' human biting (HB) mosquitos from continuing to feed on humans.
Infact you actually make likely a worse outcome, by limiting the HB mosquitos to humans, you encourage them to adapt themselves to do a better job by specialization.
As a second point the reason why the HB mosquitos are unfit in comparison to the GM mosquitos is because they remain uninfected by the common plasmodium varieties.
If this changes, via a mutated plasmodium, then the fitness of the GM mosquito is reduced to roughly the same level as the present mosquito varieties.
This leads to an interesting idea:
Each time a variety falls victim to infection and as a consequence its fitness drops versus uninfectible varieties, then a new uninfectible variety can be released, which will outcompete it in its environment.
Each release cycle should see fewer plasmodium carriers as a percentage of the overall mosquito population, it might not eradicate it, but it would reduce the number of human infections by a quite significant number.
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
Well we know genetically engineered clingons were a great hit so why not mosquitos too!!
I think maybe you misunderstood. The only reason the GM mosquitoes survive better is because they do not have their health compromised by the malaria parasite. Specifically
"However, when both sets of insects were fed non-infected blood they competed equally well."
They aren't harder to kill.
Why do we insist on playing god? Most of the time a species is introduced into a new area it is a disaster. Killer bees ring any bells?? So I ask everyone this...What is the difference between introducing a new species and genetically engineering a species to be stronger? This can only lead to disaster!!
If you make a better Malaria resistent bug, then only be the strongest strains of Malaria will survive. Now your chances of surviving infection are lower. This is just a guess but it seems resonable.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
Furthermore, 99 times out of 100, the extinction or addition of a species to an ecosystem is a complete non-event. We all hear about cane toads and cane beetles in Australia, kudzu in the south, invasive bamboos everywhere, zebra muscles in the great lakes, and so on. But those are the small minority. Many zoologists consider the region around Las Vegas (I think it's Las Vegas, some city in California anyway) to have the highest vertebrate biological diversity on Earth, because of all the exotic pets that have gotten loose and found their own little niche to enjoy. No famines or ecological disasters; new species almost always create new niches.
Granted, we should generally try to avoid these things just in case -- we don't need any more problems like the cane-beetle infestation. Still, when a species is extremely harmful to Humans or our interests, it may be worth taking the risk. The screw-worm fly that I mentioned is a horrible, horrible parasite. Exterminating it was well worth the risk, even just in terms of how it affects the cattle and dairy industry, not to mention the occasional Human infections. Malaria mosquitoes? Unless their extinction resulted in the worst ecological collapse in recorded history, it would be totally worth it. Saving all those lives, and gentrifying those parts of the world. Once third world nations have functioning economies, there's that much less incentive to hunt endangered species like Gorillas and Needlesnakes into extinction. I'll take the gorilla over the mosquito any day.
But I totally agree -- the GM solution, if it works, is much more ecologically sound. Not to mention it's probably cheaper and much less labour-intensive. It's especially good that Malaria is being tackled from multiple fronts: the bed nettings to protect people, efforts to get the parasite out of the mosquitoes, all the research into that antimalarial drug that can't be synthesized yet but works so well, etc.
While they're at it?
;-)
..
The males do fine on plant juices. It's the females which are the blood-suckers, which I guess is no revelation
But, while they are at it? .
It would be better to engineer a malaria parasite which kills mosquitos, but not humans. Then, we infect every human and animal in the area with this new parasite, and watch the mosquitos die! It's a perfect plan!
"Oh, this kind of "scare", "precautionary principle" actually led to DDT being banned in the world, while it had almost crushed malaria in Africa."
I don't see this as the same kind of debate, but I'm with you on DDT. The quintessential case of reactionary emotional responses overwhelming a logical cost-benefit analysis. For a while it was "DDT=good" so everybody decided they should use it to bathe their children and spray a 4" deep layer on every square inch of farmland. Then we discover that the stuff is having major environmental repurcussions and it's suddenly "DDT=bad" so it must be totally banned. Forget a pragmatic approach that might balance the incredible usefulness of the stuff with the potential for environmental damage.
Spraying it over hundreds of acres of farmland? Not a good idea.
Applying a light solution to indoor living spaces for mosquito control? Totally sensible with unparalleled effectiveness and = risk to humans vs. other pesticides.
Bringing back DDT for targeted applications is orders of magnitude more intelligent than releasing a GM insect into the environment.
Instead of modifying the mosquitos, let's figure out how to make us Malaria resistant. Then, introduce a retrovirus which the mosquitos can carry that will modify the whole of our population to protect us. In fact, let's do that with several diseases and ailments (damned 7 cycle limit on mammalian gene replication) and be done with this silly mortality crap already.
I'm only being partially sarcastic, too.
Nice! Never saw a GM fighting... what MMORPG are they playing??
Actually, what you were taught in school vis-a-vis DDT was nonsense.
What happens to these genes 10-20,000 generations out? That's the question that the GM industry can't really answer. Sure, the gene makes the mosquito immune to malaria, but what happens in a distant number of generatiosn through mutations and natural selection? Could this gene activate some unknown sequence down the line that allows the mosquito to become larger or even more fit, pushing out other species?
It doesn't matter how selectively you breed the gene marker, there is always the danger of some wild Atreides talent manifesting. Wasn't it Jeff Goldblum who said "nature always finds a way"?
THIS is the only possible result!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
If the malaria-resistant gene and the fluorescent-green-eye gene are somehow linked? Would the count of green-eyed mosquitoes necessarily match the count of malaria-resistant ones after several generations?
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
SKINNER: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
LISA: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
SKINNER: No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
LISA: But aren't the snakes even worse?
SKINNER: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
LISA: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
SKINNER: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Disclaimer: IAACP (I Am A Computer Person), but:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-70872766.html
"Plasmodium, the world's most lethal parasite, causes malaria. The parasite enters the bloodstream through a mosquito bite, hiding in the human liver before invading red blood cells. Ultimately, millions of infected blood cells explode at once, causing fever and death in 3 million people a year worldwide. "
Wouldn't it be a potential idea to give people with Malaria a large dose of whatever signal chemical the infected blood cells use to tell each other when to trigger? I assume they have a way of communicating that it's trigger time, and that one of two things would happen:
1) The (smaller) number of blood cells would explode prematurely, before the infection is at an advanced stage, and whatever bad things happen and methods of survival people have would be easier,
2) The parasites would become insensitive to the signal chemical, causing all sorts of weird results.
This is not quite the first attempt of this sort, though the other example I know about is much lower-tech. In Carson's _Silent Spring_ she reports on an attempt to control japanese beetles which were responsible for massive crop damage by releasing huge numbers of sterile male beetles. The sterile beetles tried to mate with fertile females, which did not work, resulting in many fewer fertile eggs being laid and the population fell drastically. This was much more effective than more direct approaches involving DDT and other chemicals which were killing other insects (e.g. honey bees, mantises), but not affecting the beetles much.
de Havilland wants the name back. :)
On the other hand - there are also several other diseases that can be carried by mosquitos and there is a risk that one of these diseases can be carried instead. Just watch your back!
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Eh, don't worry. Evolution is a myth.
- Kansas Dep. of Education.
Doesn't this scare anyone else? The GM version...is outbreeding the non-GM version, why?
Because it's resistant to malaria, which weakens infected mosquitoes and reduces their number of eggs.
It doesn't outbreed unmodified mosquitoes except in the presence of the malaria parasite.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But malaria IS the worse mosquito born disease to the countries involved and the mosquitoes only do better because they don't get sick from malaria. This is interesting because malaria would be the selective force holding the gene in the environment. The real danger level is about that of naturally breeding malaria resistant mosquitoes and releasing them. Natural mutation could make a more dangerous/fitter mosquito too.
Putting up some relatively small potential dangers as a reason not to definitely save many lives seems kinda silly doesn't it?
Unfortunately, it has the words genetically modified in it, so it will be classified as bad like golden rice. Maybe it's just ignorance about the dangers. Natural farming involves selecting and breeding the naturally occurring mutants. This can be dangerous! New breeds of potatoes, tomatoes, etc. occasionally revert to older natural states and become filled with poisons (they are related to nightshade). An insect resistant celery developed by normal means had to be withdrawn because of very high levels of carcinogens (its referenced in The Skeptical Environmentalist).
It is not all automatically good or bad. Real problems are complicated and involve thought.
OK, this is an off topic rant, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD can we PLEASE stop ending summaries with mind-numbingly obvious questions raised by the topic? This isn't a freaking high-school essay contest.
This is exactly what we've needed. They should start releasing billions of mosquitos into the major cities. Malaria won't stand a chance.
A different strategy I read about in NewScientist a few years back to reduce malarial infection was to introduce a certain gene into the mosquito population. Two mosquitoes carrying this gene would be unable to mate together (specifically, their larvae would not develop), but they would able to reproduce with other non carrier mosquitoes. It was calculated that, the gene, while rare, would propogate through the population with minimal effect. Then once popular, it prevent many pairs of mosquitos from reproducing, severely diminishing the population, perhaps permenantly. While it is certain reducing mosquito numbers would reduce malarial infection, I think there was justified concern about the effect it would have on many ecosystems where mosquito are bottom of the food chain.
I also once read about how one guy almost eradicated mosquito populations in New Mexico by introducing bats in houses near still water.
I haven't read in detail about the plan in this weeks news (I read my paper, The Times, but that sports the most dubious lacklustre reporting on science), but it sounds like a good solution which wouldn't affect other creatures. They've only tested the two genotypes competing in a lab however, with a virus other than the malarial virus, they can't be certain how the modified mosquitoes would fare in the wild. Wisdom suggests that the ability to carry the malarial parasite must be in some way an advantage, or mosquitos would develop a resistance by themselves.
i for one welcome our new genetically modified mosquito overlords.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
Why do people think that if you alter somethings DNA and then ingest said altered organism that you are somehow going to be effected by it? Eating something destroys the DNA, you don't absorb the DNA and somehow become resistant to malaria as well or part mosquito.
Now maybe the virus could change to better live in the mosquito's, and maybe because fewer mosquito's die from the virus, there will be more to spread other diseases.
But honestly how can you argue that reducing the amount of malaria carrying mosquito's is a bad thing? How can you argue that mosquito's are low on the food chain and that somehow that altered DNA is going to change something above it? Do you become part chicken every time you eat chicken? You don't absorb the DNA of what you consume, if you did we would all be long dead or changed. There are enough natural mutations that something as insignificant as altering a mosquito to be resistant to the malaria infection is ridiculous in comparison.
Again, consuming altered DNA isn't going to change you unless that altered DNA includes some new poison production system. Changing the DNA of pathogens is bad because they mutate quickly (they can go through a million generations in 6 hours) and they can share DNA with other pathogens (through mechanisms we don't understand), changing the DNA of higher organisms is NOT even remotely the same thing. Yes, I disagree with adding a poison to corn to prevent some worm because we are then ingesting that poison. I don't disagree with altering a mosquito so it's not susceptible to a pathogen and as a result won't be a carrier species for that pathogen anymore. Altering a disease carrier so it's no longer a carrier is brilliant, as the virus can't gain a foothold in the altered species it would have to evolve the natural way, not under selective pressure like antibiotics cause (a low dose environmental poison).
Imagine for a moment that they create a disease resistant mosquito, sure more of them survive because the disease is no longer is killing the mosquitoes, but the ramifications to humanity of removing the mosquito from the group of disease carriers would be astronomically beneficial. It would save millions of lives, mostly in children and the elderly and would be a dramatic health improvement in the poorer countries astride the tropical and sub-tropical latitudes. The only negative being that there are more mosquito's and those countries now need a larger supply of repellent, screens and camphor. Not only that, but without fear of diseases like Yellow fever, Malaria, and other mosquito borne illnesses, travel to those climates would be much easier for the wealthier nations that don't have resistance to those diseases.
There is a flaw in their logic. According to the blurb, they compared the rate of survival between the GM and the wild mosquitos. They did NOT compare the rate of survival of wild mosquitos in the same environment in the absence of GM mosquitos. NOR did they prove that the artificial environment was in any way like that of nature, which could potentially reveal other evolutionary weaknesses (or strengths) in the GM breed.
The only way they could claim an advantage would be if they could prove that the non malarial mosquitos actually displaced the malarial ones. But they didn't prove that. All they proved was that the GM mosquitos were better survivors under identical (and pseudocompetetive) lab conditions.
To prove what they set out to prove they would have to compare the "malarial mosquitos" on their own, compared with that of "malarial mosquitos" in the presence of the "non malarial" ones. Moreover, they would have to conduct the experiment without any artificial constraints, such as limited water pools or only one mouse per million mosquitoes, since those are NOT the quite the same as the constraints nature would give them.
A good experiment would involve making 2 seperate indoor labratory ponds with plenty of frogs, snakes, turtles, (malarial)rats, (malarial)mice, pidgeons, etc. Release wild "malarial" mosquitos into one of them, and release BOTH wild and GM mosquitos into the second one. THEN compare the number of wild moquito survivors [after a prudent amount of time], and see whether the presence of the GM mosquitos in any way changed the rate of survival and reproduction of the wild "malarial" mosquitos.
THAT is what it would take, and nothing short of it.
EVEN IF they proved that the GM mosquitos displaced the wild "malarial" mosquitos, it would still be unclear that they should be released into the wild, considering that mosquitos are a pest, and doing something to make a pest more robust is potentially making it more difficult to control. In particular, some strains of mosquito can purportedly carry west nile or other disease, which could mean there would be a tradeoff, rather than a clear victory in the war against mosquito-born pestilence.
All that being said, without further testing, it would be a really foolish mistake to release those GM mosquitos into the wild.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
What you quote is absolutely correct, as far as it goes, but from having read deeper, it seems that the following is true:
Original mosquito + malaria parasite = sick mosquito
ie. the malaria parasite carrying insect isn't healthy enough to compete with the immune insect. If a GM mozzie meets an uninfected original mozzie, then the playing field is equal, and neither has an advantage.
I can't tell if you simply misread the article, or you're deliberately misquoting in order to run an agenda, however I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
...is mosquitoes genetically modified to not bite humans.
Lets really modify them!
Lets make them immunize people too! They could be a free drug factory for third world countries.
A wild population of insects was tested by nature and evolution - they were tried and found true! If a mix of wild and GM mosquitos shows a better survival of the GM type you should have learned that your lab-conditions are not replicating the wild and not conclude that your GM moquitos are better! Envorinmentally and ecologically a better method to fight Malaria is to eradicate insects by the Sterile Insect Technology (SIT) as developed by the Laboratories of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This method has no other consequences on the environment but eradicating a single species out of a familyof hundreds. This was succesfully proved by the eradication of the TseTse Fly from Sansibar and the eradication of the Screw-worm Fly from Lybia. http://www-naweb.iaea.org/nafa/ipc/index.html Bill Gates should not have donated to a vaccine-company (which he bought himself before) but to the SIT for mosquitos which is being developed by the IAEA Labs in cooperation with the Center of Desease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, the Queen Mary University, London and the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands
The paper from John Hopkins on malaria-resistant mosquitoes is exciting but still a long way from the field. There remains the technical challenge of spreading a new gene through a mosquito population and the regulatory challenge of determining the potential risks of such an activity. There is an alternate genetic strategy being pursued by a spin-out company from Oxford University called Oxitec. Oxitec's approach would be to release sterile male mosquitoes (only females bite) to mate with wild females. The progeny (larvae) do not develop and the population crashes - reducing bites as well as disease transmission.Oxitec is focusing on the Aedes mosquito that spreads dengue fever, chikungunya and yellow fever as a first target. This approach is simpler from a technical and regulatory perspective - there will be no persistence of the introduced genes in the population.
I, for one, welcome our new mutant mosquito overlords.