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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!
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
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...
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).
Malaria kills millions of people each year. You're wrong, present methods of controlling malaria are expensive and unknown for the people that actually require them. I'm not sure that GM is the way to go, but I'm sure that something needs to be done, not for us holiday makers, but for those people that live in areas where malaria is rampant and the average wage is practically nothing a day.
And I'm a little worried that someone modded you as funny.
That depends on the strain of malaria contracted, and even then it is in dispute. (It is hard to tell if certain froms of malaria are cured or just dormant without removing your liver and dissecting it...)
This would do more than just prevent it, though: It has the potential to erradicate it: Malaria only spreads via mosquitos, and it needs a certain 'resident infected population' to remain viable in an area. If a large enough percentage of mosquitos don't transmit it, less people will be infected, and the desease could just die out from being unable to spread.
From what I see they are being careful: testing in contained environments the new mosquitos' reaction to various situations. This could be a very good thing...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Thing is, anything that lowers the infection rate -- with the stipulation that there are no other unintended bio-consequences -- at the mosquito level -- is superior because every dose of the vaccine has an associated production cost, where mosquitoes breed for free. So if the disease vector is disrupted for free 70% of the time now (and perhaps a higher percentage down the road), this gives the researchers an edge the race to develop a human malaria vaccine before the damned parasite can re-adapt.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
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.
Am I the only one who thought General Motors had created a mosquito?
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?
Exactly. Because every species that has been threatened has evolved to counter it, and nothing has ever gone extinct.
...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.
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?
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.
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.
I'm no expert in this sort of thing by any stretch of the imagination, but if it was all as easy and as cheap as you say, don't you think someone else would have also come up with the same idea?
I can just see some research scientist checking the front page of
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.
Quinine is not expensive.
It's also relatively useless against malaria, and has been for years. Pity, really, I rather enjoy a nice gin'n'tonic in malaria-infested areas. (Tonic water is flavored with quinine.)
About twenty years ago (last time I was in malaria country) the drug of choice was chloroquine -- a quinine derivative, yes, but not quinine. Even then, there were warnings about some areas where chloroquine-resistant malaria was prevalent. That resistance is pretty much everywhere, these days. The effective antimalarials are also pretty rough on the system if you're taking them for more than a couple of months.
-- Alastair
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!
"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.
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.