Engineered Mosquitoes Could Wipe Out Dengue Fever

Christina Valencia points us to a Wired story about scientists who plan to use genetically modified mosquitoes to reduce the population of Dengue-carrying insects. The altered genes cause newly born mosquitoes to die before they are able to breed if they are not supplied with a crucial antibiotic. This is a more aggressive approach than the anti-Malaria work we discussed last year. From Wired: "Mosquitoes pass dengue fever to up to 100 million people each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Up to 5 million die. If the scientists can replicate their results in real field conditions, their technology could kill half of the next generation of dengue mosquitoes, which scientists say would significantly reduce the spread of the disease. If all goes well the company envisions releasing the insects in Malaysia on a large scale in three years."

Comments

Jeff Goldblum is Always Right

[CheeseburgerBrown]

That's why I always carry an Apple laptop in the event of belligent extra-terrestrials, and why I get off on belittling Bill Murray's accomplishments as an explorer.

Spielberg be my shepherd I heard if there first: "Life will find a way..."

Re:Ripple Effect

[ChromeAeonium]

Sorry if that sounds unenlightened. That's not unenlightened at all. What's unenlightened (or rather, naïve) is people claiming they wouldn't do the same. Its easy to talk about all the long lasting effects this might have when the problem is on a different continent, but I bet they'd change their tune if the problem was in their backyard.
What gets me is these people saying, 'Well, if you support this, you don't like the environment.' Bullshit, I love nature, I'm just not a hypocrite, and unless these people doing something equivalent to dying of malaria for the environment (and obviously they're not, because electronic devices like computers contribute to the destruction of the environment), then that's all they are, hypocrites.