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Fighting Mosquitoes With GM Mosquitoes
doug141 writes "Scientists are releasing genetically modified male mosquitoes that produce flightless female offspring. The male offspring go on to wipe out another generation of females. This is similar to the way screwworms were eradicated in the U.S., except with nature itself making more of the modified males. Field trials are already underway."
What could possibly go wrong?
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
We are basing an entire science and evolution upon genetic modification through chance encounters leading to amplified results over generations (and rightfully so), but we are playing with genes of fast-breeding lower level creatures like they were lego bricks. yeah. i can assure you there wont be any fast modifications due to the genes you introduced over the subsequend generations. ending up in who knows what.
Read radical news here
What about species (bats, for one) which feed on mosquitoes, or otherwise somehow rely on them in their ecosystem?
Sorry to break up this anti-mosquito party, but don't mosquitos serve a useful purpose in nature?
Is it OK for us to blindly eradicate them just because they cause disease in humans? It's not like mosquitos are going to kill us off or anything.
Or maybe not. Actually I would be more in favor of releasing wave after wave of bats. Fruit bats preferably, they're cute!
Kill 'em all.
Sock Puppets: damn_registrars=pudge_confirmer=jimmy_slimmy=raiigunner=cml4524=a_klavan=red4men=ronpaulisanidiot
You would think that some organization like the UN would step in and tell the US that genocide of an entire species is not a good thing.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I realize the motivations might be well intended, such as stomping out malaria. However, there is so much more harm that could come from this. Entire eco-systems mucked with in a bad way. There's animals that depend on mosquitoes as their food source. And then there's the animals that depend on those animals and the chain goes on.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
SO were gonna end up with mosquito's that now can crawl and bite us. Also how many other species need those mosquito's to survive?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Anyone else start to itch while reading this article?
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
The mosquito could become extinct in a few generations. Here's how this could play out:
Mosquitoes usually fly when fleeing danger. These flightless mosquitoes will not be in position to flee! In a situation where they could survive a whack by flying away, they will surely be killed!
Killed in enough numbers, there will be no female mosquitoes to produce the 'next generation!'
Result: Males will find it difficult to find a mate, resulting in fewer mosquitoes all together.
Folks, the mosquito could get extinct in a few years. Scary indeed.
The effort to warm the planet will increase the population of mosquitos. We have to eradicate them to enjoy our swan song.
Much as humans hate them, mosquitoes constitute a potent food source to smaller vertebrates. Mammals represent massive concentrations of energy, and blood is a high energy substrate. Mosquitoes are a huge power source of fish, bats, etc. when they're caught still full of blood, and they're easy to catch.
I read in the one of the article links that the ecological impact isn't expected to be a serious problem, but I find that difficult to accept. And there are certainly detractors to that theory in the scientific community.
Is eradicating malaria, West Nile, etc. really worth the risks? They may be highly threatening to humans, but ultimately we still have to live here after the mosquitoes are gone...
I, for one, welcome our new flightless female mosquito overlords...
Don't eradicate mosquitoes, they server their purpose. For example, all blueberries are pollinated by mosquitoes. You like blueberries, don't you?
In the end, the vast majority of people that die from disease spread by mosquitos live in some of the poorest places on earth. This may prevent them from dying from malaria, but it's unlikely that their countries are going to be able to feed a lot of extra mouths or stop many of the other leading causes of death. While this might be a step in the right direction, I can't foresee this helping anyone in the short term.
Instead of eradicating them, why not impose a strong selection just against the ones we don't like, namely, the ones that can carry yellow fever, dengue, etc.
If we start imposing a strong selection pressure against mosquitoes that carry disease, but leave the ones that DON'T carry disease alone, we wipe out the disease a lot more selectively. And we don't leave an open niche for something else (possibly worse) to occupy.
--PM
Yes, they do serve a purpose, they more or less keep the human population in check.
This type of stuff is what leads to huge problems.
Any time it seems that humans interfere in nature without looking at all the repercussions. We screw it up worse than if we would have left it alone. Just look where we have screwed with species before like the cane toad in Australia. There are many more examples as well.
Would it not be better to modify the mosquitoes so the pathogens cant survive in there body's. Do the light touch rather than really screw things up? Oh but that would actually require more thought.
Stupid Humans....
I believe there was a science fiction story that once something like this:
Some super space aliens/God came to earth and after seeing what Man had done to the planet gathered up all the animals and asked:
"If two of you will say that Man was good to you, I will spare him, otherwise he will be made extinct like he has done to so many of you."
The dog, stood next to his master, loyal in his hour of need. The cat on the other hand merely licked his paws and sauntered away.
"Is there no-one else who will vouch for Man?". Just silence. Finally, the mosquito came, remembering all the juicy meals it had sucked from that soft, hairless flesh.
THAT SAID I REALLY HATE THE BUGGERS. (I live in Vietnam and I had Dengue fever last year, horrific.) Where, oh where is that mosquito vaporizing laser demonstrated at TED? Can't someone buy the patent rights fom Paul Allen and develop it already?!
> Is eradicating malaria, West Nile, etc. really worth the risks?
Say that to a victim's face you asswipe.
Not eradicating a pest that kills children because of some hypothetical shortage of other insects for animals to eat is about as vile as you can get.
Every comment here should begin and end with "How can I help?"
You wouldn't have to eradicate any species and would give all the mosquito-hating squatters without a job a smug sense of doing good.
...having read the follow-on article suggesting that wiping out mosquitoes might not result in a significant change in the overall environment, I thought of the butterfly effect. It is hubris to expect that we could foresee myriad bad possibilities.
Just put the California Department of Fish and Game in charge of maintaining a self-sustaining breeding population of mosquitoes.
I wonder how they "genetically modified" their mosquitos? Did they use a viral vector? In TFA they didn't say.
There was a book a while ago called "The White Plague" and then the movie "Children of Men" in which a virus(?) is unleashed that made WOMEN sterile. I guess this is their way of doing the same thing; they (might) use viruses to change the male Mosquitos which would THEN create flightless (unable to breed) female mosquitos.
Now with the recent revelation that scientists have made a very lethal virus (50%! fatality rate) by making Avian Flu H5N1 more transmissible (the previous "problem" was that it didn't spread human to human; fixed that) it doesn't seem that far fetched that what they did to mosquitos could be done to us.
All said, I'd rather "die" by not reproducing than from a horrible virus but I've got to ask: Is this the answer to the Fermi paradox?
So the flightless females will just sit around the house, eating cake and watching soap operas. While the males go out and work to support the family, eventually dying at their desks from massive coronaries.
Whew! That certainly was cathartic.
Have gnu, will travel.
and then records a new movie called "The Mosquito". Guess what happens when his girlfriend finds out she's pregnant in the script.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Hehehe at first I thought you were gonna fight mosquitos with Chevy-brand mosquitos!
GM used to make good mosquitos a generation ago- but to be perfectly honest, the Japanese, and lately the Koreans make better Mosquitos.
Now if only Ferrari made Mosquitos.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
mosquito bites itch too much
getting rid of mosquitos will surely cause an over population issue in many 3rd world countries where they rely on people dying off early to controll food and shelter issues.. What they should do is release mosquitos in New York, GM them so that they will focus on sucking the blood of the homeless..
I won't post again why wiping out mosquitoes is a terrible idea, someone else has already done that but ill link to a paper in nature from the lab my partner works in. They are infecting mosquitoes with a naturally occurring bacteria called Wolbachia that prevents the spread of Dengue but doesnt harm mosquito populations. There are ongoing field trials going on here in Australia and similar research in Vietnam. Seems like a much safer option to me... http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v476/n7361/full/nature10355.html
A bit of trivia. The genus name for malaria's primary mosquito vector, Anopheles, translates from Greek as "useless" or "good for nothing".
Given that malaria has probably killed more humans than any other single pathogen, historically -- I will not be sorry to see it go, regardless of any environmental collateral damage.
...All of them.
...I can think of quite a few reasons why this is a bad idea, but I seriously hope those of you who said "but what about all those people that need to be killed off?!?" end up dying because of a mosquito bite.
C'mon everyone, this is a news for (mainly) tech nerds into hardware/software not wetware (sorry biologists).
We should be demanding progress on that mosquito vaporizing laser demonstrated at TED by Paul Allen's company. It seemed remarkably free of "side effects" and would not put a dent in the overall mosquito population (at least not until the "Star Wars" space based global anti-mosquito laser netwok is set up). They claimed that they could manufacture it (in quantity) for $50.
I had Dengue fever last year and I'd buy one for ten times the price (I know that won't work for the developing world but hey, what can I say? I'm selfish and one less food source available for mosquitos the better for everyone).
Anyone out there know how to get this thing "kickstarted"? How much would Paul Allen ask for the rights?
MALARIA FACTS Of the 300-500 million clinical cases of malaria that occur globally each year, 90 percent of them are in Africa. Malaria is endemic in more than 90 countries. Forty percent of the world population is at risk for malaria. Ten percent of world population gets sick each year with malaria. DEATH BY MALARIA Number of fatal cases of malaria each year: over 1 million Most common age at death: 4 years Every 30 seconds, a child dies of malaria Five percent of African children are killed by malaria, almost 3,000 each day, or the equivalent of seven jumbo jets full of children crashing every day. Up to 23 percent of African infants are born with the malaria parasite.
(http://malaria.jhsph.edu/about_malaria/)
Personally, I think killing large numbers of mosquitoes is a good thing, especially considering malaria is quickly becoming resistant to the drugs used to treat it. A reduction in mosquito numbers would greatly reduce the transmission of this disease.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
And sharks..and rats. Really, what would go wrong if we got rid of rats and sharks?
Remoras would lose cool points because they can no longer brag about riding sharks.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Why don't we eradicate them, and then reintroduce the beneficial species: the ones that don't suck humans' blood? Obviously it would have a few difficulties, but it seems like a sensible option.
Whether it's bad for the environment or not is highly controversial...most of the "silent spring" scare stuff from crusty hippies has been discredited, but there is not much fresh research because we stopped using it.
Looking for a job in Portland, Oregon?
I would rather have a opponent like malaria and tripple E than have crawling super bugs that can kill in hours instead of days squirming around.
Here's to hoping they get it right. Wouldn't want the world to end up like day of the dead or something....
As much as I hate mosquitoes messing with them seems like a bad idea. I know at the very least they provide a bulk of the foodstuff for lower tier predators such as bats and small fish.
Love Bugs... if you live in Florida you know about them and an unsuccessful attempt at controlling mosquito populations.
wouldn't wiping off mosquitoes will help to make future generations of humans even weaker?, as enemies will disappear, immune gets weak?
as George Carlin would say, "[because] I grew up swimming in raw shit... and my immune system is equipped with fully automatic assault riffles.. and ready to [deal] with the mother fucker [germ]"
I can see it now Mosquitoman. Would he be a hero or super villian?
This article asks the correct question:
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html
The real question is not how to eradicate mosquitoes, but how do we regulate human population on a world scale ?
Frankly, mosquitoes are small killers, and are a way to regulate population without too much damage, most notably where human's density is exploding.
People reproduce themselves at an alarming rate, without bothering about resources, which is a short-sighted view.
I'm not a religious nut, but I'm pretty sure that if we kill mosquitoes, another bigger danger might appear, like a very dangerous virus, or more probably a massive famine.
As resources will get scarce, their price will increase so much that only rich people will be able to eat normally, and when you have hunger, violence and war are not too far (I won't elaborate on human exploitation).
If you see earth as a giant living organism, you should realize that we are merely fleas, and we procreate at an unsustainable rate for the planet, doing a lot of damage. Somebody will have to pay the price, and it will be our grand-children.
The worst enemy of humanity is humanity itself !
Just asking.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
All that will happen is within in a few weeks, mosquitoes will develop two extra legs and learn to run really fast.
Privacy is terrorism.
I honestly don't understand how this supposed to work. If you introduce some unfit mutant males into the population, the unfit strain will die out in one generation or so. That's natural selection. And then you are left where you started. It seems like you would have to release a number of unfit males which is comparable (or perhaps larger than) the number of fit males already present in nature in order to really effect genocide. I don't see how that is possible.
...we realize in their absence that mosquitoes are a key niche in the ecosystem. No mosquitoes, no frogs comes to mind. No mosquitoes, no dragonflies, no birds comes to mind.
Great.
Can they do this for bite mites now... or at least some time very soon?
Bird mites may actually kill us off.. slowly.. very slowly.. one bite at a time..
'nuff said.
...on condition that it's only ever done after careful thought, planning and testing. (Oh, I guess it won't work then. :/ )
But seriously... in Australia we could do with GM solutions like that to fight back against cane toads, imported bees, fire ants, etc., etc., etc.
The Rabbit Calicivirus has already had a massive impact on rabbits in the wild, though being a virus it's a bit more of a loose cannon than hereditary impotence, and the bunnies are now developing resistance.
Personally, I like the idea of hereditary impotence as it can't spread to other spieces, and the only way that it can fail (as far as I can see) is if populations die off before spreading the mutation to other populations.
Of course, these options should only be considered in bounded areas, such continents bounded by water. Thinking that these options will limit themselves is folly. What I mean is... if you have an ant that is native to South America that has invaded North America, and the population seems to span across central America, then this kind of GM option is a bad idea, as the disease/mutation may spread from North America through to South America where it's a natural and important part of the ecology. But applying it to Australia should be fine.
All your manipulations are belong to me now.
Ever been to Alaska? Locally known as the "Alaskan state bird" (shared with Lousiana), the local joke is "There's not a single skeeter in Alaska - they're all married and raising large families.
Test them in Winnipeg. In the summer the mosquitoes here are so bad that you do not leave small animals or children unattended as the mosquitoes would carry them off.
"Nature will find a way" - from a favorite dinosaur movie. Possible ways include: diseases jumping to other (mosquito & non-mosquito) species; male mossies turning into females which have no need to mate. If the mosquitoes go extinct, I, for one, will cheer wildly. And I won't be a bit surprised if we get some "nature" side effects.
And please figure out a way to take care of ticks too.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
they tried introducing a new GM mosquito in Florida. The idea was that the new breed when mated to the old one will produce a offspring that is unable to reproduce. IN addition the new breed's females did not bite.
As it turns out the new breed decided to bread with its own instead of going after the old breed.
Now they have two breeds and double the amount of mosquito swarms.
With all the talking, and thinking, and sentience, and morality...
Technology isn't the problem. The problem is people who think "Nature" is superior to and more important than humans. The moment we started valuing and prioritizing animals and plants over people, we started to undermine society at a fundamental level.
This dehumanizing of humanity leads us down evil paths, and it makes it easier for the selfish and greedy to climb up on top of the good people--after all, they're just animals with tools.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Well historically it seems that when people see a good chance that their children will survive, they'll raise fewer children. So bizarrely: reducing the risk of malaria might reduce population growth at the same time.
Good. Maybe next they can work on eradicating Aedes albopictus (Asian tiger mosquito) and fire ants from the US. Removing fire ants from the ecosystem would only be beneficial since they are an introduced species that do billions of dollars in damage annualy as well as cause several deaths. They didn't even exist in the US until the 1930's!
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Fuck my morning math. Fuck it so hard. That's roughly one 9/11 every 30 hours.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
after all, with all the mosquitoes gone I'm sure the rest of the critters that depend on them as a food source will find something else to eat.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Is it really our place to decide that an entire species should be wiped out?
This sounds pretty well wrapped up, but I'm not convinced. Females who choose not to breed with the GM males will have normal healthy offspring. Any mating preference that causes the females to choose non-GM males will become highly successful. It doesn't matter what that mating preference is: if the males have a different colouring, a different smell, if they flap their wings a little too fast...it could be anything. And it doesn't have to apply *only* to the GM males, this trait could cause the females to select against non-GM males as well. The point is that any female with this selection preference will be highly successful since their female offspring will have wings and will thrive in an environment with very little intra-species competition.
This move could, at best, introduce an evolutionary bottleneck (where genetic diversity is suddenly greatly reduced), but I wouldn't expect it to cause extinction. TFA reports an 80% reduction of the A. aegypti population on the Grand Cayman Island in 2009, but I'd be interested to know if the population has bounced back and if the same GM males would have a similar effect again today. I'm guessing that the present population would tend to avoid the GM males next time around.
Wait... we were talking about Wall Street Bankers right?