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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.
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!
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.
As far as I know, there aren't too many actual horror stories about GM animals messing up ecosystems.
However, there are hundreds of years worth of horror stories from introducing some species of animal or plant to help control another bothersome species. Plus many accidental, but no less problematic, introductions.
I'm not saying that GM as a species control is safe, but I am saying we've tried it that your way and it doesn't work well.
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.
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...
Your comment is difficult to understand, but I'm pretty sure you are implying that the GM mosquitoes will mutate and become some kind of super-bug.
However it is a non-problem. The modified flies have defective offspring, who also have defective offspring. The population will soon go extinct, long before there have been enough generations to mutate into something else. That whole extinction thing is the whole point of releasing these bugs!
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Partially agreed but...at the same time... who knows what doesn't mean it wont work...or will result in problems later, just that we don't fully know...and I might argue, can't fully know until we try.
That said, I think it has a real chance of working, mostly because of how drastic of an effect this could have by shifting the reproductive cycle in such a way as to massively overpopulate males vs females. If this works for the first few generations, it could quickly put a hurting on their numbers. This leaves a couple of possibilities.
Actually.... this reminds me of some of the talk of cancer evolution....in fact, its probably a good model here. To go from being a human cell to a cancer cell generally takes not just one, but several evolutionary steps. At each of those steps, a cell line could die off (either via chance or via a cleaning mechanism designed to take out mutated cells). Chances are, if you have cancer, your body came close to cancer several times before one cell finally finds the right mutated configuration.
So the chance of developing cancer actually is dependent on the number of steps required to become cancerous, down all of the paths that it can. This is an identical situation here.... it comes down to how close the populations genetic makeup is to being able to circumvent this. If it only takes one or two mutations to make females who avoid GM males, or to produce something which compensates for the change, then.... this is unlikely to work. Similarly, if they already have the genes required to make females that are not susceptible, then this will simply make sure that they dominate.
That said, if there are no coping mechanisms already in their population, and if developing them is more than a few mutations away.... it could come damned close to eradicating them. Once their numbers are vastly smaller, it would also slow the rate of total mutations in their population, making them less likely to make it over the hurdles.
It could work.... but... what that will mean in the long term is unclear.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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?!
So, for instance, we could create a way to selectively wipe out just the one species of mosquitoes that carry these diseases, while leaving other closely related species unharmed. Perhaps we could make it so that their females can't feed or flee from predators.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
That's exactly what they are doing. They are concentrating on one single strain of mosquito that is the only one that carries the virus. by eradicating only this one strain, they hope to eliminate the virus without eliminating the Mosquito as a species.
Just put the California Department of Fish and Game in charge of maintaining a self-sustaining breeding population of mosquitoes.
No,. What he is saying is:
"I don't understand the scary science or evolution, therefore bad stuff will happen"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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
We have killed ..., beavers, ...
I always knew shaving them would lead to problems in the long run.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The effort to warm the planet will increase the population of mosquitos. We have to eradicate them to enjoy our swan song.
Ever been to Winnipeg?
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Every comment here should begin and end with "How can I help?"
The attitude that we should just say "oh they say it helps people so we should help them do it" is incredibly naive, and in fact a very dangerous idea to have. If someone is proposing to eradicate an entire species, then we really SHOULD think about if it's a good idea, not just say "well it will fix some problems so lets do it!"
I have no problem telling that to a victim. I fully agree that we need to find some way to deal with the malaria and West Nile and all the other horrible things mosquitoes carry, but I think we can find a way to do that without ripping apart the food chain and doing God knows what to the ecology.
And don't use "think of the children" as a defense. Around here that's just going to get you mocked, at at best ignored.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
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
There are 3500 species of mosquito. You are asserting that if you eradicate ONE none of the other 3500 will fill in that niche, that even though things that "depend on mosquitoes" typically eat almost entirely non-mosquito insects, they will nevertheless also be eradicated.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
None. No species eats only one specific species of the 3500 different kinds of mosquito.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
No, what he is saying is:
"Many times before we've seen people do things on this scale that supposedly would only have benefits with no downside. And many times before we've seen there were in fact downsides. Why is this the exception?"
In other words, TANSTAAFL. Tell me the side effects are minor or are out-weighed by the potential benefits, I may be convinced. Tell me there are no side effects, then I know either you are lying or haven't thought this through all the way.
If you're trying to imply that GE mosquitoes will have some sort of crazy unforeseen consequences, those are pretty bad examples to make your point with. Neither of those really have much to do with genetic engineering. As far as I know there are a handful of theories for CCD, but no one has linked it to GE crop in any way (besides the typical crazies who blame GE crops for animal sterility, autism, cancer, droughts, missing socks, ect).
As for the so-called superweeds, there is no such thing. Maybe you were talking about glyphosate resistant weeds? That's certainty a topic worth discussing, but ultimately when you apply selection pressure to a fast reproducing population (like weeds) eventually you see a genetic shift, and it doesn't matter how. Resistant weeds have emerged in the past with previously used systems (if you think herbicide resistance in crops didn't exist until the advent of genetic engineering then you've got a lot to learn), they will emerge in future systems (although hopefully the new ideas of using a good multi-year rotation using numerous different herbicides with varying modes of action will help prevent this as it is mostly over-reliance a particular herbicide not over-use of the herbicide that creates resistance), and the fact that a transgene was involved doesn't change how population genetics works (although it has suddenly made it somehow controversial).
The immediate side effect is that there will not be any mosquitoes.
No serious negative repercussions are known to exist for such an event beyond that the diet of certain types of insect predators would be affected (fortunately for such predators, their diet is not exclusively dependent on the species of mosquito that this concept intends to render extinct). The net effect upon mankind should be positive, other than possibly causing companies that make mosquito repellent to possibly go out of business.
But seriously.... did you *NEED* somebody to have to spell that all out for you? They're mosquitoes, for crying out loud... and not some vital part of the food chain on which we ourselves are part of.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
We need a way to mod someone 'Actually read the article'
Vampire frogs. Awesome.
Dyolf Knip
I wasn't pretending to know anything... if you re-read what I said above, I stated that there are absolutely no known adverse effects to the elimination of the mosquito on mankind, other than the possible implications it might have for people who work for companies that make mosquito repellant. This much is entirely true.
Again, though... that is based only on what we know so far... if we always procrastinated with everything that we tried just because we were afraid of things that we might not happen to know about yet, we would still be living in caves.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'