Slashdot Mirror
Florida District Considers Releasing GMO Mosquitos After Cayman Islands Experiment (accuweather.com)
It's already underway just 364 miles south of Florida, according to the Associated Press. "The first wave of genetically modified mosquitoes were released Wednesday in the Cayman Islands as part of a new effort to control the insect that spreads Zika and other viruses," according to an article shared by Slashdot reader Okian Warrior:
Genetically altered male mosquitoes, which don't bite but are expected to mate with females to produce offspring that die before reaching adulthood, were released in the West Bay area of Grand Cayman Island, according to a joint statement from the Cayman Islands Mosquito Research and Control Unit and British biotech firm Oxitec.
"What could possibly go wrong?" asks The Atlantic, citing history's great pest-control fails in Hawaii and Australia. But a similar release is already being considered in the Florida Keys, though Accuweather reports it apparently depends on the results of a November referendum which could also "affect the likelihood of Oxitec trials taking place in other parts of the United States."
"What could possibly go wrong?" asks The Atlantic, citing history's great pest-control fails in Hawaii and Australia. But a similar release is already being considered in the Florida Keys, though Accuweather reports it apparently depends on the results of a November referendum which could also "affect the likelihood of Oxitec trials taking place in other parts of the United States."
were made of wood
Unless the released mosquitoes are replenished, their offspring will not perpetuate the cycle and so this trial won't last long. I'm not sure how plausible this would be, but it would be much better to release modified mosquitoes who's offspring are all male. This would then eradicate this species of mosquito.
More anti-science hipsters screaming about genetically modified stuff. We lived through the Bush Jr. administration and there was a ton of clearly anti-science bullshit thrown around (e.g. stem cell research, barring the term climate change in NASA, etc). But this is no different coming from the liberal part of the political spectrum.
The general population should just shut their fucking mouths when they feel like spewing an "opinion" about something. Science is a process and is hard. It's about time we fixed our education system to teach kids that your opinion or feeling is not the same thing as the scientific method.
TL;DR: Voice educated questions about scientific stuff. Do not broadcast uninformed opinions derived from your safe spot.
Limited.
These mosquitos can't bite people - they're males.
They can't reproduce due to their sterility.
The DNA can't transfer to other things because that bit of engineered DNA is very special purpose, and does not confer any significant fitness to anything.
This works by having mosquitos mate (which they do only with their own species), and having the developing eggs have developmental defects that lead to them dying in the egg. The female mosquito is otherwise unaffected, but dies after she lays the eggs, as she would normally.
The males are engineered to pass on a gene to their offspring. This gene kills the offspring.
So as to be able to raise them in the lab, the gene can be turned off by adding tetracycline to the food - an antibiotic.
If for some reason this fails in a small percentage of mosquitos - nothing happens other than normal mosquitos being produced.
But, in the vast majority of cases, the eggs are produced and during development, because there is no tetracycline (an antibiotic) in the environment, they die.
Instead of this, why not just use the irradiated sterile mosquitos instead? Its been done before. When that is available and just as effective, why mess with something that is more complex.
Nature will find a way!
What if you created a genetically modified mosquito that died when it came into contact with the blood of members of the homo genus? Basically build in a kill switch that would kill it if it came into contact with a human. This could prevent the transmission of communicable diseases from person to person. Furthermore, if you made this a dominant inheritable trait you could also introduce a natural selection pressure that could cause the mosquitos to evolve away from targeting humans.
But that doesn't mean we won't get more than we bargained for.
I think you ment to say "Life will find a way"; nevertheless this rings similar to the story in the book and film where the animals were engineered to be dependent on lysine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In the original novel animals had already escaped from the island before the events of the first movie. The attack on the little girl in "The Lost World" movie adaptation didn't take place on "Site B" in the book but in the surrounding area, before the incident. In the closing chapters of the first novel, sightings of animals in the outside world are reported exclusively in areas where lysine-rich feed is available, implying that "life found a way" around the engineered obstacle. As a matter of fact, lysine IS used in the feed for livestock to control growth.
An important consideration is that this plan would only (hopefully) affect one SPECIES of mosquito. Different mosquitoes don't interbreed (much).
In an ideal world, this strategy would be used to control the species of mosquitoes that carry certain human diseases, while the others are unaffected, or even encouraged since they now have less competition.
If by some accident, we wipe out all mosquitoes everywhere, we just have to release new ones from captivity. Yes, it would be an ecological disaster, but very unlikely (for hordes of reasons) and easily righted if a problem arises.
My city drops larvicide down all the storm sewers three times a year in order to prevent West Nile Virus. (We've had no cases here and no positive tests in mosquitoes either this year.) So the bugs are gone and the job is done. But the flies are the worst they have been in at least 12 yeast (I can't say any further because I've only lived in this house for 12 years). The problem is that there are no predators in my suburb to eat flying insects anymore. Before the city started dropping the larvicide down the storm sewers there were plenty of swifts, purple martins, bats, and other flying animals that would eat insects. There was only parcel of land where some swifts managed to live until a last year when houses started being built on it. Now none of those animals exist in the suburb. The city could have encouraged more of those birds and bats to thrive here by giving away homes for them. It would have been cheaper in the long run instead of having to apply chemicals three times a year, every year.
Now we are seeing parts of the city where insect populations are getting out of control because there are no predators around. The city has to respond with chemicals because that's the only response left to them. The ecosystem is much more complex than what you think, even if you think it's complex. This plan isn't just taking out a particular insect. It has a purpose in the web or else it would exist.
Genetically Modified Organism. If you say Genetically Modified Organism mosquitoes, it makes no sense, and makes you sound like an idiot who doesn't understand science or the English language. Stop misusing the term.
Judging by the heinous misuse of the acronym, my guess is uninformed knee jerk reaction is correct.
Nice. So you live somewhere without mosquitoes, and are telling from your golden throne that the people suffering from Zika, dengue, and yellow fever should do nothing and accept their suffering in order to not subject your royal highness to any imaginable risk?
Luckily the government of Brazil doesn't give a shit about what you think and it is spreading GMO mosquitoes all over the country.
entropy happens
Also, there is literally no way that the spread of Zika will stop, so efforts like these are silly.
Care to explain why? If we reduce the population of mosquitoes enough Zika will not spread. It is as simple as that.
And come on, there exist no animal whose diet consists exclusively of Aedes Aegypti. If we eliminate it, they will just eat other mosquitoes instead. It is not as if there is any lack of mosquitoes in the wild.
entropy happens
It either won't reduce the mosquito issue, or it will collapse the mosquito population and have a cascade effect on all the animals that rely on them, and those that rely on the previous ones, and so on.
Other than that, really nothing can go wrong.
They are genetically modified to be unable to successfully reproduce.
(And if somebody says "Life will find a way", since that would require it actually surviving to a new generation, I will hunt you down and beat you to extinction with a T-Rex bone to prove the point!) (Yeah, ok, I don't actually hurt anyone, but I hope you found the comment humorous / humerus since extinction proves the quote isn't true in the first place.)
Science is the only reason you *now* know that to be wrong.
The species of mosquito that carries the virus is non native in Florida and most places it is found. The treatment targets one species. These places have their own native mosquitos that are more harmless, these mosquitos would fill any environmental niche.
Mosquito-born disease affects lots of people around the globe, but how do we know the little flying Frankenstein monsters aren't going to end up enabling future mutations that helps disease (existing, or new ones) to spread to even MORE people?
Because they are sterile, unable to spread genes and male, unable to bite and spread disease. And if it loses the sterility somehow, that's the wild mosquito now isn't it? This tech lest you target one specific species while leaving all the other bugs, birds, even other mosquito species unpoisoned. You can even only release enough sterile males to keep populations lowered instead of extinct. Wild mosquitoes can also mutate in all the dangerous ways you mentioned, at least as easily. If you let viruses like Zika spread than it can mutate into more dangerous forms. That is millions of times more likely than _sterility_ creating a reproductive advantange.
It isn't necessarily wrong. Camels may still be smoked by more doctors than any other brand, though I haven't checked the latest survey. The commercial makes no claims at all that the doctors are certifying it as healthy, and doctors remain human and free to pursue unhealthy habits.
This space intentionally left blank
The spread of smallpox is inevitable, so trying to stop it is silly. Eliminating smallpox will just cause some other virus to fill its ecological niche, so you'll almost certainly cause more harm than good.
This space intentionally left blank
Since the last century we have been releasing engineered sterile fruit flies to protect commercial crops. In the US, the Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has found it to be an efficient method of control. In Peru, Australia, Croatia, South Africa and other places around the world sterile flies control populations without the dangers of chemical methods.
This genetic manipulation method for mosquitoes is certainly worth a try. I've heard that some locations are attempting to import bats to eat the mosquitoes, but this might be more reasonable. It will be sad if the bats go hungry, so maybe we could increase the fruit fly population to compensate them.
...omphaloskepsis often...
We've been *over* this, people!
If the released mosquitos get out of control, we just drop mosquito-eating lizards.
If the lizards become a problem, we simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
What about the snakes? We're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
And the beautiful part: When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
They were one of my clients for many years, until I sold my company about ten years ago. They are almost certainly the most sophisticated and technically capable mosquito control operation in the world, and I've worked with hundreds of them.
Many visitors to the Keys are unaware of the potential for a hellish mosquito problem there. This is not a natural situation. There are few places that have such a concentration of prime mosquito habitat next to dense human populations. If the Florida Keys Mosquito District simply stopped doing mosquito stopped doing mosquito control, I am confident that within a year the problem would be so bad that keys would be largely depopulated. Tourists, even many residents remain blissfully unaware of this because FKMCD is also one of the most effective district anywhere.
One of the reasons the FKMCD is so effective is it has been willing to try things that nobody else has ever done. For example they did a study of how well common pesticides actually work on the mosquitoes in their district. You'd think every district would do this routinely; after all it's pointless to spend money on pesticides your mosquitoes are resistant to, but nobody does it but FKMCD. The way most agencies choose pesticides is they go with the cheapest one. And if that doesn't work, they use more of it. FKMCD *knows* what works in their district, and how much they need to use. When you spend a million and a half bucks a year on pesticides, this is a big deal: in saving money, in reducing environmental impacts, and in keeping people from getting bit.
FKMCD has put a huge amount of investment into rapid response. Usually when a district goes out to spray an area it's in response to information that they received days, or even weeks earlier. This is not cost effective because usually the problem will have run its course by then; the mosquitoes just aren't there, they're somewhere else. In the Keys if you see a spray truck you can be sure it is being directed from data that is about twelve hours old. Since fogging has to be done in the wee hours of the morning, this is the theoretical limit for how quickly you can respond to information you receive during the day. Faster and more targeted response was the major focus of my work with them, and they paid me a lot of money to achieve success at that. It was money well spent, if I do say so myself.
This cost-is-no-object approach enabled FKMCD to achieve things that other districts can only dream of. On the other hand, it has its downsides. You could argue that the agency doesn't have to be quite as vigilant as it is, and that its success was fostering a cavalier attitude about ratepayer money. A few years ago the second-in-command was caught giving a company phone to his wife and daughter, something which did immense reputational harm to the district.
Also across Florida in the 2010s there was a movement by Tea Party to gain control of local government boards. The "Mosquitoeers" campaigned against sitting mosquito control board members by linking them with Obama, and this proved successful, even in the Keys. The results, according to the people I stay in contact with, is that spray missions have had to be curtailed because of vehicles with worn tires, or even running low on pesticides -- something that was unheard of ten years ago. They've also had management turnover -- their long-term and very experienced director retired and the replacement left after a few short years.
Still, if there's any district that can do this pilot project and track the effectiveness of the results, it's FKMCD. It is the ideal place to try it. And you just can't go off half-cocked in the Keys either, because Federal regulators watch the place like a hawk. Hopefully this represents a turn to a more balanced approach -- still aggressive and innovative, but a little more cost conscious.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
They did such a good job another species took over their niche (annoying humans).
Horseflies, I found out the hard way when we towed a boat down the keys portion of the Intercoastal channel.
Every slow no wake zone was a feeding ground where they attack the occupants on mass.
Tho it's not like the horseflies, blackflies, deerflies, and gnats aren't there regardless. We have horseflies and deerflies up in the mountains far above mosquito habitat, and they will eat you alive.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Please, spread them faster and everywhere. Mosquitoes and what they carry are one thing the world can do very well without.
Even if eliminating a few species of mosquito had drawbacks (unlikely since they are one of many in their niche) -- consider all the pesticides that would no longer be necessary, and the net gain to the environment.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?