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Mosquitoes Genetically Modified To Crash Species That Spreads Malaria (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that a controversial new kind of genetic engineering can rapidly spread a self-destructive genetic modification through a complex species. The scientists used the revolutionary gene-editing tool known as CRISPR to engineer mosquitoes with a "gene drive," which rapidly transmitted a sterilizing mutation through other members of the mosquito's species. After mosquitoes carrying the mutation were released into cages filled with unmodified mosquitoes in a high-security basement laboratory in London, virtually all of the insects were wiped out, according to a report in Nature Biotechnology. The mosquitoes were created in the hopes of using them as a potent new weapon in the long, frustrating fight against malaria. Malaria remains one of the world's deadliest diseases, killing more than 400,000 people every year, mostly children younger than 5 years old. What's encouraging is that the mosquitos reportedly did not appear to further mutate in a way that would diminish the effectiveness of the engineered mutation. "But the researchers stressed that many years of additional research are needed to further test the safety and effectiveness of the approach before anyone attempts to release these mosquitos or any other organisms created this way into the wild," reports NPR.
It worked well with cane toads in Australia.
They even provide entertainment for the locals, swerving their cars all over the road to see how many they can pop.
I am not comfortable with this, and feel that the mosquitos arenâ(TM)t just diesease control, but instead a test to rid the world of what the elites consider undesirables.
>> Why not just introduce another species to eat them.
While I hate mosquitoes, I would suggest caution. Mosquitoes are important in the food chain. If one species of mosquitoes are wiped out, would other insects fill the void? We need to think carefully about the ramifications of this. Of course, reducing the damage and death caused by malaria would be highly beneficial.
...massive amounts of Bolivian Tree Lizards that will rid us of the dastardly mosquito problem.
You know how sometimes you read something kooky and you say to yourself, "wow, this person watches too many SciFi/spy/etc. movies."? (That happens a fair bit here on Slashdot).
This article is evidently a case of "wow, these people do not watch nearly enough SciFi/spy/etc. movies."
Oh well. I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.
They're playing with things when they don't fully understand the consequences. I get that's how we learn, but you don't get an undo button
with this. You do it wrong and the consequences will be epic.
While we pretty much universally dislike mosquitoes, they do play a part in a larger ecosystem that all we ( as a species ) have managed to do is fuck it up.
Disrupt it and you risk a cascading effect which can have consequences far beyond what we can predict or plan for.
It doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to start applying similar edits to other species you may not like or wish to modify.
( Say . . . . from a weaponization standpoint . . certain pockets of civilization who carry specific genetic markers or traits )
Pick a genetic trait that only your targeted population carries, select a payload and voila.
Just hope the idiots who start down this path realize any natural mutation of their new toy can pretty much end us as a species in a hurry. :|
Is a faith based proposition. "nothing can possibli go wrong" https://youtu.be/7trn91xkJ0w
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
That is of course something to be very careful about.
Because it is, multiple teams have studied the issue thoroughly and there seems to be broad agreement that eliminating the specific species responsible for most malaria would have very little ecological impact at all. There are plenty of other mosquito species (and other insects) to fill the niche. There are over 3,000 species of mosquito, only three (0.1%) cause most disease.
A key there is something like chemical pesticides wouldn't typically target just the species. Hence the search for a very targetted approach.
There are all sorts of things that munch on mosquito's. If you kill the mosquito's, there will be other species that have issues. Everything from the mosquito eggs to the full grown adult, are eaten by other creatures.
Ten dead mosquito's, per cubic meter, ads up to a lot of biomass.
--
In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. - Charles Darwin
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
Indeed. Google the Malthusian Trap.
The great plague was actually good for mankind because it let those that survive live decent lives for a few generations.
Humans have a history of accepting new technology before all the issues are fully understood.
Scary joke: Maybe those mosquitoes will escape the attempt to eliminate them through genetic modification that occurs naturally. May they will become as large as eagles and need to drink all of the blood of a human every day.
All other unintended ecological consequences aside, mosquitoes and malaria are the main factor that makes wide areas of Africa effectively uninhabitable. Controlling them will lead to widespread deforestation, massive population growth, and probably result in famine and political upheavals. I'm not passing judgment on whether it should or shouldn't be done, but this is another example of Western technology radically altering developing nations, and I'm afraid the West will get blamed for the consequences again.
I read somewhere, and can't the exact source now, but there are similar sentiments to be found across the web, that the greatest form of contraception for those in great poverty is knowing that your children will survive. I imagine eradication of malaria would go a very long way to reduction of infant mortality in developing nations.
I'm doing my part! I'm not having kids, ever.
#DeleteFacebook
Score: +5, inconvenient truth
#DeleteFacebook
not because I'm single though
and not using Facebook will not help...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
By that the logic anti-vacation folks are the best thing ever. You are not being cold-hearted; merely following the good old “one rule for me, another for thee” hypocrisy.
One of the more popular explanations among economic historians for why regions of Africa are so underdeveloped is specifically malaria. You will notice that countries like Ethiopia that are located in more mountainous regions and thus suffer less from mosquitoes have also always been more developed. Plague and war completely wreck economic development, which ironically also leads to lower populations down the line for all cases studied to date.
As for Malthus being quoted here, cut him some slack. He lived a long time ago and didn’t sufficiently account for productivity growth.
Anyways, saving millions of children from malaria is all well and good, but what are we gonna do when the world population is 10 billion? 15 billion? Those numbers are coming up fast and will be here soon, definitely within the lifetime of a lot of people on this forum. How about saving millions of people from malaria, but then giving them vasectomy and hysterectomy? Also how about closing down borders and restricting immigration so the high growth countries are forced to confront their internal problems and improves things, instead of exporting their problems to better-run countries?
There are suggestive correlations between reduced child mortality and reduced family size. Professor Hans Rosling gave some famous talks on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (10m 55s in)
The scientists used the revolutionary gene-editing tool known as CRISPR to engineer humans with a "gene drive," which rapidly transmitted a sterilizing mutation through other members of the human's species. After humans carrying the mutation were released into cages filled with unmodified humans in a high-security basement laboratory in London, virtually all of the humans were wiped out
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
7.7Bn people on the planet, it's still growing ... Someone in power needs to think this through in a dispassionate manner.
Not in power, but maybe would be good to help these people get access to birth control (instead of letting them die of malaria).
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
"To accomplish this task, Chinese citizens were mobilized in massive numbers to eradicate the birds by forcing them to fly until they fell from exhaustion. The Chinese people took to the streets clanging their pots and pans or beating drums to terrorize the birds and prevent them from landing. Nests were torn down, eggs were broken, chicks killed, and sparrows shot down from the sky. Experts estimate that hundreds of millions of sparrows were killed as part of the campaign."
https://io9.gizmodo.com/5927112/chinas-worst-self-inflicted-disaster-the-campaign-to-wipe-out-the-common-sparrow
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20061130_1.htm
That’s amazing. You belong to a minority of this planet’s population that can birth and nurture highly productive offspring—one with net negative birth rates, mind you—and drive development for the populations stuck in a perpetual limbo. Really, the smartest and most benevolent thing you can do is not have children. *facepalm*
7.7Bn people on the planet, it's still growing
Putin, Trump and their friend Kim are going to take care of that.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Someone in power needs to think this through in a dispassionate manner.
The scientists COULD use the revolutionary gene-editing tool known as CRISPR to engineer humans with a "gene drive," which rapidly transmitted a sterilizing mutation through other members of the human's species........
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
If your or your neighbor's child dies of whatever, then you'll have 2 more just to make sure one survives. Thus why the birth rate is astronomical in places wracked by war/famine/plague/death. The push to eliminate malaria is in large part driven by the fact that doing so will cause the sub-Saharan birth rate to plummet. After lowering infant mortality rates, the next-best ways to lower the birth rate are female empowerment (enough to allow them to choose how many children they bear), sex education, then access to contraception (which is useless if you use it wrong because your instructor was a prude and assumed you would understand).
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Second-gen immigrants have FAR fewer children than first-gen immigrants. Allowing poor people to emigrate to rich countries lowers that family's birth rate compared to keeping them out.
Brazil's government gave out free vasectomies to any man that wanted one, and it was far more successful than expected. Other countries could do the same thing; how many 1st world nations even do that? The world population is expected to level out at ~10billion, FWIW.
I do agree that if every good person flees a country, then who's going to stay behind to rebuild the country or vote in competent/moral leadership?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Whether the population is growing or shrinking depends on the family size. Once the fertility rate goes below 2.0 children per woman, the population will shrink unless immigration can sustain it.
Japan's declining population is in part due to that fertility rate of 5.10 in 1925 shrinking to 1.43 in 2013 [ref, page 36, but labeled as page 70].
The point is to continue bringing developing countries up to the more stable populations of developed countries. Then global populations rise may then trail off and stabilize.
wasn't there a better suggestion where they modified the mosquitoes to not carry malaria instead of just wiping out all the mosquitoes?
The actual long term effect is population growth reduction. The high birth rates in these countries is due to dependence on children for support and the high mortality rate from things like malaria. Raising health and lowering mortality rates decreases the population growth
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's not population growth, it's resources consumption. Your entitled western ass shouldn't be blathering about poor people having too many babies when you're using 30 times as much resources as they do.
No distinction or difference from his point that that the sparrow "eradication" campaign consisted of....making loud noises. In either case, it's funny that you're attacking SB here when he's an anacho-capitliast.
There are whole regions of Africa off limits to human development due to being infested with malaria. With malaria gone, humans will move into these areas and do what humans always do: destroy the environment. It's going to be a disaster that makes climate change worse, and explode the already untenable human population.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Chill. Nobody genuinely expects exponential growth to continue indefinitely. Most estimates are that the human race will hit 9-10 billion within the next century, with growth leveling off over time and eventually stabilizing at around a billion per century once the time the world's population hits ~15 billion.
Will humanity survive? Almost certainly, as long as nothing sets us back technologically for more than a year or two (since that level of population can only be sustained via technology-intensive farming & logistics).
Note that this is against certain types of mosquitoes only. If I remember correctly, there are at least 300, and humans are after less than 10 o those.
By that the logic anti-vacation folks are the best thing ever. You are not being cold-hearted; merely following the good old âoeone rule for me, another for theeâ hypocrisy.
That's double standard, not hypocrisy.
And yes it is a double standard. The problem is that we can't do everything for everybody.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
No, race is a social construct.
DNA is quite physical.
To add to this, the periods of exponential population growth tend to come as infant mortality decreases. It takes a while for the population to adjust to the new infant mortality rate (by having fewer kids) since the commonly accepted mortality rate lags the actual mortality rate. This is in contrast to the west, where we are used to low infant mortality, so populations are much more stable. Once the developing world adjusts to the new much lower mortality rate, there's a period of linear population increase as the excess babies grow and have more modest numbers of kids and grandkids of their own. In addition to that there are still second order effects, like increased life span. The last projection I heard from an expert was 11 billion humans before it roughly stabilises worldwide. The effect of eliminating these mosquitoes would likely be an increase of population for a few generations only and it could still be counteracted through other means.
Indeed. Google the Malthusian Trap.
The great plague was actually good for mankind because it let those that survive live decent lives for a few generations.
He lived in a very different time than us. His theory was correct for his time, but not for ours. Technology has far outpaced our population growth rate since then. Also, earth's human population growth rate is slowing and even declining in many countries. Many industrialised countries produce fewer children than needed to maintain their population. While the developing world may be growing in population, most of the developed world would be shrinking if it weren't for migration effects.
We're not going to hit a Malthusian bubble. Population will stop growing before then.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Race indeed is a social construct and not something backed up by biology. Certain genes do exists at higher percents in certain populations though; so it is theoretically possible (if not probable) that a "race" could be targeted by a virus... it is a ludicrous idea though.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
So, a few survive? I guess in a generation or two (in mosquito generations), we're back to starting point, with mosquitoes resistant to the mutation.
If only a few survive then dangerous diseases like malaria would probably NOT survive. So it wouldn't be a problem if mosquito populations bounced back AFTER the diseases are wiped out. Mosquitos aren't the biggest enemy- the diseases they unwittingly spread are the biggest enemy.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Sarcasm? Because cane toads were a spectacular failure - they didn't eat the pets sitting on top the cane, but devoured native species on the ground.
The problem would fix itself if people would just stop dying.
#DeleteFacebook
Baby dragonflies feast almost exclusively on baby mosquitoes. If you kill all the mosquitoes you will likely kill all the dragonflies. Adult dragonflies are an apex predator in the insect world and there are likely a lot of bugs that dragonflies eat that we wouldn't want more of.
There are suggestive correlations between reduced child mortality and reduced family size.
If that were true then surely the great improvements in medicine and reduction in child mortality that happened from late 19th century to late 20th century would've resulted in smaller family size and smaller global population. Did the global population shrink from 1890 to 1990?
Not globally but definiately regionally. Without immigration, ALL first world countries would have declining populations. Paradoxically, countries with low child mortality rates do have reduced family sizes and native population decline. Part of this is likely do to better access to birth control and also to being less agrarian where large family size is not needed to work the fields. The USA is a perfect example where families of a dozen children used to be common and now are almost non-existent. It's rare to see families larger than 3-4 kids in the USA now with many couples having zero, one, and two.
London seems like a bad place to do experiments like this.
Antarctica would seem like a much better place as there is much less chance of an escape causing havoc.
Sarcasm? Because cane toads were a spectacular failure - they didn't eat the pets sitting on top the cane, but devoured native species on the ground.
Since you're unfamiliar with the ancient Australian concept of bleeding obvious sarcasm, I shall close the cash drawer at this time, cobber.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The Screwfly Solution has been proven to be quite effective, and doesn't require the introduction of genetically engineered insects into the wild.
They need to make a distinction between the disease (malaria) and the carriers (mosquitoes). Killing the carrier is not the same as killing the parasite.
How long until the malaria parasite starts using a new carrier?
Are currently no other species that host (however poorly) the parasite?
So you think the solution to a growing population is to give all the poor people Malaria? That's pretty backwards. Population growth is slowed by lowering birth rates which happens when people have better standards of living (e.g. not having Malaria) and when they are more educated.
Disease is not the primary limiting factor on human population, we have extra kids to make up for that. It's food and water that limit human numbers.
In all the countries where child mortality rates dropped they had reductions in family size. We just need to extend those improvements to the rest of the planet.
We got tiger mosquitoes invading New York. I volunteer them for immediate field trials. What's the risk? That we don't kill off an invasive species of disease carrier that bites people even in broad daylight?
Intentionally wipe out an entire species of anything
Read the full post before replying. Also please don't engage in mind-reading. Focus on the actual text in the post, not what you think is going on inside the head of the writer.
IIRC, Malaria is only carried by one species of mosquito. And All human diseases are only carried by 3.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Lowering the risks in premature deaths to children lead to fewer adults, as people tend to overcompensate by increasing the birthrate. It also means that adults are less educated/healthy because they have fewer resources allocated to their care (more spread out over more children).
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Ya, it would be shitty targeting at best, though; with high probability of collateral damage and missing people entirely who are considered part of that "race"
Something people would do well to remember- there is more variation between any two random people within a population than there are between the averages of two populations. That's regardless of diagnostic racial characteristics.
For the same reason that "race" is not a scientific construct, it's also a shitty biomarker for a weapon.
Ok, sorry - assuming your post wasn't just random rambling and was actually discussing the topic of this story,
Instead of saying "you think the solution to a growing population is to give all the poor people Malaria"
I should have said "you think poor people not having Malaria will cause a growing population problem"
Hope that more accurately summarizes your insane views.
Ignoring the rogues' gallery of their global advisory board in times past [jailbird, Rajat Gupta {and major jobs offshorer}, Philip Zelikow of the 9/11 Commission and Ernesto Zedillo, whom the Mexican gov't justifiably but unsuccessfully attempted to extradite back to Mexico to stand trial] the last stuff they funded, Oxitec, just happened to cause an explosion in the Zika virus wherever they released their engineered mosquitoes!
We judge the most corrupt here in Seattle by the highly paid positions they are eventually offered at the Gates Foundation . . . .
Wouldn't it be cheaper to use DDT?
Kill off all the mosquitoes, and what happens to the species of animals that eat them? What will they eat? If they don't eat them, will they survive? I'm not just talking about frogs either. Purple Martins, and countless other birds feast on those little critters, as to Praying Mantis, snakes, and other animals. Yes, Malaria is a bad disease, and it was somewhat controlled until the flood of so called refugees from Africa/middle east hit the globe, now it is spreading once again. No, I'm not a eugenics type, but there was a reason the oceans kept some species of humans, apart from another set of humans.
There is. According to the story, condoms were handed out in some 3rd world country, and their use was demonstrated by unrolling the condom over the finger of the demonstrator. It was later found that the people who saw these demonstrations were putting the condoms over their fingers and then fucking as per usual, not understanding that it has to actually go over the penis. I presume the demonstrations are a little more explicit now.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
The mosquito's in the pacific Northwest are slower bigger and have less reactive bites. Also they don't carry malaria, dengue etc. The egyptii we have down here in the south carry all of those and are so much harder to swat.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
I see a gap in the study. They kept them in a box and sterilized them but did they remember to feed them?
You missed the point by a mile. An increase in developed countries’ population is not the same as an increase in developing countries’ population, because developed nations generally produce high productivity offspring that trickle down utility to the developing nations. We have a lot of growth of the latter and the inverse in the former.
/. is doing anyone a favor by abstaining from having children is thus completely ludicrous, because it is this user’s children and not someone in a Congo village that are most likely to make people have more “decent lives” and increase productivity that again counteracts Malthus’s ideas—the two issues raised somewhere up there. If you don’t want to have children for personal reasons, knock yourself out, but you are deluding yourself if you think you are somehow “doing your part” in making the world a better place.
This idea that someone on
Quite familiar with the concept of sarcasm. The problem is telling the difference between a sarcastic comment and someone who's just that painfully ignorant. Thus the question.