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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.
>> 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.
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.
I think it's safe to assume the scientists behind this are genuinely interested in saving lives. I think it's also safe to say that the technology, once developed, will be repurposed by someone else (maybe neo-Nazis) to destroy lives.
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.
That's why they're aiming at a small subset of mosquitos rather than the entire family.
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.
Exactly. They're only targeting the spoiled brats, not the parents of the mosquitos families.
#DeleteFacebook
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)
"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
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.
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!
No, race is a social construct.
DNA is quite physical.
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.
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In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. - Charles Darwin
Nothing relies heavily on mosquitos for food though. A lot of things eat mosquitos but there is no species that eats ONLY mosquitos. Also, just eliminating species that target humans (a small %) will allow more human-friendly mosquitos to fill the role.
In all the many studies that have been done on this- none have shown mosquitos to be ecologically important to any other species. In fact- mosquitos are regularly wiped out in localized areas using chemical means to control spread of disease and no "food chain crash" has been observed. (although these events are short lived because mosquitos eventually repopulate from neighbouring areas).
The mosquito is probably the safest organism we could eliminate that wouldn't harm the food chain... ... they're also easy to breed and keep. We could keep some in a lab and at the rate they repopulate we could reintroduce them to the wild once Malaria and other diseases are wiped out if we noticed a problem being mosquito free.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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.
The Screwfly Solution has been proven to be quite effective, and doesn't require the introduction of genetically engineered insects into the wild.
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.
Not almost exclusively. It is certainly a portion of their diet (as it is for many species). They get more nutrition from tadpoles, cadis fly larvae, baby fish, daphnia, ostropods, planaria, snails, and all sorts of other micro fauna. Mosquito larvae is just a part of their diet. They're also not particular about the species of mosquito. Only a small percentage of mosquito species bite people. You could wipe out the dangerous mosquitos and leave "human-friendly" ones alone- so their larvae and adults alike can be consumed.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Does it really matter, if those carriers don't infect humans?
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
They are lousy for mosquito control, however. Researchers have analyzed bat stomach contents and mosquitoes are basically nothing - bats like bigger insects (like moths) or swarming insects (like gnats). Mosquitoes just aren't a good source of calories - too much effort for too few calories.
A bat (or purple martin) aren't going to turn down a mosquito if it happens to be in its flight path, but they aren't actively predating them either. The only really effective mosquitovore are mosquitofish, which eat larvae.