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Google Has a Plan To Eliminate Mosquitoes Around the World (bloombergquint.com)
Zorro shares a report: Silicon Valley researchers are attacking flying bloodsuckers in California's Fresno County. It's the first salvo in an unlikely war for Google parent Alphabet: eradicating mosquito-borne diseases around the world. A white high-top Mercedes van winds its way through the suburban sprawl and strip malls as a swarm of male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes shoot out of a black plastic tube on the passenger-side window. These pests are tiny and, with a wingspan of just a few millimeters, all but invisible. "You hear that little beating sound?" says Kathleen Parkes, a spokesperson for Verily Life Sciences, a unit of Alphabet. She's trailing the van in her car, the windows down. "Like a duh-duh-duh? That's the release of the mosquitoes."
Jacob Crawford, a Verily senior scientist riding with Parkes, begins describing a mosquito-control technique with dazzling potential. These particular vermin, he explains, were bred in the ultra-high-tech surroundings of Verily's automated mosquito rearing system, 200 miles away in South San Francisco. They were infected with Wolbachia, a common bacterium. When those 80,000 lab-bred Wolbachia-infected, male mosquitoes mate with their counterpart females in the wild, the result is stealth annihilation: the offspring never hatch. Better make that 79,999. "One just hit the windshield," says Crawford. Mosquito-borne disease eradication is serious stuff for Alphabet, though it is just one of many of the company's forays into health care and life sciences.
Jacob Crawford, a Verily senior scientist riding with Parkes, begins describing a mosquito-control technique with dazzling potential. These particular vermin, he explains, were bred in the ultra-high-tech surroundings of Verily's automated mosquito rearing system, 200 miles away in South San Francisco. They were infected with Wolbachia, a common bacterium. When those 80,000 lab-bred Wolbachia-infected, male mosquitoes mate with their counterpart females in the wild, the result is stealth annihilation: the offspring never hatch. Better make that 79,999. "One just hit the windshield," says Crawford. Mosquito-borne disease eradication is serious stuff for Alphabet, though it is just one of many of the company's forays into health care and life sciences.
...can you equip them to get rid of the mosquitoes too? They're getting annoying. You can at least make them less annoying by getting rid of the mosquitoes.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Do you want fewer mosquitoes, for at least a little while, or not?
If so, shaddup!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Zika wasn't a problem in South America until the Sharks lost the Stanley Cup in seven games.
Sure, where these are not native, eliminating them not too long after they turn up is probably not going to kill anything else. But where they are native, somethings will hunt them and they may have other functions. In the worst case, you get a chain reaction and a lot of things change. This may well make the situation worse.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Right. Vaccines and antibiotics should be the next to go. Nature, as it comes at us, is the best possible state. Who authorized genocide on the polio virus anyway? #poliovirusrightsnow
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Wow, you sound like you know a lot about nature. Tell us more about "moskitoes" and their importance to the world's ecosystems.
But we can't adequately keep track of variables in software we've written.
Isn't it perhaps a tad presumptuous to think that we've taken into account all the variables in our reverse engineering of nature? I appreciate this mindset would mean no progress - but perhaps a halfway house, where we're not... yanno... attempting to make a massive modification, like "killing off an entire species"?
Depends on the numbers and the details. Usually these world-improvers are bright eyed hacks that get it wrong and make things worse, sometimes massively so.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Do you want fewer mosquitoes, for at least a little while, or not?
If so, shaddup!
No, I'd rather maintain a reasonable amount of biodiversity.
If mosquitoes went extinct: Mosquito larvae are very important in aquatic ecology. Many other insects and small fish feed on them and the loss of that food source would cause their numbers to decline as well. Anything that feeds on them, such as game fish, raptorial birds, etc. would in turn suffer too. Mosquitoes can be wiped out but the ecological damage that would be necessary (draining swamps/wetlands, applying pesticides over wide areas), along with strict regulatory enforcement, would make eradication not worth it unless there was a very serious public health emergency.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
> Usually these world-improvers are bright eyed hacks that get it wrong and make things worse, sometimes massively so.
Citation needed. Similar "bright eyed hacks" wiped out polio and smallpox, and are trying to do the same to malaria.
Hence the proverb, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Nahh it just works and not much markup at this point seeing as all the patents are expired.
> Zika wasn't a problem in South America until genetically modified mosquito were released in Brazil.
That smells like bullshit. Got any proof other than a random tinfoil shoutout from an anonymous coward account? Doing a few searches shows that this sounds like a new wingnut talking point, ignoring actual facts.
a) The people doing that were definitely not bright-eyed hacks.
b) Nothing else depends on Polio and Smallpox being there. Eradicating a disease and eradicating a species are two very different things.
Knowledge on your side needed, not a citation.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
this exactly.
There are many cases where humans introducing something or removing something has had a severe negative impact on ecosystems, causing us to further mess with the ecosystem to try and mitigate the issues caused by our mitigations.
Hawaii and mongoose is a very easy obvious one,and there are many many more like that.
Has Google given any thought to what eliminating mosquitoes does to the food chain? Bats eat them. Some birds eat them. I'd guess that spiders eat them. What happens to the creatures who have a (potentially) major source of their food just disappear?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
"Citation needed. Similar "bright eyed hacks" wiped out polio and smallpox, and are trying to do the same to malaria."
That was last millennium. Nowadays people are too stupid to vax their kids, fearing they catch autism.
Not a religious person, but, amen brother.
Don't forget arsenic, it's all natural and a great substitute for sugar on your sugar cookies! And all natural botulinin, and all natural radon gas in your basement
#naturallife4eva!
Seriously though, Slashdot really needs to have a hard look at removing AC posting. Just look at all the crap comments on this topic and others, all of them are ACs and more than a few of them seem to be bot directed.
I would love to analyse the project. It sounds like an entitled millenial is about to do something stupid in the name of humanity again.
Unfortunately, I have an abundance of brain cells that I simply choose to ignore, so I will ask: Why?
See, you're going to have to lay out some clear definitions here. Is it really "screwing with nature" to genetically engineer a variant of mosquito to displace disease carriers? What about widespread spraying of pesticides? Destroying swamplands? Building cities? Building a house? What about a crude shelter in the woods? Just a cooking fire?
Humanity's history is defined by our ability to screw with nature. The entirety of our technological progress is simply enabling ourselves to screw with nature in new and faster ways. Without that, there simply wouldn't be any human civilization. Where do we draw the line between acceptable progress and a "terrible idea". Perhaps more importantly, why should the line be precisely there?
I'd certainly agree that the more wide-reaching the potential consequences, the more caution must be exercised, but I can't advocate arbitrarily limiting any technology just to preserve a romantic notion of "nature".
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I really wanted a mosquito laser cannon.
Typical "let's bomb the shit out of it" US approach.
Many birds, other insects, fish eat mosquitoes and their larvae. For these creatures, mosquitoes serve as food. You'd be affecting the ecosystem. Besides, not all mosquitoes carry said diseases.
Otherwise why not also eradicate mammalian borne diseases by killing all dogs, racoons, possums and other potentially rabid animals globally?
You don't have to wipe out all mosquito species to eliminate the ones that spread human disease... I think there are only 6 or so that bite humans. Many of them would be considered invasive species in the Americas. These techniques are actually more selective than spraying and draining wetlands, which are the historical methods of mosquito control.
I am an atheist, but thanks.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Guam and tree snakes.
Zika was first identified in humans in early 50s. It in was identified in South American in 2007, long before the modified mesquito experiment.
I hate fat people.
Do you want fewer mosquitoes, for at least a little while, or not?
If so, shaddup!
No, I'd rather maintain a reasonable amount of biodiversity.
If mosquitoes went extinct: Mosquito larvae are very important in aquatic ecology. Many other insects and small fish feed on them and the loss of that food source would cause their numbers to decline as well. Anything that feeds on them, such as game fish, raptorial birds, etc. would in turn suffer too. Mosquitoes can be wiped out but the ecological damage that would be necessary (draining swamps/wetlands, applying pesticides over wide areas), along with strict regulatory enforcement, would make eradication not worth it unless there was a very serious public health emergency.
The food source part is highly dubious, and the later part is completely unaffected by the method being tested.
Not one weird accusation or mention of his personal software business. If someone knows APK in real life, check to see if he's okay.
Ya but then the gorillas will just die when winter comes along...
So replace them with mosquitoes that fills the same ecological niche but doesn't carry malaria?
this exactly.
No, not at all. The targeted species, Aedes aegypti, is African, and IS NOT NATIVE TO CALIFORNIA. So there should be no negative repercussions from wiping it out. There are plenty of native species of mosquitoes (which are not disease vectors) that will be happy to fill the vacated niche.
Although the targeted A. aegypti will develop resistance, in the meantime, the temporary drop in their population may be enough to disrupt the spread of diseases. The spread of vector-borne diseases goes down as the reciprocal of the square of the vector population. For many of these diseases, R0 is already less than one, so this may be a way to lick'em for good.
Hawaii and mongoose is a very easy obvious one ...
Before the arrival of Europeans, Hawaii had zero mosquitoes. All the mosquitoes there should be wiped out. Then we can start working on the mongooses.
For the record, they're targeting Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, not Anopheles which is the species which carries malaria. Ae aegypti carry yellow fever virus, dengue virus chikungunya virus and Zika viruses. Interestingly Ae aegypti are considered invasive species originally native to Asia. So eradicating them, really shouldn't impact the environment.
a) What's your strict definition of "bright-eyed hacks" vs "oracle genius"? What qualifies Jonas Salks and not Dr. Jacob Crawford?
b) There are very specific species of mosquitoes that are targeted here. Also, nobody knew what eliminating a Polio would do, they just did it. The world adjusted by having more people live.
Doubtful. They are mosquitos. Why wouldn't they best understand the impact of wiping them?
Google breeding billions of blood-sucking mosquitoes and foisting them off on suburbs!
"don't be evil", my ass
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If you ask any biologist, the consensus is that if every mosquito worldwide dropped dead, nothing significant would happen to any biological systems. They're just a nuisance.
why on Earth would you want to evolve mosquitoes that are impervious to laser-fire?!! That's just daft.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Alexa, eliminate species #29048"
Table-ized A.I.
This is different from drugs killing large percent of the population, leaving behind immunized populations to propagate. These sterile mosquitoes, fight for and win females and resources and then squander them. So even if a rare mutated immunized mosquito is formed, it is not likely to get far. Its progeny need to find similar immunized males to propagate the immunity. In the drug based fight, ALL surviving insects have immunity. Here the individual with immunity is likely to mate with one without immunity and the mutation will not propagate much further.
For beneficial mutations to propagate, the vast majority of the matings should take place between individuals genetically more distant than the first cousin and closer than third cousin, second cousin seems to form the ideal distance. Closer than first cousins, deleterious mutations propagate faster taking away any benefit from beneficial mutations.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Their heads are too small to hold them. Try sharks instead.
Table-ized A.I.
Ignorance at its finest.
When those 80,000 lab-bred Wolbachia-infected, male mosquitoes mate with their counterpart females in the wild, the result is stealth annihilation: the offspring never hatch.
Emphasis mine. In case you're not aware, male mosquitos don't bite.
Ae. aegypti arrived soon after Europeans first arrived. That was a pretty long time ago. Do you think that the environment has changed to accommodate the presence of this insect after a few hundred years?
How long does a species have to be somewhere before there's negative repercussions from removing it?
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
The targeted species, Aedes aegypti, is African, and IS NOT NATIVE TO CALIFORNIA. So there should be no negative repercussions from wiping it out.
What about repercussions in AFRICA? "Wiping it out" implies globally, not just in California.
Actually, as the name suggests, the Aedes Aegypty is an invasive species to the Americas that arrived in slave boats from Africa (the disease had previously spread from Asia to Africa a few hundred years earlier).
Dengue fever (a disease first identified in Asia) could then spread freely at first in South America but more recently in North America as well.
Eradicating the Aedes Aegypty won't harm biodiversity because it is an invader. And this sort of control measure is very targeted to this particular species of mosquito (unlike DDT for example that would kill everything).
This kind of thing is disturbingly common. Way too many people think that complex systems of which we barely understand can be easily improved. They think politicians (or corporations or themselves!) should somehow be able to actually improve amazingly complex systems such as the economy and healthcare, etc. It's preposterous and wasteful, and we're all paying for it and so will our kids.
Yes, we get lucky once in a while and get some minor improvements, but I'd guess the dysfunction is far greater.
I am content to have some doubt that they don't understand the impact of wiping them out, but I am not convinced as these things are rarely as simple as they look. There are many examples where well-meaning fiddling with ecosystems has resulted in unintended negative consequences.
Uhhh... I'm disappointed. This article has some scientific work behind it. I was expecting Google to embed ultrasounds in ads ... or somethin'
Breeding and distributing species of mosquitoes that avoid humans, however, would actually be ecologically benign.
I'm sure it won't be done because it costs .01 cents more per hundred thousand mosquitoes killed.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I have plenty of mosquitoes to spare. Just give me and address and I'll mail you a few tubes full of them.
"Wiping it out" implies globally, not just in California.
A bacteria borne disease is not going to "wipe out" Aedes aegypti. It is very robust and adaptable species. They can breed in an overturned bottle cap.
But if we knock the population back, it gives us breathing room to target the diseases. If there are a million cases of mosquito borne disease every year, very few resources can be devoted to each outbreak. But if we eliminate 90% of the mosquitoes, the result is a 99% reduction in the spread of the disease. That means we can devote much more personnel and resources to pounce on each outbreak.
This is what happened with smallpox. Once we got it 99% gone, we had fast-reaction teams of dozens of people, that would fly in to each outbreak, and then fan out to vaccinate everyone in the vicinity, and quarantine those likely to have been exposed. The last case in the wild was in Somalia in 1973.
polygoose. c'mon.
You seem to be mistaken about where you are. This is /., not a scientific review committee. The Polio example is still extremely obviously (and extremely obviously back then) something completely different. Makes me think you lack the background to understand what is going on here.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
There are feral cat colonies in my neighborhood. They are regularly trapped and taken to be sterilized, then returned to the colony without any complaints from the neighborhood.
our environment? What could go wrong?
You mean the one that flings poo at people over at the zoo? Not so sure I want that one to live actually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You misread my statement. I have plenty of mosquitoes to SPARE.
I will still have enough to feed the bats, birds, and other animals that enjoy these tasty snacks.
That's a fair question that needs to be answered, but whatever those costs may be, they must be weighed against the thousands of people who die or are afflicted each year by diseases such as Zika, West Nile, Yellow Fever, and other ailments spread by this species. We aren't talking about wiping this species out because we find them to be a nuisance. We're talking about doing it because tens or hundreds of thousands of people have been debilitated or lost their lives and more will be too if we take no action. That fact seems to get lost as we argue about hypothetical repercussions in ecosystems.
We aren't wiping them out just because. We're wiping them out because lots and lots and lots of people are suffering and dying. Provided we've done our due diligence and have determined that the risk of a dire impact to the ecosystem is minimal—and by all accounts, that seems to be the case—it seems to me that this action would be justified.
It's a good idea to keep in mind that scientists believe that every 24 hours, between 150-200 species of plants, insects, birds and mammals go extinct. Also new species of the same are discovered (not sure about the rate).
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
they waste time doing it in Cali instead of the real world
What is the plural of moose?
Truth: If it's not one thing, it's another
I would rather a CRISPR-produced variety of mosquito that does not suck blood.
That is not a realistic goal. The female (only females suck blood) use the protein from the blood to make eggs. Non-blood-suckers would be at a reproductive disadvantage, and the modified gene would die out instead of spreading through the population.
A better goal is CRISPR-produced mosquitoes that don't transmit diseases. This would be no disadvantage to the mosquito, so would not die out.
And once we have proven this technique with mosquitoes, we can try it on humans.
Blood sucking human females are not a problem everywhere. Some countries don't have alimony.
Yes. Biodiversity is, apparently, only important if human beings aren't taken into account. Otherwise, it's open season on any species that dares to have a negative impact on humans.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
It's time for Slashdot to give you the boot and eliminate your posts entirely.
The grandparent posted an informative link noting that mosquitoes constitute a very small portion of bat diets, meaning that eradicating mosquitoes is unlikely to have a substantial impact on bats. Furthermore, it's not necessary to eradicate all mosquitoes, just the species that bite humans. While mosquitoes do account for a significant portion of the biomass in some regions, it's not necessary to eliminate all of them, just some species. For example, eradicating all mosquitoes might have a significant impact in the Arctic, but it's only necessary to target the species that bite humans. I doubt this would have a significant impact on bats at all, though it might remove a food source in human-inhabited areas. That's not such a bad thing, either, because bats carry their own diseases like rabies, and it might reduce infections if there were fewer bats around humans.
But you go straight to calling people trolls rather than addressing their points. The grandparent was very civil, but because they challenged you, you immediately jumped to incivility and calling them a troll. You are toxic, and this is exctly how your threads devolve into off topic cesspools. You've admitted elsewhere in this thread to writing a bot for the sole purpose of circumventing moderation and spamming your comments. Your posts greatly outnumbered any of the impersonation that was occurring. I'm the person who impersonated you, with a bot of my own. My goal is to get you banned from Slashdot, so your personal attacks and anti-semitic spam will cease to pollute these discussions. I won't be impersonating you because it's not necessary, but I will continue in my efforts to get Slashdot to permanently ban you.
New Zealand and every land mammal ever introduced there. Before people there were none and birds did the mammal stuff.
So many commenters here who figure that scientists are the last people to get the news about fragile food chains and the dangers of unintended consequence. Probably these commenters are the same group of people who never did their own arithmetic to determine that the precautionary principle can't be applied along all possible dimensions simultaneously.
Add an invasive species where it wasn't formerly found. Big problem: the precautionary principle says to remove the species immediately (some things are still being mucked up), but it also says to leave the species alone (some things might already depend upon it).
Even for the things we've done (as a species) that we now mostly regret, we don't have a complete score card. Perhaps the first-order effect looks horrific—but honestly, even in those cases, it's still not a risk-free conclusion that we messed up.
For some reason, people like to elevate the precautionary principle to some independent, meta level of confident cognition, which completely obviates the kind of hard thinking we originally messed up.
Once upon a time, mammals were a pandemic of invasive species—all of them, pretty much everywhere.
Precaution is more about change management than change avoidance. In change management, there's no magic, default "leave alone". The context around the thing you're "leaving alone" is also undergoing change.
That's why the Buddhist philosophers say you can never step into the same river twice—the precautionary principle applied to the precautionary principle—which for some reason causes most Westerners to go "why would you do that?" before returning to their confident precautionating.
> They were not a tech company involving themselves in something that is best left to biologists and ecologists.
So what you think a bunch of Scala coders got bored at Google and started genetically manipulating mosquitos?
What's Bayer? Merck? Bio TECH companies. Bayer and Merck also have a lot of non bio subdivisions but nobody hassles them about those.
Maybe Alphabet, a giant TECH company made a biotech division and staffed it with biologists, geneticists and ecologists? Think that's possible?
But no, it's probably the Scala guys.
Hey google, if you want to get rid of bugs, go look at Android.
maybe there's a decade of fewer mosquitos it's great, and the only result is the bat population starves to death.
Now the mutant mosquitos rise. their old nemesis, the bat is gone. we are overwhelmed with unchecked hungry insects.
oh, of course, not all the bats died. some bats had a predisposition to seeking out other meals. There's now a growing population of bats that make a living off of biting larger land mammals, including people. they also transmit disease.
> The Polio example is still extremely obviously (and extremely obviously back then)
The only reason the polio example was obvious back then was because polio was fucking terrifying and if anything helped everyone was all for it. Most people back then knew someone who was affected by polio. Hell, it lived in the outside environment. You'd hear about little Jimmy was out playing in the park and woke up the next morning and can't walk anymore and all the rest of the kids in the neighborhood are being kept inside because their parents are terrified their kids will end up the same way.
Zika has also affected a ton of people, but not in the "developed" world much yet. Believe me, when climate change pushes these mosquitoes a little further north over the next decade and there's thousands of kids born with encephalitis in the southern US, there *will* be a panic and an outcry. They'll probably bring back DDT in response.
With each news release from Alphabet/Google, it seems we'll soon see them convert into Aperture Science Labs.
#DeleteFacebook
CRISPR the females to get even better protein from some food source other than blood.
Again, that is totally unrealistic. Any available protein source is going to already be exploited by other species that are far better adapted to it than your gene patched mosquitoes.
No. Mongeese.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Before the arrival of Europeans, Hawaii had zero mosquitoes.
As well as zero Europeans.
All the mosquitoes there should be wiped out.
D'oh!
Aren’t viruses, by definition, species?
So, eradicating a virus and “a species” are, like, exactly the same thing.
(Fuck Smallpox, though.)
IS NOT NATIVE TO CALIFORNIA. So there should be no negative repercussions from wiping it out.
Humans ARE NOT NATIVE TO YOUR STATE. I suggest we wipe out humans in your state. There should be no negative repercussions.
The potential consequences make me a little nervous though. Mosquitoes are a leading theory on what drives the caribou to migrate. The caribou will stay in one area until the mosquitos are more than they can take, then they start running. May not stop running for a couple of days. This, combined with the birds and bats others have mentioned, make me a little nervous about potential consequences.
Before the arrival of Europeans, Hawaii had zero mosquitoes. All the mosquitoes there should be wiped out.
Let's just be a bit careful waving that sort of logic around because the same argument would technically also apply to humans and in a lot more places than just Hawaii.
Ah, so driving mosquitoes into extinction would be a drop in the bucket.
They will eat all the other stuff that makes up their usual fare, of which skeeters make up only a small percentage.
This space unintentionally left blank.
That question is answered in the article.
One in a million or whatever will survive and develop an immunity. A few of those will find each other and breed.
All this will lead to.is a new breed of mosquitoes that are immune to wolbachia.
How about releasing 80,000 cobras into the wild?
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
I think it's legal provided they annotate the result:
This item isn't available in your country
What authority do you have to rtfa?
Big Brother Google gets more evil by the day. Now we see these self-righteous wannabe genocidaires planning to release a biological weapon, in hopes of wiping out a whole species.
We call the faction who control Google "social just-us nazis" because they espouse censorship, racism, and militarism. So I guess it's not surprising that they are also enthused about causing animal megadeath. If these crazies are allowed to remain in power, it won't be long until they're building death camps for us deplorables.
President Trump: Break up Alphabet now! Arrest Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Sundar Pichai. Arrest the wild-eyed nazis behind the mosquito megadeath plan. Senate hearings on all of Alphabet's secret mad science projects. It's time for some sunlight.
STOP GOOGLE NOW, BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.
Has anyone asked the Germans for their input? Seems they always have a final solution to any problem... (https://youtu.be/G6JewWEzEl4). Stephen Lynch is hilarious. Watch it.
No. We have about no examples were a severe infectious disease is critical for an ecosystem. They are nit parasites, where that is different. They are basically biological free-riders. Also, it is very easy to reintroduce that disease in case something begins to really break. Of course, that is not something you tell the public.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
There are so many species that depend on mosquito larvae for survival. Alphabet is being colossally irresponsible here. Are they going to create some alternative food for fish, dragonflies, bird species? Because those will die off, and the species that rely on them for survival will then die off.
Alphabet should be looking to make harmless the mosquito-borne illnesses, and leave the bugs alone.
"Annoying" is not a valid reason to instigate wide-spread species elimination.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Alphabet is not doing what you think they are doing. Inform yourself.
Using language customarily used in a certain application domain (here: religion) gives some legitimacy to that domain. But you did already know that, since you are just trolling.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If you eliminate one thing out of the equation, the whole system will self modify to adapt to that change. It's not like taking one life form out of food chain will destroy the universe. If things were that fragile as removing mosquitos from existence, the world will end. If things were like that, we would never evolve to this point to begin with. Nature changes and adapts, old things die, new gets born, new dies, surface heats up, freezes, floods, dries up, and everything else in between.
Only a human can be so arrogant to immediately assume that he has the power to destroy all of that.
Mosquitoes are almost certainly the backbone of evolution. With every bite, they transport viruses that silently transmit R/DNA fragments from 1 species to another. Most of these will do nothing. Some of them will be diseases such as west Nile, Dengue, VEE, etc. Others will be cancer. Yes, down the road, we will figure it out that some cancers were arthopod-borne. BUT, some of these fragments will actually cause a positive Gene to be formed. These fragments/genes will actually code for something useful. Sadly, the majority will be lost due to the transmission going to a regular cell and not to egg/sperm/precursors Finally though, a virus will finally hit the right egg/sperm/precursor, and finally add a new Gene to a species. This is very likely the main route of how species obtain new genes. And Google wants to destroy it.
and that does not address the fact that mosquitoes serve as main food for a number of bats and birds.
Hopefully, the UN or trump step in and prevent this.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Our friend the mosquito is responsible for adding years to the lifespan of the human race as a whole... see what will happen to the lungs of the planet when population growth and travel is unchecked.
who was like: first steps into biology and already is killing a specie. Umbrella corporation?
Either that, or (most likely) the law of unintended consequences will strike again in yet another huge environmental disaster. I wouldn't put my name on this one if I were Google.
I'm sure they would be thrilled to eat some other kind of mosquito that does not spread malaria. Biodiversity needn't include horrific parasites.
Phase 1: Male Mosquitoes infected with wolbachia breed with females and produce eggs that never hatch
Phase 2: A strain of wolbachia is developed to cross the species barrier and infect humans
Phase 3: Mosquitoes bite humans and transfer altered strain of wolbachia to human hosts who then breed and only give birth to still-born children
Where is Venom Snake when you need him...
And then what will bats eat?
Bats eat a lot more than just mosquitos. Nothing eats ONLY mosquitos. Not one species relies solely on mosquitos... and besides only a minority of mosquito species bite people. To prevent spread of human disease you only wipe out the mosquitos that bite people.
The "friendly" mosquitos will then move in instead.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Given that there are around 3500 species of mosquito, of which 100 are vectors for human diseases, and Google/Alphabet is (presumably) focusing on those 100 species, and probably only tooling on 1 species of mosquito at a time, I suspect that the other 3400 species of mosquito will probably grow slightly in population to fill the vacated niche.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Either that, or (most likely) the law of unintended consequences will strike again in yet another huge environmental disaster. I wouldn't put my name on this one if I were Google.
This isn't a new idea. It's been done before and tried in various other countries (or same approach, different specifics)- wiping out mosquitos in an area has not caused any ecological problem in any ecosystem it has been tried in. Now granted, it's only ever been done on a location-specific area and within a year the mosquitos are back. Noone has tried doing a large-spread wiping out of mosquitos over a very large region yet.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
There are 3500 known species of mosquito, and only around 100 of those are disease vectors for humans. We'll never avoid being itchy, but we can probably avoid the mosquito diseases.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
If the number of survivors is low enough, the population still might collapse into extinction for that particular species of mosquito. There are over 3500 known species of mosquito, so even with immune survivors, it is possible for the depleted species to be out competed in the ecosystem by un-treated species.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
if you crash the mosquito population then the food chain collapses
Nope. You only attack species of mosquito that attack people (you could be more specific and only attack ones that carry disease). That still leaves the vast majority of mosquito species in place.
Nothing eats just mosquitos anyway. Everything that eats mosquitos gets nutrition from many other sources too. Infact, we've wiped out mosquito populations in many areas many times (and not just harmful ones like this study suggests) and there hasn't been any reported ecological problems caused by wiping out the mosquitos.
You can wipe out harmful mosquitos without crashing the food chain. Considering mosquitos are the animal species that leads to more deaths in humans than any other species on earth- that's a pretty good thing.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I imagine this is how all these mysterious diseases appear, like AIDS, Ebola, etc. When non-medical doctors start practicing medicine on a global scale.
I'm not sure that's guaranteed. Please someone let me know if I'm wrong. I'm just thinking there is no way to know 100% that any mosquito could be immune. We haven't yet found a human immune to cancer or the common cold (I know it's many strains but perhaps this bacteria acts similarly).
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Polymoose?
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
I don't know if his stat is correct, but I do know that only a small fraction of species ever get around to being named. Think of all of the species specific parasites you can think of, then imagine that each species has a variety of those, and then each named extinction becomes quite a few total extinctions.
Meesix
I've always had a problem with this. One would think that goose, mongoose, and moose would have the same plurals.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
How's this?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
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Moosen!
What authority do you have to rtfa?
Ahh, ya busted me. lol
There are so many species that depend on mosquito larvae for survival. Alphabet is being colossally irresponsible here. Are they going to create some alternative food for fish, dragonflies, bird species? Because those will die off, and the species that rely on them for survival will then die off.
Alphabet should be looking to make harmless the mosquito-borne illnesses, and leave the bugs alone.
"Annoying" is not a valid reason to instigate wide-spread species elimination.
I know ignorant outrage is fashionable these days, but if you don't have a clue what you're talking about please stfu. Alphabet is targeting one of over 3000 species of mosquito, an invasive species in North America with a small scale experiment. You moron.
Yeah, I'm a moron because I understood the sentence " Google Has a Plan To Eliminate Mosquitoes Around the World " to mean Google has a plan to eliminate mosquitoes around the world.
Maybe. Almost certainly if they were using viruses -- see: Frank Ryan's "Virolution" ISBN-13: 978-0007315123 IIRC 43% of our DNA has viral origins. One reviewer writes: viruses have played a significant role in evolution. Large segments of viral genes have been found in human (and other) genome code fragments; viruses will co-evolve with their host under certain situations rather than destroy them. This co-evolution symbiosis has historically contributed to the selection process and enhanced the survival of both the host and viruses and added creative variation to the gene pool of all life forms. Part of our gene structure is due to viruses intrusion and subsequent symbiosis and are inheritable.
It's also possible this bacterium could jump between species
Also a good point. To answer that we'd need to know how much interaction there is between various species of mosquito, which is information I don't readily have. One would hope that the people who are doing this experiment would at least have considered these aspects, being 'experts'.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.