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This is an absolute no-brainer. Mosquitoes are flying disease vectors that deserve to be eliminated. In the Americas, they're an annoyance, but in many other pa

This is an absolute no-brainer. Mosquitoes are flying disease vectors that deserve to be eliminated. In the Americas, they're an annoyance, but in many other parts of the world, they cause millions of deaths per year. Many studies have shown that the extinction of mosquitoes would have little if any ecological impact. I think if we had to worry about malaria in the Americas, we'd have eliminated mosquitoes years ago, and this wouldn't even be a question of whether or not we should do this.

roywiggins 8y ago
Malaria was eliminated in the US by DDTing mosquitos to death back in the '40s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Malaria_Eradication_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Malaria_Eradication_P...
thrower123 8y ago
For the most part in the Americas, we did eliminate them years ago, at least the nasty malarial varieties. https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.html https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.htm... Huge amounts of DDT are maybe not the greatest way to accomplish this, but it was highly effective.
RIMR 8y ago
I think there still is an ecological impact, albeit a gruesome one, that still needs to be considered. Avoiding these millions of deaths per year will just increase populations in parts of the world where resources are already scarce. It could lead to ecological collapse, which very well could result in more human death all-at-once than the Mosquitos were causing over time. Now, I hate to advocate for letting people die - that's obviously something we as a species aren't going to do - but I feel like we care about population control for every single species but ourselves. I worry that all of our modern medicine and championing of mother nature could eventually be our demise in the long-term, even if all of these things provide incredible benefits in the short-term. We are, after all, just really smart animals. In any environment where a single species eliminates all threats to itself, it becomes the biggest threat to itself in terms of competing for resources. We are better at managing resources than any other species, but to a fault. Eventually we'll bite off more than we can chew. I'm sure plenty of you will think that what I have said here is evil (even I feel that way a little bit), but I think that this really could be a credible threat to humanity ~200 year down the line.
- athenot 8y ago
  > I'm sure plenty of you will think that what I have said here is evil (even I feel that way a little bit) Yes. It is. Because it relies on the premise of determining whether other fellow humans are worthy of life.
- JamesBarney 8y ago
  Imagine applying this same logic to justify letting your neighbor's child get hit by a bus.... But there is also some pretty good evidence that as child mortality decreases, the number of children parents choose to have drops as well.
- emtel 8y ago
  What you're saying is horrific. If you think population control is important, birth control, sex education, economic opportunities, and women's rights are the answers. Letting other people die in misery (that you'll conveniently never have to witness) due to some half thought out idea about what might happen in hundreds of years is literally evil.
- camjohnson26 8y ago
  And this is where eugenics and Nazi ideology comes from. The American universities of the pre 1940s provided the intellectual foundation that Hitler built on. Most of them made arguments similar to yours and it led to some of the most horrifying events of the century.
CWuestefeld 8y ago
From TFA: the gene drive isn't ready for use in the field. Doublesex is so central to insect sex determination that every species we have looked at has a version, and the ones in closely related species are similar enough that the gene-drive construct could potentially hop species. While targeting other mosquitos might not be a terrible thing, we probably want to have a clear idea of potential issues before releasing anything like this into the wild.
- JamesBarney 8y ago
  Yeah, but this has to be weighed against the fact that every year we wait a half a million African children die.
  - aaron_m04 8y ago
    OK, but can you even guarantee an upper bound on the damage of this gene drive getting out of control? For all we know, it could result in even more lives lost. We would be so screwed if, for example, all insects became extinct.
    - JamesBarney 8y ago
      How would this happen? Insects are very different genetically, and can't even come close to cross breeding, which is how the gene drive is spread.

roywiggins 8y ago

Malaria was eliminated in the US by DDTing mosquitos to death back in the '40s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Malaria_Eradication_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Malaria_Eradication_P...

thrower123 8y ago

For the most part in the Americas, we did eliminate them years ago, at least the nasty malarial varieties. https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.html https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.htm... Huge amounts of DDT are maybe not the greatest way to accomplish this, but it was highly effective.

RIMR 8y ago

I think there still is an ecological impact, albeit a gruesome one, that still needs to be considered. Avoiding these millions of deaths per year will just increase populations in parts of the world where resources are already scarce. It could lead to ecological collapse, which very well could result in more human death all-at-once than the Mosquitos were causing over time. Now, I hate to advocate for letting people die - that's obviously something we as a species aren't going to do - but I feel like we care about population control for every single species but ourselves. I worry that all of our modern medicine and championing of mother nature could eventually be our demise in the long-term, even if all of these things provide incredible benefits in the short-term. We are, after all, just really smart animals. In any environment where a single species eliminates all threats to itself, it becomes the biggest threat to itself in terms of competing for resources. We are better at managing resources than any other species, but to a fault. Eventually we'll bite off more than we can chew. I'm sure plenty of you will think that what I have said here is evil (even I feel that way a little bit), but I think that this really could be a credible threat to humanity ~200 year down the line.

athenot 8y ago
> I'm sure plenty of you will think that what I have said here is evil (even I feel that way a little bit) Yes. It is. Because it relies on the premise of determining whether other fellow humans are worthy of life.
JamesBarney 8y ago
Imagine applying this same logic to justify letting your neighbor's child get hit by a bus.... But there is also some pretty good evidence that as child mortality decreases, the number of children parents choose to have drops as well.
emtel 8y ago
What you're saying is horrific. If you think population control is important, birth control, sex education, economic opportunities, and women's rights are the answers. Letting other people die in misery (that you'll conveniently never have to witness) due to some half thought out idea about what might happen in hundreds of years is literally evil.
camjohnson26 8y ago
And this is where eugenics and Nazi ideology comes from. The American universities of the pre 1940s provided the intellectual foundation that Hitler built on. Most of them made arguments similar to yours and it led to some of the most horrifying events of the century.

CWuestefeld 8y ago

From TFA: the gene drive isn't ready for use in the field. Doublesex is so central to insect sex determination that every species we have looked at has a version, and the ones in closely related species are similar enough that the gene-drive construct could potentially hop species. While targeting other mosquitos might not be a terrible thing, we probably want to have a clear idea of potential issues before releasing anything like this into the wild.

JamesBarney 8y ago
Yeah, but this has to be weighed against the fact that every year we wait a half a million African children die.
- aaron_m04 8y ago
  OK, but can you even guarantee an upper bound on the damage of this gene drive getting out of control? For all we know, it could result in even more lives lost. We would be so screwed if, for example, all insects became extinct.
  - JamesBarney 8y ago
    How would this happen? Insects are very different genetically, and can't even come close to cross breeding, which is how the gene drive is spread.