Engineered Mosquitoes Could Wipe Out Dengue Fever 343
Christina Valencia points us to a Wired story about scientists who plan to use genetically modified mosquitoes to reduce the population of Dengue-carrying insects. The altered genes cause newly born mosquitoes to die before they are able to breed if they are not supplied with a crucial antibiotic. This is a more aggressive approach than the anti-Malaria work we discussed last year. From Wired:
"Mosquitoes pass dengue fever to up to 100 million people each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Up to 5 million die. If the scientists can replicate their results in real field conditions, their technology could kill half of the next generation of dengue mosquitoes, which scientists say would significantly reduce the spread of the disease. If all goes well the company envisions releasing the insects in Malaysia on a large scale in three years."
Two Words (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Ripple Effect (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes (Score:5, Informative)
Hint: How the fuck are you supposed to breed lovebugs & mosquitoes? (Give them tiny little Jacuzzis and Play Barry White at them?)
Re:Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_bug#Folklore [wikipedia.org]
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/IN694 [ufl.edu]
Charles Darwin Thinks... (Score:3, Informative)
Charles Darwin thinks that this idea is probably dumb.
Unless they manage to release some critical number of mosquitoes, the faulty ones will die and the normal ones will pass on their undamaged genes.
Genetically Modified Anti Mosquitoes! (Score:2, Informative)
From the other perspective though, controlling the mosquito population in this way will definitely impact the ecosystem. If Dengue is no longer a problem, human populations will rise faster than it otherwise would have. More people means more ecological damage. Of course I'm not saying we shouldn't save the people, because I know if it were me living in an area with Dengue and my friends and family were getting sick from it, I'd want a solution no matter what the cost to the environment is.
Wipe it out completely? Possibly. (Score:3, Informative)
They are preventing the female mosquitoes from mating with the "normal" males, and at the same time (via mutant offspring) increasing competition for resources needed by "normal" offspring. This _should_ cause a reduction in the dengue fever mosquito (aedes aegypti) population. The question is, given there will always be a small percentage of normal males who will mate with the females, can they eradicate dengue 100% at least within a given isolated area?
I think so yes.
What they want is to release their mutants so they outnumber the normals by a MASSIVE ratio -this is key. Since their offspring die, this will ultimately reduce the number of female aedes aegypti mosquitoes. The actual percentage of dengue carrying mosquitoes (had to have gotten unlucky and bitten an infected person) is a sub fraction of the dengue carry capable mosquitoes. In turn, there will be a quick dramatic decline in infected people because the chance of a normal aedes aegypti mosquito actually biting a dengue infected person and then giving it to a normal person will become lower and lower.
However I think the public will oppose this for a few reasons:
1. Irrational paranoia about the G word (genetically modified), thousands of genetically modified mosquitoes (even if they are non biting males) being released OMG.
2. The reduction in aedes aegypti females may cause an increase in other mosquito species that compete with it (increase in anopheles (malaria)?).
3. Male mutant mosquitoes will have to be introduced in large numbers to the environment until either aedes aegypti or dengue fever is 100% eradicated (but mad profits if you own the company selling them).
4. Public may get pissed off at the sight of mosquitoes getting released in their neighborhood.
Probably they need to combine this with introducing a harmless (non disease vector) mosquito species suited to a given environment (for example some places may suit aedes albopictus).
Re:Charles Darwin Thinks... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Eco-Nut replies are telling (Score:4, Informative)
As serious as the illness was, there was never any risk of me dying: my family is well enough off that I received good medical care. But for every guy like me with the resources to get by in the event of catastrophic illness, there are about a thousand who die, coughing and bleeding, in the gutters. I really wish people in the west would think about these people before they dismiss potential solutions to epidemics for "environmental" reasons.
Re:Are mosquitos important? (Score:5, Informative)
There are many species of mosquitos, not all (or even most IIRC) of which bite humans. There's no need - and no way - to wipe out all mosquitos. Hammering the specific species that transmit deadly diseases to humans is an ecological engineering project and moral choice that I think most humans are comfortable with, though.
The effort in the article specifically attacks one species - the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
Re:Wipe it out completely? Possibly. (Score:3, Informative)
Dengue is a mosquito disease as well as a human disease. By this I mean that the dengue virus is transmitted from mosquito parents to their offspring WITHOUT the need of humans at all (unlike say malaria, where a host organism (human) is needed for the parasite to breed). Therefore the actual situation is a chronic reservoir of virus in both mosquito AND human populations. A "healthy" mosquito bites an infected human and can contract the disease, and then form disease carrying colonies which will perpetuate the virus and continue infecting humans - which will cause mosquitoes from different colonies to become infected (the Aedes aegypti mosquito doesn't travel all that far during its life cycle after all).
So to get to my point, all you need is for ONE INFECTED MOSQUITO to survive, OR one healthy mosquito to bite an infected human - and eventually more and more mosquitoes (and therefore humans) will become infected.
I am sure that brighter minds than me are working on the problem, and I sincerely wish them luck. I personally doubt that this line of work will lead to any lasting results, however. You might as well try to eradicate all mosquitoes, and leave it at that.
Biology usually finds an original way to bite us in the ass when we try to mess with it on a large scale.
dengue (Score:3, Informative)
A friend of a friend of mine got dengue in Indonesia. I was there after he had gotten over it, but from second-hand accounts it didn't sound like much fun. I think he had a mild form, where he ran a horrendous fever for about a week, and then had a full-body painful rash for about a week, and then had some serious depression for a few months until he figured out that you can take pills to counteract the neurological aftereffects (which I hear tend to last about a year). I'm not sure if he had to be hooked up to an IV during the fever, but I hear that's common practice.
I don't know what the right solution is, but I'm glad people are working on it.
Re:The Eco-Nut replies are telling (Score:2, Informative)
yet, paradoxically, the number of people dying of malaria since the banning of DDT has drastically increased. Not only that, but DDT was banned not because it was fucking up people, but because it was a probable human carcinogen.
Don't get me wrong, DDT is far from perfect, since it DID fuck up the environment (famously birds) and also loses efficacy over time, but you can't just dismiss its benefits to humanity that quickly. Modern, safer pesticides now cost much more than DDT, which cost pennies per kilogram. The net effect is that the poorest regions of the world, mainly Africa, where 1 million children die a year due to malaria, can't afford the insecticides now that DDT is banned. Its certainly not as cut and dry as you make it out to be, and you would be well served to know a bit more about it. Wikipedia has some good references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddt#Effects_on_human_health [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddt#DDT_use_against_malaria [wikipedia.org]
Vaccinate people against Dengue Fever (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The environment arguments are one-sided (Score:2, Informative)