Should We Kill All The Mosquitoes? (bbc.com) 470
If scientists could send Zika-carrying mosquitoes into extinction, should they do it? Several science and business journals are now exploring the question, and Slashdot reader retroworks asks if scientists will ultimately target "not just the most deadly species of the animal, but all 12 species of human-biting mosquitoes in the world, responsible for 500,000 deaths per year."
The headline on today's [paywalled] Wall Street Journal article begs the question, "Why Not Kill Them All...?" [M]ore business journals are exploring private sector investments to eradicate the species of mosquito entirely, [and] most articles seem to find extinction of the indoors-attacking, dengue fever- and malaria-spreading Aedes aegypti a tantalizing prospect...
The BBC weighed the approach more carefully, noting that mosquitoes make rain forests uninhabitable (and consequences of human populations in rain forests are usually disastrous)... Will capitalism make the itch of mosquito bites be forgotten... Forever?
The BBC weighed the approach more carefully, noting that mosquitoes make rain forests uninhabitable (and consequences of human populations in rain forests are usually disastrous)... Will capitalism make the itch of mosquito bites be forgotten... Forever?
Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:5, Insightful)
The little bastards like the taste of me, but I'd be wary of creating a vacancy that something worse might fill.
Re:Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:5, Insightful)
Before we worry about the mosquitoes, we should first exterminate all the journalists who use the phrase "begs the question" [begthequestion.info].
Re:Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny thing about language - if enough people start using a word or phrase incorrectly, at some point that usage becomes the correct one.
Re:Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:5, Interesting)
Does that mean if people keep using the phrase "I could care less", then the words could and couldn't officially switch meaning?
Re:Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:5, Funny)
Not if we keep shooting those people.
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I used to work with a rather brilliant glaciologist (judging by his funding and publication history), who also happened to be one of the worst spellers I've ever met. It took me a long time to mentally reconcile those two facts...
Re:Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:5, Informative)
Does that mean if people keep using the phrase "I could care less", then the words could and couldn't officially switch meaning?
Yes, actually it does. The term "awful" used to mean the exact opposite of what it does currently. At one time if someone was in awe of something it was awful. Now awesome has replaced it and awful means the opposite.
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Changes which have happened quite recently: "really" (which used to mean "real", and now is a generic intensifier; cf "literally") and "hopefully" (which still occasionally means "with hope", but now more commonly means "I hope that").
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Yes... but possibly *only* in that limited context.
A good example is the word 'literally'. Pedants love to complain when people use literally as a form of hyperbole (basically the opposite of it's meaning)...but in fact this usage is so old and well established that it's in the dictionary as one of the meanings of the word.
The dictionary definition of "literally" literally includes the meaning "not literally".
Whether your use of the word denotes "in actuality" or "I'm making an obvious exaggeration here" is
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Yep. AC's parents think his generation were responsible for destroying the language, his grandparents think it was his parents. So it goes.
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Funny thing is - it does bother me when I see or hear people misusing phrases such as "begs the question" or saying "could care less". But that (unfortunately) doesn't change reality.
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If using words of phrases to mean their exact opposite was not common we would not have needed the words "irony" or "sarcasm" (sarcasm is a subtype of irony where the irony is made blatantly obvious through tone).
Uh... no. "Sarcasm" specifically implies mockery, to figuratively inflict a wound. It comes from the Greek word for "flesh"; we also get words like "sarcoma" from there.
The claim was that Americans are not very good at this. I would point to the news satire genre as an obvious counter-example; there's no shortage of sarcasm there.
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Well, yes, and in the case of things like "drone" it's not too bothersome, since alternatives and clarifications are readily available.
I still think it's worth fighting for "begs the question," though, since a) accepting defeat means losing the useful original meaning and b) it doesn't actually mean, once you take the individual words, what it is being used to mean, which is "raises the question." Begging is in no sense related to raising.
I'm going to start using "begets the question" just to confuse people
Re:Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:4, Insightful)
accepting defeat means losing the useful original meaning
The original meaning is already lost. If you actually use "begs the question" correctly, 90% of your audience will have no idea what you mean, and the other 10% will think you are being pompous. It is best to just avoid the phrase entirely in both writing and speaking.
Re:Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:4, Insightful)
accepting defeat means losing the useful original meaning
The original meaning is already lost. If you actually use "begs the question" correctly, 90% of your audience will have no idea what you mean, and the other 10% will think you are being pompous. It is best to just avoid the phrase entirely in both writing and speaking.
This +++
When one identifies a phrase or word in transition, it's probably best to avoid it. I'm afraid to use "literally" now because I have no idea how it will be interpreted.
Re:Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference is context.
If you and I were having an informal discussion and I corrected you on a "begs vs. raises the question" or how you "could care less" colloquialism, I'd be kind of a dick*. The writing and editorial staff of a publication are something else. They're paid to get it right. It's their job, amongst other things, to use correct spelling and grammar, and to hold to a more educated and formal style in general. And it's entirely right to take them to task over it when they cock it up.
*Unless of course you pronounce "espresso" with an "x", in which case you're an uncultured heathen who should be held under the steam wand as punishment.
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Re:Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:5, Informative)
And also a recent study on adult mice showed that Zika appears to kill their brain stem cells https://goo.gl/zhz7VB [goo.gl].
It's not known whether this might have long-term neurological consequences in humans, and what they might be, because the strain of Zika that causes these neurological problems has not been around that long.
The previously circulating strains do not seem to have caused these problems like microcephaly.
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If it weren't /., I wouldn't get technical, but "deet" does not kill or even "repel" mosquitos. It does a so-so job of masking your sweet scent to them. IDK if various species are evolving to detect your scent through deep woods off better (I doubt it), but they are not developing a "resistance."
Re: Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't imagine consequences because you lack any kind of knowledge about nature.
While they are undesirable for humans, mosquitoes are the source of food of a very large number of animals. Bats, lizards, frogs, fish, birds, etc many of them survive on eating mosquitoes. Kill the mosquito and you will be killing a good number of species of animals that depend on them.
Re: Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:2)
That's a risk I'm willing to take.
Re: Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:5, Informative)
You can't imagine consequences because you lack any kind of knowledge about nature.
While they are undesirable for humans, mosquitoes are the source of food of a very large number of animals. Bats, lizards, frogs, fish, birds, etc many of them survive on eating mosquitoes. Kill the mosquito and you will be killing a good number of species of animals that depend on them.
Not so, actually: out of the 3,500 species of mosquitos out there, only about 200 bite man. The only dire consequence of eliminating these is that great Green boogeyman of more humans surviving tropical diseases. Mosquito-eating species can easily switch to other, similar, bugs:
http://www.nature.com/news/201... [nature.com]
Oops, I killed it again... (Score:4, Interesting)
While it would seem to be nice to not have these insects making parts of the earth effectively uninhabitable, lets be a little cautious before removing something that has been part of the Earths ecology for the past billion years or so.
Before we go too far down that line of thought (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? And in a related note, apparently only two mosquito species transmit Zika [cdc.gov]. Why?
I'm asking because that Nature link only seems to be considering consequences of the loss of the species as a food source. What about some of the other possible consequences? Could these human-biting mosquitoes be filling an ecological niche, and without them could biting flies (which hurt like hell) [wikipedia.org] end up filling the now-empty niche and exploding in population? Could Zika mutate into a different form which allows it to be transmitted by other mosquitoes, or even flies?
You can't just consider whether the rest of the ecosystem could survive the loss of mosquitoes. You have to look at how it would react to the loss.
That's not how evolution works (Score:4, Insightful)
So biting flies or some other species would bite people more because the mosquitos that bite people were killed off? How does that make sense from an evolutionary standpoint? The presence or non presence of mosquitos that bite people should not make a difference as to whether some other species evolves to attack humans or not. Just because a mosquito bites a person doesnt mean another species cant.
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Because the place mosquitos have in the food web is the only ecological impact. Other than that, they are totally useless and man is not the only species (see article) that will applaud their going extinct.
Okay, I exaggerate. Caribou can't applaud.
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The only dire consequence of eliminating these is that great Green boogeyman of more humans surviving tropical diseases. Mosquito-eating species can easily switch to other, similar, bugs: http://www.nature.com/news/201... [nature.com]
That very article, midway through, discusses the potential pitfalls that would result. It openly says that Arctic tundra (which is very fragile) would definitely be seriously affected. It then quotes a study noting that one species of birds reduces egg laying by one third just in reaction to dropped mosquito populations.
The article repeatedly says "yes, mosquitos serve important niches, but other species will step up to the plate" while steadfastly to reflect on how the changes in those populations will sp
Re: Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the ecosystem? As a species we are guilty of repeatedly taking actions without thinking about the effects on the environment. Considered in isolation, anything that damages "the ecosystem" sounds universally bad. In this case, the ecosystem in question is cans, buckets, pots, water storage jars, trash, tires, and whatever else is lying around collecting rainwater. Aedes aegypti does not breed in ponds, marshes, swamps, or wetlands, and thus there are no frogs and no fish to eat these mosquitoes—one of the reasons they have done so well as a species.
A little reading of the linked articles answers some questions about this. In short, it's not at all clear this would have a significant effect on anything other than our own man-made ecosystem, and that effect would likely be nothing but positive.
I also find it a tad hypocritical when people pontificate on theoretical consequences while they are nearly completely immune to the consequences of the status quo. It's pretty damned easy to be opposed to actions that could save tens of thousands of lives a year when you personally are at nearly zero risk of dying from a tropical, mosquito-borne disease.
I'm not saying to rush into eliminating a species without due diligence, but let's not let knee-jerk reactions prevent us from at least investigating the viability of this.
Re: Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:4, Informative)
Aedes aegypti is an invasive species in the Americas and doesn't lays it's eggs in water that typically hosts dragonfly larvae. It's elimination from the americas poses no threat here. Even in it's native range there are other, non pathogen spreading species that are more important to dragonflies than Aedes aegypti.
Zika problem may be from previous intervention (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.naturalnews.com/052... [naturalnews.com]
http://articles.mercola.com/si... [mercola.com]!
"For decades, Zika transmission was extremely rare. The virus didn't start spreading until after 2012 -- right after the biotech company Oxitec released genetically modified mosquitoes en masse in Brazil. Zika outbreaks quickly exploded from sites where genetically modified mosquitoes were released to combat dengue. Zika has now spread to 21 other countries and territories.
What's appalling is that Zika virus (ATCC VR-84) can b
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They are a main good source of dragonflies, both in nymph and adult stages.
And apart from being pretty what good are dragonflys? Food for something else I guess?
Re: Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, there are very few things that humanity has "done" where afterwards we've gone "you know, that was very fucking stupid to do." We are very good at foreseeing the consequences and all the interactions of various courses of action and selecting the 'best' one available.
It's what has made this world such an awesome place to be.
We are part of natural selection (Score:5, Interesting)
I love how people talk about natural selection as if we weren't part of it. If mosquitoes are a pest to the apex predator of the planet and it decides to eliminate them, it has lost at natural selection because it was unfit to survive in an environment where we live. Other insects that don't spread disease to the apex predator are more fit. Just because we reason and can launch space ships into orbit doesn't mean that we are somehow outside of the forces that natural selection acts with. We are one of its tools for determining survival regardless of what we think.
Re:We are part of natural selection (Score:4, Insightful)
You're showing a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation, it's not about whether we are or aren't affected by or do or don't affect natural selection, it's that ecosystems are complex systems, ones that we simply cannot accurately predict the result of changes on.
The issue is that we don't know what the effect of wiping out that species is, it may mean that they or species dependent on them as a food source also die out and that chain continues until some fundmentally important species to the ecosystem die out and the local ecosystem collapses.
It's precisely the problem that we are part of the ecosystem and that we simply do not know what the consequences of wiping a species out are. It's perfectly possible that more people will die from ecosystem collapse resulting from mosquito elimination than die from mosquito born diseases currently. Even wiping out mosquito born diseases can be problematic in that it can make way for new diseases that are more deadly to take their place.
No one with any scientific authority believes for one second that we're outside the forces of nature, on the contrary, they know we're bound by the forces of nature such that meddling with them can be dangerous for us, as well as our target of eradication. Saying we can kill what we want because we're the fittest is astoundingly naive as it assumes that nature can always support us no matter how much of it we destroy, but there reaches a tipping point where that's simply not true, and if we're destroying it to try and save lives there's every possibility we're actually doing the opposite and losing lives as a result.
This isn't just theory, there are many cases where it's born through into reality. People used to kill beavers in England for food to the point they were wiped out here, a classic case of survival of the fittest such that humans were avoiding starvation by eating beavers and used their pelts for clothing, except, because beavers were no longer building upland dams, heavy rains were no longer held back, and villages were wiped out and people killed by resultant floods. The result being that the human population also decreased in turn. This effect is still being felt to this very day where land clearance has created far greater harm from floods where people still die in England.
The issue is that we can't wipe out a species as an isolated event whereby there are no negative consequences for us.
The thing that actually makes us different is precisely the fact that we can reason about these things, many past extinctions such as certain mammoth populations were down to the fact that they over-grazed during extended dry periods and starved, were they able to reason about things like stock piling they may be around to this day, but for them sending the species of plants on which they grazed extinct was their own undoing. We're fortunate that we're able to reason against that same fate. Well, the intelligent amongst us are at least - I just hope we don't get outvoted by the sort of naive ignorance on such issues that suggest we can just wipe out species at will with no consequences based on a half arsed belief that we're part of nature so we can wipe out species under the guise of natural selection coupled with the hypocritical belief that we magically stop being part of nature when it comes back to bite us. It doesn't work like that, once you recognise the reality of biology and fitness you have to understand that it's a two way street - nature can destroy us, just as we can destroy it.
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But if we kill all the mosquitoes, how will the hyper-intelligent amphibians in 10 billion years create a Cenozoic/Holocene Park and use fish DNA to fill in the missing bits needed to recreate us?
Re:Law of unintended consequences, also frosty (Score:4, Funny)
They'll just have to suck our DNA out of crab lice trapped in fossilized lube.
Might want to think about that... (Score:2, Insightful)
As annoying as mosquitos are, they also serve as a food source for other species. Might be a good idea to figure out where that thread leads before you pull it...
Re: Might want to think about that... (Score:5, Funny)
#mosquitolivesmatter
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Agreed that this is idea completely half-baked. Definitely need to calculate the ENTIRE food chain, not ignore it.
[OT] Re: your .sig
Your "solution" to fighting Stupid Juvenile Whiners is worse then the cure. Violence just begets more violence.
The proper solution comes from how we should treat all trolls: Don't feed the tolls.
Don't give them attention. Eventually they will figure out no one gives them a fuck about their insecurity.
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The proper solution comes from how we should treat all trolls: Don't feed the tolls.
YHBT. HTH, HAND
Re:Might want to think about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, if only the biologists were as clever as Slashdot posters.
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No mod points today, but thank you.
Re:Might want to think about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Gene drive under discussion is Aedes aegypti specific, Aedes aegypti isn't the only mosquito species present even in it's home range and due to it's habit of laying eggs in tiny pools of water is never an important prey species. What basis do you have for saying that the elimination of a specific pathogen spreading species in the Americas where it is an invasive species is a problem?
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If only the answer to that question could be in the second line of the linked article. Life would be so much easier...
Re: Might want to think about that... (Score:4, Insightful)
In many parts of the country or world spraying is used to control mosquitos. Spraying not only kills the fast majority of mosquitos in an area but likely kills other bugs in the area as well. If wiping out the mosquitos eliminated an important food source for other species, we would be seeing a significant decline of other species in areas of heavy spraying. While I'm not arguing for eliminating mosquitos without seriously looking at it, spraying will continue as will the environmental consequences of spraying until it happens.
Additionally, our politicians always are saying "if the life of one child can be saved...." give up your freedoms. People seem to be pretty ready to live under onerous government rule to save that one (or twelve) lives per year saved. Well, here we have a situation where we can measure what the worth of a human life truly is worth.
Re:Might want to think about that... (Score:5, Interesting)
As annoying as mosquitos are, they also serve as a food source for other species. Might be a good idea to figure out where that thread leads before you pull it...
It has been investigated. Turns out they are not important for any other species, everything that eats mosquitos mainly eat other things.
Re:Might want to think about that... (Score:4)
I think both you and the GP need a healthy dose of [citation needed].
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This. We need to understand what will fill that ecological niche before we create a vacancy. Which other genera will move in, whether they will be a suitable prey for the predators and what they prey on other than us.
My dog will not be happy if we replace human-biting bugs with canine-biters.
Re:Might want to think about that... (Score:5, Funny)
The effect would be no worse than if pizza stopped existing.
Please think about what you are saying!
Kill Them All, For God Shall Know His Own (Score:2)
Unfortunately, mosquitoes have no souls.
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Unfortunately, mosquitoes have no souls.
Neither do humans.
Re:Kill Them All, For God Shall Know His Own (Score:4, Funny)
Unfortunately, mosquitoes have no souls.
That doesn't mean that hell isn't full of them.
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Kill all mosquitos? There are other options... [youtube.com]
Food supply for bats (Score:4, Insightful)
I would love not having them around, however be aware that mosquitos are a staple for bats. You have to think about the food chain first before you just go blindly killing all of them.
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I would love not having them around, however be aware that mosquitos are a staple for bats. You have to think about the food chain first before you just go blindly killing all of them.
But we only like bats because they kill mosquitos.
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I would love not having them around, however be aware that mosquitos are a staple for bats. You have to think about the food chain first before you just go blindly killing all of them.
Much like actual bat biology, I see what you did there...
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I would love not having them around, however be aware that mosquitos are a staple for bats. You have to think about the food chain first before you just go blindly killing all of them.
Much like actual bat biology, I see what you did there...
Never do science with the blinders on.
Re:Food supply for bats (Score:5, Informative)
This article argues otherwise and says the environmental impact would be negligible: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html
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And some have shown more like 1-3% - and it's indiscriminate feeding, ie. mostly through random chance - as you said there is no shortage of other insects for them to eat!
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Actually, no, they aren't. I read a couple of studies (easy to find) that say mosquitos make up about 1-3% of bat's nutritiional intake, and most of that is just by chance as they are fairly indiscriminate insect feeders.
My first thought was the same as yours - don't mess with the food web! - but the more I looked into it the more I started thinking that mosquitos (especially the few species that transmit human diseases) do not provide a substantial food source to all but a couple VERY limited ecosystems (
Re: Food supply for bats (Score:4, Interesting)
As much as i like bats as any other person, they are the most popular remaining source of rabies in the developed world.
Bats also eat thousands and thousands of tons of insects that otherwise would wipe out our crops. They are extremely useful creatures. I think we can put up with the relatively insignificant annoyance of a few of them having rabies, especially in view of the fact that we have had a rabies vaccine since 1885.
Even more reason to off mosquitos then (Score:5, Interesting)
Bats also eat thousands and thousands of tons of insects that otherwise would wipe out our crops.
So then bats without any mosquitos to catch would simply catch more of the crop-destroying insects, right?
Bats are still around.
More crop pests are eaten.
Mosquitos are gone.
Sounds like a win/win/win.
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Go look it up. Between 1-3 cases of rabies are reported in the US each year. And not all of those come from bats. So, one person in the ENTIRE country gets rabies from a bat each year. Such a non-issue it's laughable.
I have a better idea. (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's kill the rich and all the corporations instead. The planet will thank us.
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Killing people is INSIGHTFUL?
Funny thing is it's not like the "corporations" are setting out destroying the planet - they are just an amoral entity focused on expansion and profit.
The driving force of the destruction is the massive growth of the middle class worldwide. Without customers, corporations wouldn't exist. We ALL have to change our attitudes toward consumerism and consumption rather than blame the rich or the poor.
Yes. (Score:2)
Kill them all.
How many lives do they save? (Score:2, Interesting)
How many lives do mosquitoes save by migrating virii and enabling human populations to develop immunities?
That's the question I'd ask before thinking about killing them all off.
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That's a bit counter intuitive. There's nothing magical that makes viruses inert in mosquitoes. Viruses either travel through mosquitoes between people or they don't. If they do they are an infection vector. If there was no other way for people to be exposed and build an immunity other than the mosquito then wiping them out would likely also stop the virus in its tracks. ... Kind of what they are proposing to do with the Zika mosquitoes.
Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
>"If scientists could send Zika-carrying mosquitoes into extinction, should they do it?"
Yes. In fact, any human biting mosquitoes, not just Zika ones. I personally would prefer the "eradicate to NEAR extinction" option and not complete eradication, however... just to be on the super-safe side. And, of course, we would retain frozen/live samples indefinitely. Perhaps eventually we could find a way to change them such that the females do NOT require blood to procreate.
The studies I have read seem to indicate that human-biting mosquitoes do not represent a critical or even major link in the food chain for other creatures. They are also very minor pollinators. Many believe their loss will not collapse or even stress any ecosystem.
I have no problems with the same treatment for fleas, ticks, chiggers, and bedbugs, either.... insects that cause nothing but misery and add little to nothing to the food chain.
mosquito the ... (Score:2)
If we're going after bloodsuckers... (Score:5, Funny)
start with lawyers and leave the poor mosquitoes alone.
Meh (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think we should be playing God and deciding who and what species deserve to be around. This seems like the beginning of a bad precedent. It is also extreme laziness. We know what causes and breeds mosquitoes. You should be working on a plan to eliminate the conditions that causes mosquitoes to breed in human population centers. More than that, mosquitoes are just convenient way for zika virus to get passed around. That doesn't mean there isn't any number of paths for pathogens to find their way to human hosts. Are we going to eliminate every species that can be a carrier?
Perhaps we should try to understand how zika was created. As always, our modern world will beget new species of viruses as a reaction to the things humans are doing. We are finding ways to fight viruses and they are mutating and finding ways to get back at us. It is quite probable that nature itself is trying to curb our own population growth in some manner. Right now, it isn't mosquitoes that is causing eco-logical disasters everywhere. We are
Re:Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Deciding people should die for the sake of preserving mosquitoes is also playing God. Once the possibility exists, you can't avoid deciding.
The closest this planet has to a nervous system is our society. Nature isn't trying to limit us any more than your body is trying to limit you. Some choices might have less than optimal outcomes, but that's no different from you getting a hangover: it's not that your body is trying to stop you from drinking, it's that it's not working well do to your actions.
If you wish to mystify this, then karma is a better framework than vengeful nature deity.
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Deciding people should die for the sake of preserving mosquitoes is also playing God. Once the possibility exists, you can't avoid deciding.
The closest this planet has to a nervous system is our society. Nature isn't trying to limit us any more than your body is trying to limit you. Some choices might have less than optimal outcomes, but that's no different from you getting a hangover: it's not that your body is trying to stop you from drinking, it's that it's not working well do to your actions.
If you wish to mystify this, then karma is a better framework than vengeful nature deity.
You talk about society like it is some single monolithic entity. And seriously, comparing the situation with all its complexity to a simplistic "like a hangover" doesn't make any sense to me. It's nothing like the feedback loop of a hangover.
Re:Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
People have driven so many species extinct that we're a major global extinction event. Suddenly when we decide to do it intentionally just once to the most disastrous killers who server no purpose in their ecosystem and are easily replaced by non-harmful species, that's when it becomes wrong?
Re:Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a difference between murder and manslaughter.
I'm not trying to make some emotional argument with that, just pointing out why people may perceive the extinction of species differently in this case.
We intentionally eradicated smallpox.
Inevitability (Score:2)
Too many species use them as food (Score:2, Interesting)
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This is hypothetical. Even if somebody indiscriminately releases millions of genetically modified death-skeeters, it would not make mosquitoes extinct. There are more than 3,500 species of mosquito, for one. Also, from the BBC article, "Would it be wrong to eradicate mosquitoes? [bbc.com]
capitalism? (Score:3, Insightful)
What TF has this got to do with capitalism? If it happens, it will be a huge regulatory intervention, done by governments and inter-governmental organizations. It will not be done for profit. That's like the exact opposite of capitalism.
China's Four Pests Campaign (Score:4, Informative)
Eliminating pests sure worked well for the Chinese, didn't it? http://io9.gizmodo.com/5927112... [gizmodo.com]
Here is a picture of somebody in China hand-pollinating a pear tree due to one of the unintended side effects (no bees): https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9wT... [blogspot.com]
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Which creates jobs! Another benefit of eradicating the mosquito! Win/win!
Of course, then those workers will want decent pay and health insurance and things like that, so they'll lose their jobs to robots [businessinsider.com]. It's all the grand circle of life...
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Apparently not.
Tell you what, let's try eradicating all humans first, and if it works out, go from there.
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A campaign done in complete ignorance by a brutal dictator ignoring all science didn't work, therefore forget science?
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But that was done without scientific evidence. Mao just needed a few scrape goats, Mao was no scientist.
Its like saying Mao tried to modernism the steel industry and failed miserably, so we shouldnt try to modernize steel production anywhere.
Still waiting.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever happened to those laser mosquito zappers? They were coming real soon at least as far back as 2009. The inventors claimed it was easy to do with off the shelf components and aimed at $100 mass produced devices. There were all those cool slow motion videos of mosquitos shot down in flight. Nothing ever came of it... I'd happily pay $200 or more for a working system. There's a real need for such products, maybe a DIY version could be invented and people could build their own open source control systems for them. Malaria was bad enough, now with Zika all over the news I can't understand why these guys aren't swimming in cash.
GM mosquitoes (Score:3)
I have seen dramatic evidence that genetically modified fruit flies can wipe out populations and save millions worth of crops. This works on organic farms as well because no poison spray is required. These GM flies don't kill other species, only their own.
So, where are the modified mosquitoes?
It's been done before (Score:2)
Just as a point of reference, look up eradication of the screwworm fly. E.g., http://www.fao.org/docrep/U422... [fao.org]
Wouldn't bug me. (Score:3, Funny)
They can't be too ecologically important. Besides, we have plenty of lawyers and politicians to fill the bloodsucker vacancy.
Error message (Score:2)
We need to cool the planet (Score:3)
Mosquitoes are only a problem when its hot and humid.
You don't see them around in the winter.
and they would be less of a problem then anyway. If all your skin is covered up to protect you from the 40 below wind chill then they wouldn't be able to bite you anyway.
I think we should kill them all (Score:3, Insightful)
The primary argument for killing them seems to be that it would help protect humans. The primary argument against seems to be that there might be environmental consequences.
Consider if the situation were reversed. Imagine that mosquitoes were currently not killing any humans, but were in danger of going extinct, and there might be environmental consequences to that.
But wait! Fortunately, we have the ability to save the mosquitoes. All it would take is for some 500,000 people to be sacrificed each year! Now I know this may seem a bit unethical, but most of these people are in very poor countries, so the don't really count, right?
When you put it like that, the two sides don't seem so evenly balanced. It becomes pretty clear that our moral obligation is to exterminate the mosquitoes that spread disease to humans as soon as we can, using all the tools at our disposal.
Some people also bring up the possibility that wiping out mosquitoes will give an opportunity for something worse to appear. I don't think this is a good counter argument.
First, it is never used for any other species that poses a similar health risk. No one would ring their hands over the possibility that wiping out HIV would cause something worse to replace it.
Second, there really isn't a mechanism by which wiping out mosquitoes could present an opportunity for another species. Mosquitoes don't compete with other blood-drinking insects the way foxes and coyotes compete with each-other over rabbits.
Foxes and coyotes both have a certain rate at which they consume rabbits. The rate at which foxes consume rabbits plus the rate at which coyotes consume rabbits must be less than the replenishment rate of the rabbits, or over hunting occurs. As a result, a reduction in the number of coyotes means there can be more foxes.
But mosquitoes and other bloodsuckers don't compete like this. The total amount of harvest-able blood is not much reduced by mosquito activities. 500,000 people/year out of around 7,000,000,000 people = around 0.007% of the world population per year. True, this rate is much higher in high-mosquito regions, but even with very generous assumptions, it's unlikely to rise above 5%.
The upshot of all this is that wiping out mosquitoes won't suddenly cause a huge increase the amount of food available for any other species whose food source is similar to the mosquito's. As a result, any species that would be enabled by killing the mosquitoes should already have appeared, because the environment is just as favorable for them now as it would be if we were to kill the mosquitoes.
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But lacking any humanity it does keep the population down.
Wealth does a lot more to keep the population down than mosquitos.
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Ironically HAVING wealth LITERALLY keeps the population down. It's mostly the poorest countries that have the highest population growth rates.
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