West African Village Weighs Using Genetically Modified Mosquitoes In Malaria Fight (scientificamerican.com) 112
New submitter omaha393 writes: A public engagement campaign is underway in the hopes of convincing Burkina Faso residents to allow the release of genetically modified mosquitoes to combat deadly mosquito-borne pathogens. GM mosquitoes rely on a technology called "gene drives." Different gene drives offer different solutions, typically leading to subsequent broods being sterile, predominantly male, resistant to infection or nonviable due to toxic traits. Researchers in this case are only in the preliminary stages of releasing sterile males but hope to begin wider releases of GM mosquitoes in about 6 years.
Burkina Faso is not the only country to pursue GM mosquitoes in efforts to prevent disease. Brazil has become a testing ground for wide release, and last fall voters in Florida Keys approved measures to begin releasing GM mosquitoes to fight the spread of Zika. Both the WHO and the U.S. FDA have approved the technique, but skeptics are critical of the method.
Burkina Faso is not the only country to pursue GM mosquitoes in efforts to prevent disease. Brazil has become a testing ground for wide release, and last fall voters in Florida Keys approved measures to begin releasing GM mosquitoes to fight the spread of Zika. Both the WHO and the U.S. FDA have approved the technique, but skeptics are critical of the method.
Re:Weighs what? (Score:5, Informative)
Then I suggest you learn English properly.
Weighs can also mean considers the importance of different parts of a decision.. IE. Weighs the factors in a decision.
As it clearly does here smart arse.
More importantly.. Perhaps someone should tell them actual tests of these modified mosquitoes have failed, as not surprisingly it turns out that the changes mutate out again very quickly as survival is actually dominant.
Who would have thought.
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Yet your grammar is atrocious. I suggest you learn English, properly.
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It still doesn't make much sense, I mean, which village is meant, and since when are villages allowed to make such decisions.
Indeed. It seems absurd that this decision is left up to "villagers". It seems like scientists and political leaders should be making these decisions. And maybe it should be tested first on an isolated island rather than where it could spread unimpeded across Africa and Eurasia.
Hawaii would be a good first test, since it is isolated in the middle of the Pacific, and mosquitoes aren't native to Hawaii in the first place, so there is no negative ecological effects in exterminating them.
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It seems absurd that this decision is left up to "villagers". It seems like scientists and political leaders should be making these decisions.
The scientists and politicians are ready to proceed. Now they're talking the villagers into being the test site.
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The Villages don't have approval power, the Government doesn't, but the researchers have extended the villages veto power as a courtesy; the villagers being the ones who'll have to live with the results good or ill. Many places in Africa have complex parallel power structures, our concept of country is rather foreign to Africans and usually ignored once the military moves on.
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It still doesn't make much sense, I mean, which village is meant, and since when are villages allowed to make such decisions.
So a local jurisdiction should have no say on whether it and its people are to be used for experimental scientific tests?
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The "failures" can be overwhelmed though. As in the case of Brazil, they just release swarm after swarm of modified males until the females are only able to mate with the toxic males. Populations in some parts of Brazil have dropped 99-100% with zero infections in months.
It's like "herd immunity" in reverse.
Re:Weighs what? (Score:5, Funny)
Weighs can also mean considers the importance of different parts of a decision.. IE. Weighs the factors in a decision.
In Ouagadougou, it is a bit more literal. They weigh the scientist on a beam balance to see if he is heavier than a mosquito. Or a duck.
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Sounds like a good prologue for a catastrophe movie.
Fade in.
"The year was 2017. A team of scientists released a genetically modified mosquito to fight malaria. It was a mistake. A terrible mistake."
Fade out.
GM versus Gene Drive (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly I'm cautiously optimistic about GM stuff in general, though I think gene patents should be abolished to weaken the more reckless influences of the profit motive. If you can engineer important nutrient production into a staple crop, or selectively graft in specific traits from wild relatives to make your crops able to survive an extra three weeks of flooding, or months without water like a resurrection plant, it seems like it might be irresponsible *not* to do so. Just make sure it's subjected to thorough independent testing against unintended consequences.
Gene Drives though are in a whole different terrifying league. That's no longer just a modified organism, that's an organism with advanced bacterial DNA-editing tools grafted into it. We've only just recently stolen powerful cutting-edge gene editing tools from bacteria, the potential implications of which we're only beginning to imagine, and are now talking about installing them into complex organisms where they will tend to spread throughout the entire species - a decision that can never be undone short of extinction. All other changes could be potentially reverted, but only by releasing another Gene Drive into the population - it can remove anything except itself.
Now, if we could count on the GD only doing what it was supposed to, that would be scary enough. The lines between species are much fuzzier than we imagine, and the potential for strange interactions is vast. We might accidentally wipe out all mosquitoes and relatives, a wide family of important pollinating insects, rather than just the disease-carrying species we were aiming for. But even worse, the one constant thing in genetics is mutation - and so any gene drive that doesn't lead to the extinction of its host species will eventually mutate, and now we have a misprogrammed gene-editor spreading through the population doing who-knows-what. Or alternately, there's now some extremely powerful gene-editing tools in the organism, the product of billions of generations more evolution than anything else in its genome, and nature does seem to love to find a way to put useful genes to work.
Excellent! Mod parent up, up, up. Scary issues!!! (Score:2)
Important quotes:
Excellent: "Just make sure it's subjected to thorough independent testing against unintended consequences."
Excellent: "We've only just recently stolen powerful cutting-edge gene editing tools from bacteria, the potential implications of which we're only beginning to imagine, and are now talking about installing them into complex organisms where they will tend to spread throughou
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Thanks. It's good to know my efforts are appreciated.
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They're important pollinators and food source for fish and birds, and most species don't bite humans.
And where exactly is the line between "mosquito" and "insect"? Just how far across the tree of life could the gene drive spread due to chance interbreedings in corner cases?
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Plus, you know, if it wasn't completely effective at wiping out a species, I'm sure nothing could ever possibly go wrong with a gene-drive carrier species that routinely injects it's own DNA-editing DNA into other creatures whenever it bites them...
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Here's an article from Nature that goes into some light detail on the role of mosquitoes in the ecosystem and the possible consequences of their eradication.
http://www.nature.com/news/201... [nature.com]
Short story: eradicating just the Aedes Aegypti and suchlike human bloodsuckers would be a good thing with little to no consequence.
Killing all the mosquitoes would probably have little noticeable effect except in the Artic tundra where they exist is vast numbers. No one knows what effect killing off all the Aedes in the
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Of all animals... Is there a single really GOOD thing that mosquitoes do in an ecosystem? ...If they were extinct every human being would be better off.
Two good counter-points come to mind...
1) Adult and larvae mosquitoes are a critical food chain base important for many species of freshwater fish, birds, amphibians, bats, and insects and in turn any predators further up the chain, so removal of all mosquitoes from the planet could potentially have detrimental effects to natural food chains, which humans may rely on.
2) Mosquito-related human health problems [and general aggravation] are predominantly related to the Aedes Aegypti mosquito which is perfectly
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Actually, mosquitos are an insignificant food source in almost all cases. The common claims that bats, or purple martins, are uniquely dependent on them is BS - stomach content surveys routinely show that they make up less than 1% of their diet. Even species of fish (e.g., mosquitofish) that purportedly eat large numbers of mosquito larvae turn out to overwhelmingly eat other things [archive.org].
In any case, there are only 40 species of mosquito that feed on humans, out of nearly 3,500 species. Of these, the worst, as y
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Which is great if we could wipe out *just* Aedes aegypti, but if we release a gene drive that will (probably) do the job, there's a very real risk that it may spread to other species as well - with bad luck potentially far beyond mosquitoes.
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Genocide should be illegal world-wide!
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Genocide should be illegal world-wide!
No one seems to mind genocidal action against the guinea worm/dracunculiasis, which is [thankfully] getting very close to extinction in large part due to efforts by former President Carter, Gates Foundation, and other world health groups ( https://www.cartercenter.org/h... [cartercenter.org] ). Mosquito-transmitted diseases are mainly spread by the invasive Aedes mosquito, so eradication of that specific species could be justified, and GM tools could target that species while sparing other mosquito species.
Re: Idk (Score:5, Insightful)
I think your underestimating how much suffering malaria causes. Malaria is nasty stuff. It's super painful , leaves you completely unable to get out of bed , you run huge fevers , and because the body can't really mount an antigen defence against it , you'll get it over and over and over again. The end result is it paralyses entire regions by making huge portions of the workforce perpetually sick and this has contributed hugely to Africa's economic misfortunes. A society where almost everyone of age can work is a society where people can work their way out of poverty and that means cleaner water , better tended environments and cheaper government
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While malaria is the big one when it comes to mosquito transmitted diseases, we also have many other horrible diseases carried by mosquitoes.
Furtermore, as long as mosquitos exist, there will continue to be new mosquito vector blood-borne diseases evolving.
I say exterminate the brutes, but as others have pointed out, we have to be absolutely 100% sure that gene drive doesn't spread to other members of the Culicidae family, or worse, climb up to the Diptera order.
100% sure.
A non-eradicate mosquito solution t
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The only real alternative right now is DDT, and whilst the human toxicity of DDT is a bit exaggerated in the public imagination, its still not exactly a great solution and has awful environmental effects. Worse, the bloody mozzies are developing resistance.
What are folks to do? Reject it because of a theoretical concern about gene propagation whilst theres a very concrete concern about the alternatives? Malaria is a thief in the night who steals entire generations. Forget HIV, malaria is the #1 health issue
Re:Idk (Score:5, Insightful)
On one hand yay potentially end suffering on the other increase population
This is nonsense. Better health does NOT lead to increased population growth. I leads to a decrease. As parents are more assured that their children will survive and be healthy, they invest greater resources into each child's nutrition and education, and have fewer children. This has happened repeatedly many times throughout the world.
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Eventually, yes. There's a very consistent pattern. When countries industrialise and get all the good stuff like healthcare, dependable food and sanitation the population does rise very rapidly - every time. It takes a full generation for the culture to change to reflect the new conditions. Once cultural change does catch up, then growth levels off and sometimes even goes negative.
IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZER (Score:4, Interesting)
Still waiting for these beauties [youtube.com] to start being mass produced, looks like they're making progress [youtube.com].
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The one thing worse than mosquitoes is ticks. That damn lime disease is no joke. Then there's rocky mountain spotted fever. It's not safe in the woods. I would love to have the laser mosquito killer though. The coolness factor is off the damn chart.
Extinct them! (Score:1)
Extinct ALL mosquitoes, ticks, lice, scabies, crabs, bed bugs, and cockroaches.
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And politicians and lawyers.
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Bed bugs and cockroaches were already mentioned!
Re:Extinct them! (Score:4, Insightful)
>> cockroaches
>No way.
Agreed. Anything that can wipe out cockroaches will doom us all.
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Nuke them all from orbit including humans! :P
Willing to take the chance (Score:2)
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The one thing worse than mosquitoes is ticks.
If you have a fenced in space, invest in some chickens. Those girls will go around all day eating up the ticks.
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I used to raise chickens in an outdoor pen. They scratched in the dirt all days and ate everything. I'd turn over rocks sometimes and they'd come running to eat the creepy crawlers underneath that were suddenly exposed.
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Now I spray my shoes and socks and pants with permethrin. It lasts for months and survives multiple washings. It's a chemical cousin of a natural insecticide and it is super effective against ticks. Mosquitos too!
Re: IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZER (Score:2)
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Still waiting for these beauties [youtube.com] to start being mass produced, looks like they're making progress [youtube.com].
[Mosquito zapping laser] I saw a magazine article on this and the author said it's not necessary to burn them out of the air. You can use a lower powered IR laser which penetrates the mossie's body like a heat lamp, and partially cooks it on the inside. The insect goes away and dies within a few hours. That's maybe not as much fun as the incendiary option but uses less power and could be safer.
Radiolab (Score:1)
For anyone who has *not* been following crispr/gene drives over the last couple years, RL has a really good overview(podcast) of it.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/... [radiolab.org]
I'm not into genetics at all, but this is a REALLY interesting story.
Loss of export potential? (Score:2)
The product that has value needs a nice GMO free logo and can meet other standards to get importers interested.
Once a brand finds organic certified, GMO free, local farmers can work out some nice export deals or just ensure access to different export markets.
As a framer or as a local coop, GMO free has some global export value.
Without been GMO free a product only has national value or limited export to some nations who may not pay much as a food pr
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I'm pretty sure there's not much of a market for African mosquitoes anyway.
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There are potential upgrades that might well be worth it though - imagine the gains from adding the ability of your crops to survive being underwater for 3-4 weeks, or to dry out and "die" like a resurrection plant during an extreme drought only to spring back to life as soon as it starts getting water again. I imagine both would be very valuable to a lot of farmers. To say nothing of more directly increasing yield and adding in a bunch of important nutrients so that a single hardy crop can provide more
Frankenbugs (Score:1)
The history of introducing a non-native predator species to control the population of a pest has been full of unpleasant surprises. Now this is different, but what if birds don't like to feed on the GMO mosquitoes, or fish don't like their larvae? The scientists will sit back in their air-conditioned offices and say, well I guess we were wrong about that but at least we advanced science by performing this experiment.
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... The scientists will sit back in their air-conditioned offices and say, well I guess we were wrong about that but at least we advanced science by performing this experiment.
Probably the biggest experiment that we'd be conducting is about pollination. Mosquitoes (and other flies) do pollinate quite a few plant species.
Sometimes pollination is incredibly fussy and sometimes only one species specializes in pollinating a given plant. So one of the unintended consequences here might be the disappearance of one or more plant species. Of course, something else absolutely critical to the ecosystem will depend on one or more of the plants that are no longer pollinated...
It is obviou
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Ask yourself "What eats the plants?" Mosquitoes only eat the nectar - something else eats the plants.
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Ask yourself "What eats the plants?" .
Something that will have to eat the other plants that replace them.
Not just pollenation (Score:1)
Mosquitoes and Mosquito larvae are critical food sources for numerous creatures. No mosquitoes == no larvae == starving little fish, starving bats, starving birds, starving spiders, etc.. etc.. etc...
Killing off mosquitoes is the worst possible option. Find vaccines and cures for the diseases/viruses/bacteria/etc.. mosquitoes carry, or find a way to simply kill those diseases/viruses/bacteria/etc.. in the mosquito.
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Yeah, and I've heard of some plans under development that simply make the mosquitoes immune to malaria, which at first glance seems like an eminently more ecologically responsible approach.
The gene drive itself worries me though - by it's nature we'd pretty much be permanently installing cutting-edge bacterial gene-editing tools into the entire species - a species that reproduces quickly to ensure that mutation rates are high, and by it's nature regularly injects things into the bloodstreams of humans and o
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Mosquitos are immune to Malaria ... but they suck blood from humans ... and hence transport Malaria parasites from one human to the other.
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Immune = "can't be infected", which current mosquitoes obviously are not. They're just not dramatically sickened by their infection. Similarly sheep aren't immune to anthrax, they're just not harmed by it.
And actually a malarial infection causes behavioral changes in mosquitoes, though from what I've found it hasn't yet been established whether the changes are a net benefit or hazard to the mosquito.
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Hm, never heared that the mosquitos themsleves are infected. The parasites live in the human blood the mosquitos suck. Not in the blood of the mosquitos. But perhaps they can infect the organs of the mosquito. I found an article on sciense mag, http://www.sciencemag.org/news... [sciencemag.org]
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They live in the saliva if I recall correctly. But presumably also link in to the brain somehow since they change feeding behaviors.
In this case "infected" basically just means "acts as a host for" - just as you are currently infected by hundreds of microorganisms that aren't doing any obvious harm. Making them immune prevents them from acing as a viable host. Not sure if that entails tweaking their immune system to kill the parasites, or maybe just adds/removes something in their metabolism that prevents
Re:Not just pollenation (Score:5, Insightful)
Mosquitoes and Mosquito larvae are critical food sources for numerous creatures. No mosquitoes == no larvae == starving little fish, starving bats, starving birds, starving spiders, etc.. etc.. etc...
Only a few species of mosquito transmit malaria. Most do not. The beauty of this extermination gene is that it only affects the targeted species. The population of other mosquitoes will expand to fill the niche, and the little fishes will be fine.
Re: Frankenbugs (Score:2)
Yes , sometimes they are
Re:Frankenbugs (Score:5, Informative)
"what if birds don't like to feed on the GMO mosquitoes, or fish don't like their larvae?"
Because there are no liberal birds or fish. They will go on eating what they have been used to eating in their environment, since the GMO version does not taste any different.
But you're missing the whole point of gene drives, which are to in a short time eliminate the target species. So long as there are other prey species for the birds and fish to move on to, no problem. Fish flies, damsel flies, there is a plethora of substitute species out there. In any case, only a small fraction of the 3,000 mosquito species even bite humans. Eliminating them all would not even cut into the supply of mosquitos in the environment, since the species remaining after the gene drive would just populate to fill the gap..
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An awful lot of assumptions there about what will happen as a result of driving a species to extinction. Though frankly, with all the extinction we've already caused by accident, I'm not overly worried about intentionally adding human-biting mosquitoes to the pyre. But "species" is a very fuzzy line with interbreeding in corner cases being a common occurrence. What happens if the gene drive starts spreading to *all* mosquitoes? Or even further afield?
And in any host population where it takes up residenc
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What happens if the gene drive starts spreading to *all* mosquitoes
The gene is explicitly sterilizing mosquitoes. It seems like if the gene "spread", in its current form either there would be no offspring at all, or it would have no effect at all. It seems like the gene would have to be mutated into something completely different.
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That's one of many options, and the least effective since it can't possibly spread throughout the population. There have been similar non-gene-drive based techniques already used - they're basically an alternative to chemical spraying, not a method of eliminating the population.
More aggressive techniques are those like making all offspring male, which then spreads at maximum speed throughout the population until there's no females left. Except for any mutants that are somehow immune to the effect. Or re
Re: Frankenbugs (Score:1)
This would matter if the goal was to eradicate the mosquitoes. However, according to tfa, the goal is only to knock mosquito populations down in malaria-prone areas long enough to eliminate malaria. The wee beasties that cause malaria must alternate between a human host and a female mosquito as part of their life cycle. It would be cheaper and easier to just exile malaria-infected people to S
Re:Frankenbugs (Score:4, Insightful)
Now this is different, but what if birds don't like to feed on the GMO mosquitoes, or fish don't like their larvae?
No Problem, we'll just let another 429 000 [who.int] die horrible, painful death from malaria this year, They are mostly brown and black people anyway, nothing compared to a few bird deaths.
Yeah. (Score:2)
But then later there's running and screaming.
Strange unit of measurement (Score:3)
movie pitch potential (Score:2)
What could possibly go wrong... (Score:2)
"Burkina Faso is not the only country to pursue GM mosquitoes in efforts to prevent disease. Brazil has become a testing ground for wide release...
Somebody with a perverse sense of humour might note that killer bees originated in (cough) Brazil.
Sterile males? (Score:1)
Besides a feminist wet dream come true, it makes no sense, since it's just less competition for the existing non-sterile males.
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Bad news, AC: I've already passed my genes to the next generation.
The sterile males still compete. (Score:2)
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I know all that, and doesn't contradict the fact that sterile females are a better idea if you want to wipe out a population.
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I know all that, and doesn't contradict the fact that sterile females are a better idea if you want to wipe out a population.
Except that the remaining fertile females will still produce another generation of males and females. So you release more sterile females and you continue to get fertile ones mating. With sterile males, every female that mates with one will have only sterile male offspring. So there are fewer and fewer fertile males and the females cannot fine any fertile males to mate with. Big difference in the way it progresses.
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With sterile males, every female that mates with one will have only sterile male offspring.
"Sterility" does not mean what you think it means.
Re: The sterile males still compete. (Score:2)
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(Reminds me of how Monsanto makes seeds who's "children" might be fertile, but who's grandchildren won't be.)
I still think that "sterile females" is a better population bottleneck.
Sterile females not as effective. (Score:2)
If you instea
Needs additional safeguards. (Score:2)
What's really needed is an additional modification that would make the following generation fail to hatch. Yes, I realize the males are "sterile" but I also realize that a mutation could occur in their lab and then they would be releasing one that isn't sterile but would have many more males. I do not know the ecological fallout of such a possibility and I'm willing to be they don't know either. Nature is unforgiving and we already have a lot to make up for.
There Used to be an Effective Way to Control Them (Score:3, Insightful)
Once upon a time there used to be an inexpensive effective way to control mosquitoes, Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. As long as it was sprayed in limited areas where there are concentrations of mosquitoes, it was pretty safe. I'm not advocating using it from crop dusting aircraft to cover huge areas. Rachel Carlson is personally responsible for the pain, suffering and death of huge numbers of people through the ban.
I know this will probably bring up a few replies about bird egg shell thinning, but I'm writing about allowing LIMITED use of DDT in areas of mosquito populations to prevent the death of 400,000 people (per webmd.com) per year.
Re:There Used to be an Effective Way to Control Th (Score:4, Interesting)
I've seen this sentiment here before regarding DDT, and it's mostly nonsense.
Once upon a time there used to be an inexpensive effective way to control mosquitoes, Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane.
There still is, and it's still used for that purpose. In some places, though, it's not as effective as it used to be because mosquitoes were selected for resistance thanks to indiscriminate spraying.
Rachel Carlson is personally responsible for the pain, suffering and death of huge numbers of people through the ban.
The ban on DDT is a ban against wholesale agricultural spraying. It explicitly includes an exemption for disease vector control, and DDT is still used for public health mosquito control.
I'm writing about allowing LIMITED use of DDT in areas of mosquito populations to prevent the death of 400,000 people (per webmd.com) per year.
Yep, that's exactly how it's used today.
Re: There Used to be an Effective Way to Control T (Score:2, Insightful)
Rachel Carlson is personally responsible for the pain, suffering and death of huge numbers of people through the ban.
Nope. You're just looking for a scapegoat [nytimes.com].
Which says a lot about you. In reality, numerous countries, including African ones continued to use DDT with RIS. But you would rather blame an environmentalist who actually served to warn us of real problems with the effects of DDT that were developing due to its misuse.
Not to mention the development of resistance in mosquito populations which was rendering it less effective.
Oh no, you would tell us the person we should be outraged at, who didn't cause any of
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Magic Fairy Dust kills all bad bugs.
Magic Fairy Dust kills nothing but bad bugs.
Nothing but Magic Fairy Dust kills bad bugs.
Magic Fairy Dust does not persist in the environment.
Eggshells do not have to support ten pounds of raptor.
Who needs eagles, hawks and falcons anyway? All they do is control the varmint population.
Seriously, turn off Fox Propaganda, go read Silent Spring and only then can you have an informed opinion on what Rachel Carson wrote.
it takes a village ... (Score:3)
According to the headline: "West African Village Weighs Using Genetically Modified Mosquitoes..."
According to Wikipedia: "In 2014 its population was estimated at just over 17.3 million." That's a mighty big village! Actually Burkina Faso is a country. Very few villages could afford such a program and it would be pointless when it was surrounded by other villages who prefer regular mosquitos. Don't know why the headlines here so often mislead the readers and continue to add caps to every word- just like in good old 1856 when headlines sold papers.
literally literal (Score:2)
Both the WHO and the U.S. FDA have approved the technique, but skeptics are critical of the method.
They wouldn't be very good skeptics otherwise.