United Nations Considers a Test Ban on Evolution-Warping Gene Drives (technologyreview.com) 150
Bill Gates wants to end malaria, and so he's particularly "energized" about gene drives, a technology that could wipe out the mosquitoes that spread the disease. Gates calls the new approach a "breakthrough," but some environmental groups say gene drives are too dangerous to ever use. From a report: Now the sides are headed for a showdown. In a letter circulated this week, scientists funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others are raising the alarm over what they say is an attempt to use a United Nations biodiversity meeting this week in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, to introduce a global ban on field tests of the technology. At issue is a draft resolution by diplomats updating the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which -- if adopted -- would call on governments to "refrain from" any release of organisms containing engineered gene drives, even as part of experiments. The proposal for a global gene-drive moratorium has been pushed by environmental groups that are also opposed to genetically modified soybeans and corn. They have likened the gene-drive technique to the atom bomb.
In response, the Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, has been funding a counter-campaign, hiring public relations agencies to preempt restrictive legislation and to distribute today's letter. Many of its signatories are directly funded by the foundation. "This is a lobbying game on both sides, to put it bluntly," says Todd Kuiken, who studies gene-drive policy at North Carolina State University. (He says he was asked to sign the Gates letter but declined because he is a technical advisor to the UN.) New technology The gene-drive technique involves modifying a mosquito's DNA so that, when the insect breeds, it spreads a specific genetic change -- one that's bad for its survival.
In response, the Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, has been funding a counter-campaign, hiring public relations agencies to preempt restrictive legislation and to distribute today's letter. Many of its signatories are directly funded by the foundation. "This is a lobbying game on both sides, to put it bluntly," says Todd Kuiken, who studies gene-drive policy at North Carolina State University. (He says he was asked to sign the Gates letter but declined because he is a technical advisor to the UN.) New technology The gene-drive technique involves modifying a mosquito's DNA so that, when the insect breeds, it spreads a specific genetic change -- one that's bad for its survival.
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some environmental groups say gene drives are too dangerous to ever use.
Sure, and some "environmental groups" are staffed by people who firmly believe that Atlantean DNA has 12 strands [google.com].
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You mean, people from the lost city of Atlanta?
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I'm pretty sure humans are genetically one species, even on Santorini.
I know the place feels magical, but still!
Re:TOO LATE (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. There's no putting the nuclear weapon genie back in it's bottle either - but that doesn't mean we should stand back and let every arms dealer with the resources make and sell nukes to any wacko with the money.
As someone who tentatively approves of responsible genetic engineering (tentatively, because I see precious little evidence of responsible behavior among GMO creators), I'm still strongly opposed to employing gene drives.
Basically, a gene drive involves installing state-of-the-art genetic engineering tools that we stole from bacteria, and are only beginning to fully understand ourselves, into various organisms in a way in which we'll *never* be able to remove, short of driving the species to extinction (which we've thus far had very little success at doing on purpose). And evolution does so love to find creative ways to put useful genes to work.
There's also the fact that we pretty much have to go on faith that gene drives will remain in the target species - the barriers between species are not nearly as absolute as we often imagine, with occasional individuals successfully cross-breeding with similar species. It's very uncommon, but it happens, and it only takes one such hybridization to spread the gene drive into new species, where its effects will be unpredictable.
And that's before even considering the modification payload itself, which may or may not succeed in its intended goals. Extinction drives are perhaps one of the safer gene drives possible, provided they don't jump species, as they eliminate themselves from the gene pool going forward, assuming the species doesn't evolve immunity, which there's already some evidence can occur. I trust I'm not alone in being concerned about those qualifiers. It only takes one individual among countless trillions with a mutation that neutralizes the gene drive (or its effect) to spread the neutered gene drive throughout the now rapidly rebounding species.
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That would be hideously unlikely. Horizontal gene transmission, and fertile hybrid species are both rare. Even if that did happen, the gene drive won't work in a non-target species, because the CAS9 protein in the gene drive is sequence specific. You typically set the gene drive to target a gene critical for reproduction in a target species, something like a protein involved in eggs for a mosquito. If the gene drive ends up in a different species, the nontarget will have similar and related genes, but the C
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Rare, but not unheard of - it often comes down to the genetic compatibility of the specific individuals involved - and when you're talking about species who number in the trillions, and have 3000 related species, rare events aren't quite so hideously unlikely as you might expect.
Meanwhile, if a species is similar enough to allow fertile hybrids, it seems to me quite likely that the gene drive would work on them as well (also note that I'm not talking just about extinction drives that would interfere with so
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Comparing atomic weapons to genetics is misleading, you can control the production of nukes as you need enriched fissionable material and its very hard to make that. But with genetics all the tools and source materials are really all around. Life would not work if it didn't had the tools ...
Theres a lot of fear of genetic modification, but humankind has modified genes since longer than there are written records. The beef and pork and also
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As I said, I approve of responsible genetic engineering.
Gene drives specifically are something else though, and they are being investigated for many non-extinction applications as well - one of the proposed mosquito "low impact" solutions being developed for example is a gene drive that simply makes them immune to the malaria parasite, which actually gives the modified individuals a survival advantage.
As for gene drives that "stop working" being harmless - not so much. Just because the payload stops being d
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And that's before we start talking about the truly scary gene drives being discussed - such as the work the US military has proposed into developing "defensive" gene drives for our staple food crops. "In case of genetic attack on our food supply". Right.
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Actually, not really. It's conceptually horrifying, but would be relatively easy to control. I mean, the original race-targeting virus would not be, but that has nothing to do with gene-drives, and there's not a whole lot of motive to insert a gene-drive rather than just killing or modifying the targeted individuals outright, which is considerably faster and easier. Gene drives only affect your children.
Also, there are no gene sequences present in all members of one race but none of another - the reason
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Basically, a gene drive involves installing state-of-the-art genetic engineering tools that we stole from bacteria, and are only beginning to fully understand ourselves, into various organisms in a way in which we'll *never* be able to remove, short of driving the species to extinction (which we've thus far had very little success at doing on purpose).
The upside is we get rid of mosquitoes. The downside is a few non-target species might die slightly earlier than when the sun goes red giant and fries every living thing on the Earth.
Sounds like an acceptable risk, IMHO.
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Not quite.
We *might* get rid of mosquitoes. There've already been a few lab tests in which species have evolved an immunity to "extinction drives", and the odds of that happening go up dramatically when the population numbers in the trillions. In which case we're back to square one, except that now the mosquitoes are all carrying powerful DNA-editing tools in their genes, just waiting for further evolution to put them to use.
I'm sure there's no way that could possibly go badly with a species of blood-feed
Re: TOO LATE (Score:1)
I'm sure there's no way that could possibly go badly with a species of blood-feeders that already routinely inject their DNA into their host's bloodstream.
This was my first thought after reading the article. Mosquitos are particularly risky to genetically modify due to how they interact with other species. What are the chances that they might bite and exchange the gene drive DNA with another species with a similar enough gene sequence to the target of the gene drive? And what if the gene drive mutates within the mosquito population in a way that better targets other species?
Hopefully one stage of lab testing involves a massive hermetically sealed warehouse fu
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What is missing from your comment is a single defined negative outcome. When millions of people die each year from mosquito born diseases, vague insinuations that something bad you can't articulate could happen is not a sufficient rebuttal to saving them. What are you proposing could happen that would make us long for the days when we only had malaria and dengue to worry about?
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That is a decent argument, but I disagree.
I know it sounds callous, but several tens of millions of people die every year, and nothing we do will ever change that (well, we might invent immortality, but that would likely soon result in billions of people dying). People dying is the natural course of events. Jeopardizing the future viability of the global biosphere to save the lives of a few percent of those is hopelessly reckless.
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Even if some hypothetical species jump were to occur, at the most it could effect one or a few individuals. For a gene drive to work, you need to release a large number of the target species so that a significant fraction of the breeding population will have the modification.
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No, you really don't. That makes it more likely to be successful, as it's more likely that at least one of your individuals manage to reproduce before dying in every generation, and that their offspring manage to do so as well, until such time as they have enough descendants that it would be virtually impossible to eliminate them all. But it's not required.
You may be thinking of "traditional GMO" mosquito control strategies, where you're relying on normal genetic dispersion to spread your modifications, bu
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Nowhere did I object to genetic engineering, just to one specific, exceptionally dangerous technology that's completely unrelated to curing genetic-based diseases.
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How do you figure? Offhand I can't think of any viruses that splice DNA-editing tools into their hosts reproductive cells in such a way that they're all but guaranteed to spread throughout the entire species.
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Worst case scenario is that this spreads beyond the intended target population and you end up exterminating additional populations of the same species.
UN has no authority. (Score:2, Insightful)
Just a bunch of politicians playing pretend. Ignore them.
Re: UN has no authority. (Score:2)
Ignore them
By all means, ignore those clowns; just don't ignore the message.
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Seems like the sole purpose of the UN is letting 192 nations vote on how much money the United States should pay each of them.
How do you get that from this story? I don't see any aspect of it being about the US paying other nations. (indeed, it looks like it's other nations telling a US charity not to spend its money on something that might arguably help those other nations, i.e. the exact opposite of your characterization).
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Just a bunch of politicians playing pretend. Ignore them.
As it stands now, this isn't about the UN. It's about activists who are haranguing a conference to get the UN to do its bidding.
Re: Mild pesticides work wonders (Score:2)
Mosquito genocide (Score:2)
I for one am looking forward to the coming mosquito genocide.
Re:Mosquito genocide (Score:4, Informative)
And when the bats start disappearing will that be OK too?
The majority of the diet of bats is not mosquitos, either in numbers or in weight. Among insect-eating bats, mosquitos are no more than 20% of their diet.
Also, the modified species the Gates Foundation wants to release is only one mosquito species that bites humans. There are numerous other mosquito species which do not bite humans. They'll still be available for bats to eat.
The Gates Foundation is known for being a bit self-serving, but they're not proposing this solution to malaria in a vacuum. It's fairly well considered.
The bats will adapt (Score:2)
Adapt or die, as the saying goes.
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Why would the bats disappear? Human-feeding mosquitoes are an invasive species that followed humans across the globe. There's no shortage of other mosquito species, nor of other flying insect species. Their sudden extinction might make for a rough year, but other species of fast-breeding pollen-feeders would almost certainly fill the ecological niche almost immediately.
I'm strongly opposed to gene drive technology for reasons listed in my reply to the first post, but if we could safely drive human-feedin
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Mosquitoes make up only a very small portion of a bats diet (I've been studying that lately because of the moquito population around my back deck.) A still pond with a few guppy fish has a much large effect on moquito populations.
Re: Mosquito genocide (Score:2)
Re: Mosquito genocide (Score:2)
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We have eliminated millions of species, one more (and one which actually causes harm) won't cause the apocalypse. There's tons and tons of other insects for all the insectivores to eat. Including non-malaria-spreading mosquito subspecies which will be all too happy to replace the malaria-bearing ones in that particular ecological niche.
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But how can you be sure only one species of mosquito is erased?
Mosquitoes suffer from viruses, just like we do. The same virus can attack several insect species. Viruses try to spread their own DNA, but sometimes also scoops up other DNA (some of our inactive DNA is such garbage DNA that got into our ancestors.) So, this sterility gene drive could jump to other insects and kill them off too. Or to organisms that aren't insects.
Getting bitten by a malaria-infected mosquito is bad, but at least we have an (
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This is a fair consideration. However, it's not quite as dire as that for a number of reasons. My approach would be to engineer a mosquito which won't transmit malaria, but otherwise of the same species. The problem isn't that mosquitoes bite humans exactly, but rather that they transmit the disease. If we could provoke the mosquitoes to have an immune response to the pathogen, the problem should self-resolve.
In the end, nature is doing these experiments all of the time in less overt, but very random ways.
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I believe they studied that, and it's not significant, especially if you only target the species of mosquitoes that spread diseases to humans (malaria, west nile, etc.), as that leaves many others unharmed.
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"Contrary to Gates’s time line, which he later amended to “several years,” gene-drive technology remains highly experimental. Scientists aren’t sure how well it would work in the wild and don’t even have insects they consider ready for field tests."
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Think again:
If you actually read what I wrote an the comment it was responding to, it has nothing to do with the technology being ready. It's a discussion on whether the elimination of mosquito species would disrupt the food chain.
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Yes. Other mosquitoes will just fill the gap. There is nothing special about this species other than it hosts malaria plasmodia. Mosquitoes will even profit because when they don't transmit diseases, they're just a nuisance to humans who will make much less of an effort to destroy their breeding grounds or poison them.
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I prefer the food chain pizza hut effect.
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I for one am looking forward to the coming mosquito genocide.
There are over 3000 species of mosquito. Out of these, only 200 even bite humans, and only a small fraction of these spread disease. Eliminating even the 200 would have no effect on ecosystems.
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what we should do is modify humans to be poisonous to mosquitos :)
Obligatory Jurassic Park Reference (Score:1)
"Life finds a way..."
Won't happen. (Score:2)
According to Kuiken, the UN is unlikely to endorse a ban, because that requires consensus, and some countries with biotech industries are expected to oppose the measure.
It's not even worth discussing here.
We can't have that. Who's bringin' the gene-o-cide (Score:1)
MIT Technology Review has a paywall (Score:4, Informative)
MIT Technology Review allows 3 page views per user per month before putting up a paywall, or 0 page views per user per month for users who use Disconnect, Firefox Tracking Protection, or any of several other privacy tools. Editors: In the future, please add "(may be paywalled)" when posting articles from technologyreview.com.
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The website is still not UTF-8 compliant near the end of 2018, they can't even avoid posting duplicates of the same news and you want them to have a list of websites which need to have a warning added to their URLs?
I agree with this (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironically I'm not even worried about this on an emotional basis. There's already enough GMO that's been released into the wild that it's already too late to do anything about it, and countries like China are even less cautious about doing it than anyone else. One way or another our fate is already sealed. Odds are about even that those of us alive right now won't live to see any possible negative consequences; it might take several generations before anything shows up.
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I am almost always shouted down for it, but I agree that we're forging ahead with genetic modifications without fully knowing what the long-term consequences will be, and it's a one-way street, once it's done you can't take it back, and we won't know what the ultimate consequences will be for decades or centuries -- or maybe a matter of just years, if we're really unlucky. Worse, there could be consequences we'll never even realize are due to something we've modifed genetically; imagine our species dying out and never even understanding why it's happening?
It is not enough for Icarus to fly near the sun, he must fly to it's center... just to ensure it's really that hot.
You have set a bar so high, as to be totally impossible to reach. I therefore award you the rank of "Twelve Sigma Black Belt." Now go, and use your powers to frustrate all of humanity.
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If you're flying high and they're calling you Icarus but your wings don't melt, and so you keep flying higher, and then they say, "Oh now he's trying to fly into the center of the Sun!" you should probably just look down and laugh at the dimwits.
Predictions aren't useful or knowledgy if you double them whenever they're wrong. You can't Martingale your way to science.
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Sounds like a totally reasonable point of view to me. No matter how 'careful' we think we're being, or how well considered we are regarding unintended consequences; there's always a chance something will sneak past the goalie, and who knows what happens then?
The iterative approach to figuring things out falls flat when an unintended consequence or other unforeseen outcomes have the potential for devastation. Sure, this attempt might only effect a particular type of mosquito, but who's to say that it'll n
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I am almost always shouted down for it, but I agree that we're forging ahead with genetic modifications without fully knowing what the long-term consequences will be, and it's a one-way street, once it's done you can't take it back, and we won't know what the ultimate consequences will be for decades or centuries -- or maybe a matter of just years, if we're really unlucky. Worse, there could be consequences we'll never even realize are due to something we've modifed genetically; imagine our species dying out and never even understanding why it's happening?
Ironically I'm not even worried about this on an emotional basis. There's already enough GMO that's been released into the wild that it's already too late to do anything about it, and countries like China are even less cautious about doing it than anyone else. One way or another our fate is already sealed. Odds are about even that those of us alive right now won't live to see any possible negative consequences; it might take several generations before anything shows up.
You need to balance not just the potential unknowns, but also the things we know. For example, we know which animal kills the most humans annually. It isn't our fellow humans as might be expected, but mosquitoes [who.int]. The Gates foundation are trying to prevent the deaths of the millions(plural) killed every year by mosquito born illnesses.
There will always be unknowns, even if we discovered a magical genie tomorrow that could kill all mosquitos overnight with zero other affects, we still would have to face the u
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once it's done you can't take it back
That's how it works, non-adaptive modifications take themselves back.
Positive feedback loops will kill themselves. Negative feedback loops are self-limiting, and can evolve.
The reason you get shouted down is probably that your concerns are hand-wavy, and easily replaced by hand-wavy stuff with different conclusions. Also, the fatalism; fatalists should just shut the fuck up because even they don't believe they're adding anything to the conversation.
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The thing that's wrong with it is that inaction bias can also cause immense human suffering.
The solution here is to establish a consistent, quantifiable principle about how much caution is enough caution for this. We can't wallow in an endless series of "it needs more research", but sure, it needs some research so we don't accidentally engineer the Rage virus. So, how much?
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without fully knowing what the long-term consequences will be
Perhaps what we should start with known factual and at hand consequences of not doing anything. 216 million illness cases and 445,000 to 731,000 deaths, per year, every year. This is not a maybe, decades down the line, we don't know bullshit, this is reality today, right now. That's a corpse every minute you fail to make a decision, think about that very carefully.
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we should keep a bunch of those mosquitoes alive somewhere 'safe', just as we do with all those deadly virusses that are erradicated.
in case we did screw up, hopefully we can still restore the situation by releasing our safely kept species.
Everything is dangerous. (Score:2, Informative)
You know how many viruses are around you right now? Trillions and trillions. Each one a message to rewrite the DNA of something in your body (mostly of bacteria), each one indirectly competing with eachother to carve a larger niche out of our existences.
We took a couple of those and use them in the safest way we can to fight against a small number of pathogens.
I understand the fear - that of Andromeda strains, grey goo, and other explicitly fictional thought experiment scenarios.
Someone, somewhere is goin
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but but but but but it has a WARP DRIVE so it goes REALLY FAST and we'll all die if viruses hit us at that speed... right?
Who decides which species to terminate? (Score:2)
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How about we limit the use of this technology to only species of animals that kill more that 100,000 people per year. (Yes that would include humans, but let's exclude them.)
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Words on paper won't stop that at all.
You're either afraid that your neighbors will nuke you for doing it... or you're not.
If words on paper were going to stop you, you'd already not be doing that thing without an agreement.
See what I mean about the left hating science? (Score:2)
Gene drives are a powerful new technology which needs to be deployed with caution and respect, with review by peer biologists who are as fully informed as possible about the effect they are having on ecosystems. But when "environmental groups" get involved, the usual suspects will insist on banning any tech that didn't exist in their great-grammaw's time.
Furthermore, note the shift going on here from opposing an implementation of technology to opposing basic scientific research in a field. When we look more
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Any group which opposes gene drives will inevitably, by definition, be an environmental group. That obviously doesn't mean that all environmental groups oppose it. Nor does the attitude of environmental activists define "the left" on any issue. I, for one, am a leftist socialist who welcomes our mosquito-extinction-causing overlords.
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Then let's put an end to the groupthink by which today's version of the Party That Used To Build Stuff rubber-stamps every antiscience cause the hippies come up with. If they wanted to, Democrats could become popular again by building again.
Mosquitos kill more humans than humans do. (Score:2)
That's a lot of humans.
We should stop them from doing that.
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If you aren't a troll, they you are wildly ignorant. ...Or you watch far too much right-wing propaganda.
I'm sure you can scratch the bottom of the "environmentalism barrel" and some absolute nut job that would say they want that. But they are such a tiny and insignificant minority of environmentalists (even those you would call "radical") that your statement is horrifyingly incorrect. How could you even say that?
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Did you ever consider that blindly ignoring people who could be bad for your movement and literally pretending they don't exist (except whe
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You're shifting goalposts. You started with "a lot of", which Dallas May refuted, and now you've moved to "does any awful person exist?", and acted like Dallas May is insane for making arguments that don't refute your new position that you didn't take in the first place.
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It'd be moving goal posts if I were try
Zach Patterson / ZIP "Greatest Hits" (lol, not) (Score:1)
See how STUPID "ZIP" (Zach Patterson) the CHIMP is (tried to take credit for what I solved before him) https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org] (he needs to LEARN TO READ)!
I even SHOW ways to do it YOURSELF https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org] (he couldn't).
Delphi/FreePascal/ObjectPascal HAS no issue w/ null-term'd string bufferoverflows - C does, C++ can UNLESS you do what I said 1st loser.
Tell us about CODE SIGNING (which has been STOLEN & ABUSED) https://www.helpnetsecurity.co... [helpnetsecurity.com] MY METHOD CAN'T BE (upmodded +
Try the Rats on Tristan da Cunha (Score:3)
Tristan is an island a good thousand miles away from anyplace else and rats are not native there. They cause all kinds of grief and there is no normal way to get rid of them. Try a "death gene" drive with them. They are not likely to breed with anything from off island, and if it somehow goes bad you are naturally isolated from, well, everything else in the world.
Once they let the genie out (Score:2)
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Inaction is also an action (Score:2)
Mother Nature is out of her league. (Score:2)
But seriously (Score:2)
Ticks should be next. First we get rid of deer ticks (Lyme disease), and maybe a few others that spread serious illnesses.
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RUFR GTFO MOFO
Re: This is more than Genetic Engineering (Score:2)
Where the hell did you get that nonsense from? Literally none of that is in any way correct.
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You can't stop us from using the Warp Drive to kill mosquitos, I don't care how many subspace cultures we destroy. Do we live in subspace? No. So do we care? No.
Back off the gene warp, cowherd.
Re: Bad analogy (Score:2)
The reason they're profitable is because they are better at feeding the planet. The "it's all about the profit" objection is just blatant propaganda; if you're going to object to efficiency based on the fact that it's more profitable than inefficiency, I really hope you enjoy being a cave dwelling hunter-gatherer.