America's Government Approves Release of Genetically-Engineered Mosquitoes (bloombergenvironment.com) 84
America's Environmental Protection Agency "granted permission for genetically engineered mosquitoes to be released into the Florida Keys and around Houston to see if they can help limit the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses," writes Bloomberg Environment.
clovis (Slashdot reader #4,684) shared their report on ab experimental use permit granted to British biotech company Oxitec Ltd: Oxitec's first field trial in Brazil achieved up to a 96% suppression of target disease transmitting mosquito populations in dense urban settings, the company said. But in public comments on the permit approval docket, Jaydee Hanson, policy director at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Food Safety, questioned Oxitec's claims and warned of other possible dangers.
"Most (but not all) of the GE mosquitoes' offspring die at the late larval stage, in the water where the female mosquitoes lay their eggs," Hanson wrote."This partial survival rate, even if low (a reported 3 to 4% in laboratory conditions), would lead to the establishment of hybrid mosquitoes in the environment, which might possess altered properties, including the potential for enhanced disease transmission or resistance to insecticides," Hanson said.
The U.S. agency said it "looks forward to receiving field test results regarding the effectiveness of this promising new tool that could help combat the spread of mosquito-borne diseases like the Zika virus."
clovis (Slashdot reader #4,684) shared their report on ab experimental use permit granted to British biotech company Oxitec Ltd: Oxitec's first field trial in Brazil achieved up to a 96% suppression of target disease transmitting mosquito populations in dense urban settings, the company said. But in public comments on the permit approval docket, Jaydee Hanson, policy director at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Food Safety, questioned Oxitec's claims and warned of other possible dangers.
"Most (but not all) of the GE mosquitoes' offspring die at the late larval stage, in the water where the female mosquitoes lay their eggs," Hanson wrote."This partial survival rate, even if low (a reported 3 to 4% in laboratory conditions), would lead to the establishment of hybrid mosquitoes in the environment, which might possess altered properties, including the potential for enhanced disease transmission or resistance to insecticides," Hanson said.
The U.S. agency said it "looks forward to receiving field test results regarding the effectiveness of this promising new tool that could help combat the spread of mosquito-borne diseases like the Zika virus."
Just shut me up already (Score:3)
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What could go wrong?
UV light from the sun causes several quintillion mutations every day. I think we can survive one more.
Re: Just shut me up already (Score:1)
Random mutations.
Most of which instantly fixes.
Versus ones deliberately designed by literally the biggest mass-extincters in the known universe ... HUMANS.
Yeah, if anyone manges to create killer mosquitoes, it's us.
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Mosquitoes are already one of the world's deadliest animals.
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Arguably the deadliest, and not by a small margin.
Wipe them out. Wipe them ALL out.
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Strictly speaking, aren't the plasmodia to blame?
Indeed. Historically, malaria has been eradicated by eliminating the plasmodia, not the mosquito vectors.
To propagate, two mosquitoes must bite the same person: once to infect the human, and again to infect the new vector.
So if you can cut the population of mosquitoes in half, and thus the bite-rate in half, the propagation will go down by the inverse square, so a quarter as much.
If you knock the mosquito population down by 99%, you reduce the malaria rate by 99.99%. If you simultaneously pass out bed net
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GM the Covid and cut the human population in half.
Or just vote a loonie as president.
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Wipe them out. Wipe them ALL out.
Most mosquito species do not spread disease.
Re: Just shut me up already (Score:1)
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I think the Chicxulub asteroid has us beat by a few orders of magnitude [...]. We're pikers compared to that.
But we try harder!
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Versus ones deliberately designed
The mutation is designed to weaken the mosquito.
If there was some adaption that would inadvertently make the mosquitoes stronger, then random mutations would have already found a way to do that sometime in the last 300 million years.
If you tinker with your car, it is very likely you can break it. It is far less likely you will inadvertently cause it to escape and survive in the wild.
Re: Just shut me up already (Score:1)
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Could the world stand to have those extra 60,001,000 people? I'd sooner kill off another 600,010,000, might be enough to actually make a difference. Go, Mosquitoes!
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I'd actually be curious to understand Jaydee Hanson's argument with regard to exponential decay. While there surely will be as many as N(4e-2) survivors each generation and some of these survivors may successfully go on to produce further generations; I do not understand the argument as anything but Murphy's law applied to mosquitoes.
Given that the probability is so low, I'd like to understand exactly which worst-case (assuming despite probability that such will occur) scenario delivers consequences from wh
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Good info. And I just read this detail about the spreading of insecticide genes into the wild makes some sense:
https://www.regulations.gov/co... [regulations.gov]
In addition, because the
OX5034 strain is female-killing only, GE males are expected to survive for multiple generations and this
will considerably increase the spread of genes from the introduced strain into the wild population. In an
online presentation, Oxitec presents this as a benefit because it argues that the released laboratoryderived strain will spread insecti
genocide (Score:2)
Who in their right mind thinks it's a good idea to (attempt to) genocide a whole species?
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Yeah! Smallpox gotta live!
Oh boy... (Score:5, Funny)
Virtually no ecological impact (Score:5, Interesting)
Before anyone asks, the ecological impact has been studied to death. Over and over by many different parties.
For example there is no other species which depends on this particular species of mosquito for food. The things that eat mosquitos also ear other bugs, and other species of mosquito.
Re:Virtually no ecological impact (Score:5, Interesting)
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I am not doubting the science, I am doubting the execution. Whatever is perfect in theory will almost always be flawed in reality due to a lot of variables during engineering.
You mean "Nature finds a way"?
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That's a silly argument. The relevant question is whether the flaws are relevant to the success of the effort or to the environment more generally. Someone who thinks such a flaw is sufficient to cancel the effort needs to identify the flaw and quantify both it's likelihood and its impact.
Arguing that we should not try to kill pathogen-carrying mosquitos just because there might be some flaw somewhere is FUD.
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That's way too many words to say what boils down to: I don't understand the science.
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Re:Virtually no ecological impact (Score:5, Informative)
The aedes mosquito is not even native to North America. It is an invasive species, originating in Africa.
Re: Virtually no ecological impact (Score:5, Funny)
Guess what else is an invasive species that originated in Africa...
$5,000 (Score:3)
> Not one bird that eats mosquitoes regardless of species... How much
If you can find a bird species native to the US that only eats aegypti, or even has aegypti (an African species of mosquito) as a major food source, I'll give you $5,000.
Offer expires Wednesday May 6th midnight GMT.
Convenient "only". (Score:1)
It doesn't need to "only" eat that species, and you know it.
It will not be restricted to the US, and you know it.
It will alter the delicate balance of life, like re-introducing wolves to the Yellowstone park literally altered the course of rivers and hence biodiversity. (Due to different grazing behavior.) And you know it!
You are only being an asshole, grasping at straws, who can't handle just being wrong, and you know it.
Go learn to deal with being wrong like a grown-up, instead of like the textbook stereo
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You know the difference between "only eats" and "major food source", right?
I am curious if you think the birds native to the US didn't exist 30 years ago, before there were African mosquitos here.
Censoring with mod points again. (Score:1)
Seriously, who the hell is such a psychopath that he would downmod this?
What's wrong with you sick fucks??
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Yeah corporations like the Audabon Society.
Do you really think that birds native to America didn't exist until a few years ago, when an invasive African species of mosquito was introduced? Really?
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Ear other bugs? Like earwigs?
Not be confused wirh (Score:2)
Yes, earwigs. Not to be confused with any kind of ant.
I just looked at your web site again. I was delighted to go it still looks the same as the last time I saw it, using IE4. That's wonderful.
Of the approximately 1.8 billion web sites, yours was about #3 million (or earlier) and it's awesome that it's still the original classic site.
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Haha, thanks. :) Please be sure to check out my more updated web site at http://aqfl.net/ [aqfl.net] if you haven't done so. ;)
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What about 30 years ago? (Score:2)
It's not a significant food source.
If it's hard to understand or believe that, how do you think the IS birds survived 30 years ago, before there were any African mosquitos in the area at all?
Re: Don't worry. If something goes wrong... (Score:1)
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Here they come (Score:2)
Murder sparrows!!
This used to be an urban legend (Score:2)
This begs the question... (Score:2)
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"looks forward to receiving field test results regarding the effectiveness of this promising new tool that could help combat the spread of mosquito-borne diseases like the Zika virus."
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Of all species that could be eradicated, there is only one that unquestionably deserves it: The pathogen called "humans".
Go ahead and check out any time you like. So odd that that the idiots talking about reducing the population never seem to do their part.
There are thousands of mosquito species and only a small number bite humans while being capable of carrying infectious diseases. We could eliminate those with no real impact to the ecosystem. Other species would largely take their place and there aren't any organisms higher up the food chain that subsist solely (or even largely) on the species of mosquitos we want to eli
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Instead of just curing the mosquitoes so they just don't carry the disease, you want to eradicate an entire fucking ecosystem by eradicating an entire species!
There are about 3,000 species of mosquitoes, of which only about 200 even bite humans. The top 5 of these are the ones that carry all the diseases. If we eliminated all the biting species, the ecosystem wouldn't feel a thing.
Of all species that could be eradicated, could there be a more arrogant piece of shit of a species than fascist Greens? Their solution to perceived environmental problems is genocide of the one species which has evolved a civilization.
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Curing the mosquitoes? You're hilarious. Are you going to make vaccinations mandatory for mosquitoes after we develop the vaccines over the next few years,and then they can queue up health clinics? or maybe make them wear masks and practice social distancing?
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Curing mosquitoes? You're daft.
These mosquitoes have been engineered to a). have goofy green eyes that are instantly recognizeable and b). be infertile.
They haven't been given pesticide resistance or enhanced disease-carrying capabilities. If this initiative works and produces mass die-offs with a new, much-smaller generation of hybrid mosquitoes, odds are the males of that population will also have fertility problems. Future releases can be coordinated to add other undesirable traits such as producing of
Re: What could possibly go ... dumber? (Score:2)
Yay genocide! Whoo-whee, we're gonna kill 'em all!!
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Pretty much. Killing off a few varieties of mosquito will go a long way to improving the life of all warm-blooded animals.
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I gotta bad feeling about this.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's see if I can Godwin this thing (Score:2)
worst thing that could happen is that this works out successfully, then we'll be encouraged to keep pushing it until something bad occurs that we can't fix
Suppose during WWII someone had the opportunity to take out Hitler. Someone says, "But if you kill him, he might be replaced by someone even worse."
Keeping the current problem because the alternative might be worse is status quo bias. We're literally choosing between a) This bug might cause some unspecified problem some unspecified time in the future, and b) This bug is guaranteed to kill more than 700,000 people per year. Which bug do you want in the wild?
I am 100% against this (Score:1)
Just wanted y'all to know...
Obligatory Simpsons reference (Score:1)
I for one welcome our new mosquito overlords
nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
In the last century I was involved in a number of campaigns in which the US and California Food and Drug Administration used genetically sterile bugs to wipe out agricultural threats in a similar fashion. That's over 20 years ago and no deleterious effects to date. No guarantee for the current action, but it may be best to trust the scientists who planned it.
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Hey, It's Dep't of Food & AGRICULTURE, idiot!
Worth the risk (Score:2)
Long overdue (Score:5, Informative)
Mosquitoes have killed more people than even the communists have. That is pretty exclusive company. There is no reason to have delay further. This is long overdue after being held up by superfluous red tape studies for years. To put some context on things, this was first studied in Brazil in 2013 and the second US study isnâ(TM)t scheduled until 2021. It could easily be years after that before it is released to the public.
https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org]
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Wrong genus of mosquitoes my friend. Not saying these mosquitoes should be in N. America but... quoting how mosquitoes as a whole kill millions is kind of like saying all dogs should be destroyed because pitbulls have killed people.
https://www.who.int/news-room/... [who.int]
"Only certain species of mosquitoes of the Anopheles genusâ"and only females of those speciesâ"can transmit malaria."
Cue the conspiracy theories in 3.. 2.. 1.. (Score:2)
"Oh my GOD, they're spreading COVID-19 with mosquitoes!!!11!!" (too soon?)
"What could possibly go wrong?" and "Wait, hold my beer and watch this" definitely apply here.
Seriously, can't wait to see what the unintended consequences of this will be.
Five bucks says it somehow manages to make pollinators like bees infertile, threatening a total ecosystem collapse. Like we're so far from that now anyway.
Wipe out all mosquitoes (Score:1)
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Swap out their mouth bits with fly mouth bits so they can vom and suck trash like ordinary flies but still mate with existing mosquitoes. There solved it for you. Don't call me until it is implemented and don't pester me, the great inventor and architect of this solution with implementation details.
State of affairs (Score:1)
The test has already been done -- in Australia (Score:3)
Not only that, but Slashdot has has already beat the subject to death once [slashdot.org]. The only difference this time is the method of sterilization and, since one of the earlier methods used was hard X-ray radiation, I think the mutation possibilities have already been explored.
(For the record, my opinion is here [slashdot.org].)
Okay, dial back the panic alarms and parades (Score:2)
They are only modifying one variety of mosquito, there are many, and they overlap each other on the food chain.