'We Finally May Be Able to Rid the World of Mosquitoes. But Should We?' (yahoo.com) 78
It's no longer a hypothetical question, writes the Washington Post. "In recent years, scientists have devised powerful genetic tools that may be able to eradicate mosquitoes and other pests once and for all."
But along with the ability to fight malaria, dengue, West Nile virus and other serious diseases, "the development of this technology also raises a profound ethical question: When, if ever, is it okay to intentionally drive a species out of existence...?" When so many wildlife conservationists are trying to save plants and animals from disappearing, the mosquito is one of the few creatures that people argue is actually worthy of extinction. Forget about tigers or bears; it's the tiny mosquito that is the deadliest animal on Earth. The human misery caused by malaria is undeniable. Nearly 600,000 people died of the disease in 2023, according to the World Health Organization, with the majority of cases in Africa... But recently, the Hastings Center for Bioethics, a research institute in New York, and Arizona State University brought together a group of bioethicists to discuss the potential pitfalls of intentionally trying to drive a species to extinction. In a policy paper published in the journal Science last month, the group concluded that "deliberate full extinction might occasionally be acceptable, but only extremely rarely..."
It's unclear how important malaria-carrying mosquitoes are to broader ecosystems. Little research has been done to figure out whether frogs or other animals that eat the insects would be able to find their meals elsewhere. Scientists are hotly debating whether a broader "insect apocalypse" is underway in many parts of the world, which may imperil other creatures that depend on them for food and pollination... Instead, the authors said, geneticists should be able to use gene editing, vaccines and other tools to target not the mosquito itself, but the single-celled Plasmodium parasite that is responsible for malaria. That invisible microorganism — which a mosquito transfers from its saliva to a person's blood when it bites — is the real culprit.
A nonprofit research consortium called Target Malaria has genetically modified mosquitoes in their labs (which get core funding from the Gates Foundation and from Open Philanthropy, backed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife). ), and hopes to deploy them in the wild within five years...
But along with the ability to fight malaria, dengue, West Nile virus and other serious diseases, "the development of this technology also raises a profound ethical question: When, if ever, is it okay to intentionally drive a species out of existence...?" When so many wildlife conservationists are trying to save plants and animals from disappearing, the mosquito is one of the few creatures that people argue is actually worthy of extinction. Forget about tigers or bears; it's the tiny mosquito that is the deadliest animal on Earth. The human misery caused by malaria is undeniable. Nearly 600,000 people died of the disease in 2023, according to the World Health Organization, with the majority of cases in Africa... But recently, the Hastings Center for Bioethics, a research institute in New York, and Arizona State University brought together a group of bioethicists to discuss the potential pitfalls of intentionally trying to drive a species to extinction. In a policy paper published in the journal Science last month, the group concluded that "deliberate full extinction might occasionally be acceptable, but only extremely rarely..."
It's unclear how important malaria-carrying mosquitoes are to broader ecosystems. Little research has been done to figure out whether frogs or other animals that eat the insects would be able to find their meals elsewhere. Scientists are hotly debating whether a broader "insect apocalypse" is underway in many parts of the world, which may imperil other creatures that depend on them for food and pollination... Instead, the authors said, geneticists should be able to use gene editing, vaccines and other tools to target not the mosquito itself, but the single-celled Plasmodium parasite that is responsible for malaria. That invisible microorganism — which a mosquito transfers from its saliva to a person's blood when it bites — is the real culprit.
A nonprofit research consortium called Target Malaria has genetically modified mosquitoes in their labs (which get core funding from the Gates Foundation and from Open Philanthropy, backed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife). ), and hopes to deploy them in the wild within five years...
Yes (Score:1, Insightful)
The answer is yes, it's OK to eliminate mosquitos.
Some people waste far too much time thinking about silly questions.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
What about the animals that depend on mosquitos for food? Are you ready to see a collapse in spider, bat, and bird populations? You've got to think about the whole food chain.
On the flip side, what if in a twisted way... mosquitos also fulfill population control?
Re: Yes (Score:3, Interesting)
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YES. We should.
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Africa cant even keep its own people fed on its own and now you're talking about eliminating a major part of the local food chain and replacing it with human grown food like it wont be any problem at all?
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Who is going to distribute all this food across millions of square miles? Mosquitoes have wings.
There is more biomass in the mosquito population than the human population.
It's about the mass of the entire annual global food production.
Except mosquitoes only live 1 - 2 months, not 12.
We'd need to upscale food production by a factor of 10 and find a way to distribute it to places humans have never even been, in to tiny pieces 1/400th of a gram, and find a way to make it move on its own, because frogs don't ea
Re: Yes (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Yes (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Bats, dragonflies, birds, and frogs generally eat mosquitoes, but they're generalist eaters. No creature relies on mosquitoes solely; they eat other insects like flies. Also as someone below pointed out, there are many species of mosquitoes; these kinds of solutions target only the species that carry disease.
Further, most of these genetic solutions involve releasing some form of male mosquito that can sterilize eggs. They are transgenic, meaning that the genes are not natural to the species; their genetic material is unstable. Most transgenic things can't maintain the foreign gene for about 10-20 generations (a mosquito generation is about 3 weeks). So the solution would involve releasing male mosquitoes to fertilize the eggs that sterilize females in the eggs (female mosquitoes lay eggs only once, so a sterilized females in the larval state results in population control of the insect); the best you can hope for is about an 80% reduction of the species, with at best topping out at 90%. Given the speed at which mosquitoes breed, this would overall just reduce the number of mosquitoes in a given area. These are also species-specific situations; it wouldn't hurt the non-disease carrying mosquitoes.
And your point about what you suggested IS twisted; population control? Tell that to the people suffering in Africa, who are the ones who are the subjects of this population control. You'd be singing a different tune if it was your family members dying of malaria. The most effective population control in human history has been industrialization; poverty increases the birth rates, whereas wealth decreases it. Africa's battle with disease is one of many reasons why they struggle to develop as a country; anything that improves health is a step towards a better life for people there which also tends to result in lower birth rates.
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Bats, dragonflies, birds, and frogs generally eat mosquitoes, but they're generalist eaters. No creature relies on mosquitoes solely; they eat other insects like flies. Also as someone below pointed out, there are many species of mosquitoes; these kinds of solutions target only the species that carry disease.
Sure but that doesnt change the fact that killing off all mosquitos would be taking a massive amount of food out of the food chain. This will have dramatic effects on other insect species which are already in decline and all the animals that eat them and all of the animals that eat those animals and all the animals that eat those animals and so on.
I'm all for reducing human suffering but we should make damn sure we understand the consequences of killing off all mosquitos before we take out such a major, low
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> the fact that killing off all mosquitos
Literally nobody is proposing this.
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but they're generalist eaters. No creature relies on mosquitoes solely; they eat other insects like flies. Also as someone below pointed out, there are many species of mosquitoes; these kinds of solutions target only the species that carry disease.
You're jumping to the answer that is "No" The question was should we eradicate the mosquito, not should we target disease carrying subspecies in a particular area. The fact that only the latter makes sense objectively means the former is a bad idea.
But you're also missing the point. Just because something doesn't eat one thing exclusively doesn't mean that they can live without it. We're not talking about supplementing the mosquito, we're talking about removing a chunk of the food chain. You can see the imp
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> they're generalist eaters
Humans are also generalist eaters. That doesn't mean there won't be severe problems if you suddenly eliminated, say, all rice crops.
> genetic solutions involve releasing some form of male mosquito that can sterilize eggs ... Most transgenic things can't maintain the foreign gene for about 10-20 generations
Setting aside that your description is a bit wrong but probably just mixed the words up... how exactly can an any mutation - artificially induced or otherwise - that result
But, but, but..... (Score:3)
"Life finds a way!"
All the animals that eat mosquitoes eat other things too. Maybe we don't wipe mosquitoes out "all at once." We can just cull their numbers. Give everything time to adapt. Obliterate them once the time is right.
It would probably help to figure out why other insect populations are collapsing, and turn that around, so the alternative food sources will be available.
Mosquitoes are a blight upon creation! The little bastards have no right to exist! Of course there will be consequences b
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"Life finds a way" was a warning against meddling with poorly understood biological processes... exactly what you would be doing by completely eradicating mosquitos.
Broader Ecological Impact (Score:2)
What about the animals that depend on mosquitos for food?
That's too specific. The more general question we need to know the answer to is what would the ecological impact be of removing mosquitoes from the environment. It might be that some predator populations would decline but it may also be that some other species surges in numbers to fill the ecological gap left by eradicating mosquitoes. It would not be a great improvement if mosquitoes were replaced by some other, potentially worse biting insect or, if the population of predators relying on mosquitoes decli
Re: Yes (Score:2)
Animals can adapt
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Yeah, I thought so too. Here in this South-American region there is 9 months out of the year good, sunny weather and 3 months of less sunny, colder and much wetter weather. So, mosquitos are about 10 months of the year a big problem. Not only for people and dengue, but also for dogs. Mosquitos also transfer a disease that has no cure and robs the dog of quality of life. Got several times a young dog/puppy, that somehow got stung by mosquitos and where they were bringing a lot of joy and life, they suddenly
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Did you also think of all the other species that primarly feed on mosquitos? I.e. swallows.
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There are no known species that primarily feed on mosquitos, and swallows don't go after anything that small.
Spend some time observing swallows feeding if you're interested in it and your eyes are good enough.
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No (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously. It will take a few more centuries until we understand things well enough. Until we do, one such move could kill the human race. Fremi Paradox anyone?
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Obviously. It will take a few more centuries until we understand things well enough. Until we do, one such move could kill the human race. Fremi Paradox anyone?
"I felt a great disturbance in the force. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced [youtube.com]. ~Obi Wan Kenobi
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Violent sadistic suicidal primitive? Check. Also dumb as fuck.
Here is an alternate solution: Execute all people operating on your mental level. Would also nicely solve overpopulation.
As much as I hate them (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I hate mosquitos I don't believe we should exterminate them to the point of extinction. Doing so will most likely have unforeseen consequences down the road causing mass damage to the ecosystem. Find ways to fight the parasites instead if possible.
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They currently "fight the parasites" by spraying pesticide indiscriminately on top of everything in residential areas. Targeting one species would be a much more surgical approach.
I've also been told that there is one particular species that feeds on humans, and that it is not native to the Americas. So it is not likely to occupy a critical niche in the ecosystem. Not sure how true that is, though.
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A few years ago my wife starting growing plants in the back yard that she claimed would repel mosquitos and other biting insects, citronella amongst others. At first I was skeptical but it in fact worked. The citronella has a funny smell but you get used to it.
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Every hour on the hour, we lose a species for $ (Score:4, Insightful)
On average, every hour humans make a species extinct, for no better reason than to extract some more wealth.
How about we extinct some species for a good reason for a change? Malaria alone inflicts about 500,000 deaths per year, and a total economic burden of maybe a trillion dollars or more per year, and really messes up the development of much of the world.
And to eliminate malaria and all other mosquito-borne diseases, we only need to extinct about 34 species out of 3000+ species of mosquito.
Yes, let's do it. And let's also extinct ticks, coddling moth, and cherry fruit fly. None of these are species that feed a lot of other species, and they're all nasty in their own ways.
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I was thinking the tsetse fly should be another top candidate, in the past they made it almost impossible to keep animals for livestock or transportation in large swathes of Africa, and the control efforts that continue to this day are massively destructive including wantonly burning natural foliage and killing wild animals they could feed on!
https://www.britannica.com/ani... [britannica.com]
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Politicians first (Score:2, Funny)
Hell no (Score:2, Insightful)
Human mucking about with nature has a bad track record, and many creatures depend on mosquitoes for food. It would be a terrible idea to mess with ecosystems on that level.
A couple of things to consider (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, there are over 3,000 species of mosquito, only a few of which carry human diseases. No one is talking about eliminating every mosquito species.
Secondly, the Aedes egypti and Anopheles gambiae mosquitos (the most common carriers of yellow fever and malaria respectively) are both native to Africa. They're invasive species in most other places (introduced by humans).
There shouldn't be any negative consequences from removing them from non-native locations -- in fact, it should reduce competition for the native mosquito species.
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No one is talking about eliminating every mosquito species.
You should talk to whomever wrote the headline. Because really some people are actually talking precisely about this, which would be a very bad idea.
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The people who wrote the headline (and the article) are clueless. That's quite common when general-readership newspapers "report" on scientific stuff.
If you read the actual direct quotes in the article (rather than the reporter's clueless interpretation thereof), it's clear that the research is targeted toward removing disease-carrying mosquitoes, not all mosquitoes.
We absolutely should get rid of them (Score:5, Insightful)
You could replace "mosquitoes" in that headline with polio, smallpox, measles, AIDS, malaria, or any one of a thousand different pathogens. No one is agonizing over eradicating them.
If a particular species of mosquito is a vector for a deadly disease, eliminating that one species provides a net benefit. You don't have to kill all mosquitoes, just the species that are truly dangerous. So yes, do it.
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Except RFK Jr.
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Viruses aren't really even alive, though. They're genetic coding errors that get copied when introduced to a biological system.
It would be a good point if they were alive. But they're not.
Oh, just solve Malaria instead! (Score:2)
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But (certain) Mosquitos are vectors for a whole lot of other diseases that are not as easy to get rid off as Malaria.
Re: Oh, just solve Malaria instead! (Score:2)
The answer is another question (Score:1, Redundant)
Ask "Do we know all the consequences of eliminating mosquitoes world-wide?". If the answer is "No." then you DO NOT WANT to eliminate mosquitoes world-wide, for the same reason you don't push the Big Red Button before you know what pushing it will do.
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Pollinator (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes- If you took away turkey, I'd just eat chicken (Score:2)
In the developed world?
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And that's what the situation was with turkey up until the early to mid '60; the only time turkey was available in the markets was Thanksgiving, and then it was only whole birds. If you wanted turkey any other time of the year, you either had to find a restaurant that had it on the menu or special order one from your butcher. Then, somebody had the idea of splitting them in half lengthwise and selling half turkey
The biggest pests of all (Score:2)
scientists have devised powerful genetic tools that may be able to eradicate mosquitoes and other pests once and for all
If I were a sentient alien dispassionate observer, I might well conclude that eliminating humans from Earth would be the most just and - ironically - the most humane way to apply these new genetic tools.
Query: (Score:2)
I was under the impression that there are very many species of mosquito, and only some of the bite humans.
If the total number of ones that do is only a small percentage of the total, wouldn't an intermediate solution be to breed away (etc) the ones that bite humans? That would seem to have minimal side effects as compared to wiping them out universally.
Fu- (Score:2)
The only good Mosquitoes (Score:2)
Were made of wood in the 1940's.
This rhetorical question seems easy to answer (Score:3)
When, if ever, is it okay to intentionally drive a species out of existence...?
When that species provides no value and brings huge dangers to the world. Hey, if we find we dreadfully miss them for whatever reason, clone 'em and bring them back.
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Hey, if we find we dreadfully miss them for whatever reason, clone 'em and bring them back.
Indeed with Mosquitos it should be feasible to keep a frozen reserve around for the unlikely case that the drawbacks of their eradication outweighs the benefits. Way easier to freeze them then a Passenger Pigeon or a Dodo.
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My two nickels (since 1c is also being eliminated) (Score:2)
And, if what another poster said is true, that only some mosquitos carry human diseases and the rest could be eliminated, can we assure that the remaining wouldn't be harmed directly or indirectly? Perhaps after mating/evolution?
Lastly, humans mostly suck when it comes to their unintended consequences, always trying to play "clean up" after we finally figur
Sounds good (Score:2)
There are species on this planet that most of us would love to live without. Mosquitos are one of them. Ticks and lice are too.
Since we can easily sequence the DNA, let's do it and keep the friggin' mosquitos in the DNA bank instead of on me.
How About Just 0.3% of Mosquito Species? (Score:2)
The topic is very poorly framed here. There are 3500 known mosquito species. Just 12 are known to cause human disease. Eliminating these 12 that have become evolutionarily co-adapted with pathogens to propagate human (and other mammalian) disease seems unlikely to cause any sort of ecological catastrophe, but certainly this must be thoroughly examined before we try to do it. It will also be essential that we know our methods only target the specific mosquito species.
Engineer me a grasshopper... (Score:2)
How about mosquitos that can pollinate plants instead of suck blood?
Re: Engineer me a grasshopper... (Score:1)
Plenty of mosquitoes do exactly that
We have for a long time been able (Score:2)
We have for a long time been able to rid the world of ourselves. I think, it's about time. Yes, we should. Actually, I've never liked any of you very much. You basically had it coming.
Go To Sleep, Gecko!: A Balinese Folktale (Score:1)