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Comment by jimrandomh | Hacker News Reader

This is called the sterile insect technique, and it is a well-established practice for getting rid of mosquito populations that could threaten humans. It is very safe, both to humans (male mosquitoes don't bite) and ecologically (species other than mosquitoes aren't affected at all).

It sounds like Google is working on improvements to the process. This is important work, because mosquitos are a major cause of disease, especially in Africa, and we haven't been able to fully solve the problem with existing technology.

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> "In 2016, CMAD and MosquitoMate piloted the first-ever U.S. release of male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with Wolbachia in Fresno County. Our 2017 collaboration represents a more than 25x increase in the release efforts, with a total of one million non-biting sterile male mosquitoes released weekly, made possible by the automated mass rearing and sex-sorting processes developed at Verily. Additionally, our software algorithms and on-the-ground release devices will allow us to distribute the sterile male mosquitoes in an even and targeted way throughout Fresno’s mosquito season. We believe that these advancements could have a meaningful impact on what is traditionally a very labor-intensive process and could reduce the number of biting Aedes aegypti in Fresno County."

So the improvements are a mass-production technique that produces sterile mosquitos in large enough quantities to wipe out the wild ones, and software to determine where to release them for best effect.

Where is the quote from?

> Where is the quote from?

Coincidentally, Google isn't just in the business of releasing mosquitoes, but has other useful functions.

https://blog.verily.com/2017/07/debug-fresno-our-first-us-fi...

I copied a sentence from the quote and did a search for it. The only result with the sentence was this HN post.

Thanks for the snark, though.

Apologies for snark.

I searched - on the entire quoted string - two hours after you. It's weird, but not entirely infeasible, that google had indexed HN before verily, but if that URL is to be believed that blog was posted ~1 day earlier.

The google bubble may be downgrading the value of certain results for you, but shouldn't be actively hiding them. If you're still not seeing the result by whole or sub-string, perhaps try an incognito (or similar) browser, just in case your search engine, browser, or an extension is protecting you from something.

Searching for the same sentence now places the Verily article at #1, the Verge at #2, and HN at #3.

I thought the snark was funny and good.

It is very safe ... ecologically (species other than mosquitoes aren't affected at all)

In this case it seems to be for a species of mosquitos only having arrived in 2013. Could even call that an invasive and exotic, so no, it won't be misssed.

However in other situations this might be a bit of a stretch: mosquito larvae are part of the aquatic food chain. After that stage they become food for e.g. birds, spiders, bats. So it's really not as simple as 'other species arent't affected', instead it would have to be considered on a per-case basis whether that truly is the case. I can imagine certain localized climates where mosquitos and their larvae make up a critical percentage of the food chain in a way that, should they all disappear, other species start to suffer as well.

That being said: mosquitos are considered the most dangerous insects, so even if destroying them weren't 100% safe in one way or another, that would probably not at all outweight the benefit (for humans) to not get rid of them.

edit was too fast again, see toplevel comment by WaxProlix for example, which also addresses this issue and was already there for hours :]

Yep. They made the process much more efficient, they can release 25x per week of mosquitos of what the startup they are working with could do before.

This is by doing automation - a robot that rear moskuitos , removes females from the group, automatically releases mosquitos at the right area, result measurement tools, etc.

Another interesting thing:reading this, and the recent news about Google entering geo-thermal power generation - One gets the notion that Google found a way to locate areas with a decent solution available, but that just needed scaling - developing cheaper processes and tools, working with cities and government and financing institutions, etc.

And doing that is much easier than inventing new stuff in really hard areas, like the previous approach of Alphabet.

And i could see how having the best search engine in the world, all that data, all that "AI" capability could enable an automated or half-automated "lead sensing" approach such as this.

Are you certain the robot removes females? That doesn't sound easy.

See "Step 3": https://debug.com/how/

My first thoughts on seeing the URL: That's a fantastic, super geeky domain name.

I would love to see the complete eradication of these pest species; what a great effort by said Alphabet team.

It doesn't really explain though. Are the sensors detecting something chemically unique to males / females? Or are they taking images of each mosquito and differentiating between them with ML?

I believe one way is to generate a frequency similar to female wingbeat frequency that attracts male mosquitoes and separate them that way. I am unsure if there is a difference in the frequency between genders.

There absolutely is a difference in sound. If you hear a mosquito, it's female. Males are silent.

This is how the photo fence from intellectual ventures detects and destroys female mosquitoes.Unfortunately they never released that tech as open source

Lesbian mosquitos...hello?

As long as they're inclined to seek out females in the wild and spread the mosquito STD, they could be just as useful as males :)

There's some margin of error, and it would be interesting to see what that is, tbh.

Does no one remember Jurassic Park?

Yes; Scary movie.

Can they do something similar for ticks. Ticks seem to be picking up steam as a disease vector spreading more than just Lime disease, as if that were not enough.

I'm still mad that the Lyme disease vaccine was killed by anti-vaxxers. If not for those people, ticks would be about as annoying as leeches.

Interesting, did not know about this. One article about the subject: http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/thanks-anti-va...

That would completely depend on your definition of 'annoying': ticks spread more diseases than just Lyme. For example, I'm really not sure whether Human Anaplasmosis [1] is only as annoying as a leech.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/anaplasmosis/symptoms/index.html

There's also the one that induces a severe, life-long allergy to red meat. https://www.wired.com/story/lone-star-tick-that-gives-people...

Lyme disease is a couple times more common than other diseases, and it can have permanent, sometimes debilitating effects. In many people it can be hard to recognize or diagnose before permanent effects set in. The other things you can get just make you sick.

But true, its very hard to get sick from a leech. A mosquito or black fly would be a better comparison. Without the vaccine, ticks are second only to like... bot flies and tarantula wasps.

Could you be more specific about vaccination opponents aspect?

Here [1] is an article:

> The idea that the vaccine could cause this “autoimmune arthritis” stemmed from a hypothesis, named the molecular mimicry hypothesis, which suggested that the protein used in the vaccine displayed similarity to a protein found in the human body, but was still different enough to be recognized as foreign by the immune system. This would mean that, alongside attacking the foreign bacterial protein, the immune system would also start targeting the normal human protein and thus lead to an autoimmune reaction.

It's not quite as simple as "anti-vaxxers shut it down", but it's also pretty clear that an effective, useful vaccine is unavailable for largely political (or non-medical) reasons.

[1] http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/thanks-anti-va...

Same thing as the "vaccines cause autism" crowd. For Lyme disease, it was fear that it would cause arthritis (Lyme disease causes arthritis). Despite repeated proof that it did not, the vaccine was banned in the US.

The meat allergy thing is nightmare fuel.

The tick/lyme disease problem is indeed serious. I think you would have to control influence acorn production though there since acorn abundance seems to be linchpin.

see:

http://www.caryinstitute.org/science-program/research-projec...

you're not lying. Upstate New York and it's deer tick population seem to be breeding some terrifying diseases.

Seems the tick population is increasing the The Netherlands as well [0]. I am kinda scared to go outside in nature in The Netherlands, due to these little buggers.

---

[0]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-m-rubin/lyme-disease_b_31135...

I am kinda scared to go outside in nature in The Netherlands, due to these little buggers

Your fear isn't completely irrational, but not going outside anymore because of it would be (imo). Learning how to avoid them, or find them, or remove them, or spot symptoms (all in that order) should make the chances of any serious damage quite small. E.g. people often seem to forget it takes time, up to many hours, from a tick landing on your clothes to actually bite. (anecdotal, but I've spotted tens of times more ticks on me than I've actually been bitten). That is already quite a barrier: proper clothing + knowing how and where to check can reduce the chance of getting bitten. And even the, not all is lost. As it takes again many hours before any possible disease transmits. If there is already a disease, to start with. Since you're talking about the Netherlands: there's quite a difference between areas when it comes to rick of ticks actually carrying Lyme, see https://www.tekenradar.nl/ for instance.

> I've spotted tens of times more ticks on me than I've actually been bitten

How many total is that?

Never mind. You convinced me to never go outside, even if you were advocating the opposite.

How many total is that?

Bitten? Past 10 years like 15 times or so. Spotted on my clothes or on me easily over 100.

You convinced me to never go outside

You're kidding, right? I got all those ticks just because I knowingly spent time in specific tick-heavy areas. I could also have chosen to avoid them, and those numbers would be close to zero.

It's hit southern Ontario bad the past few years as well. It's a shame.

Ticks are terrble. Also lice. A parent yesterday told me her kid got them and she had some lice expert spend three hours removing them with a brush. haha

Yeah, a very fine comb is the best way to get rid of lice (and their eggs, more importantly) - they're quite resistant to the meds/chemicals on the market, even most of the prescription ones.

The strategy of releasing sterile males to reduce populations has been used for decades.

This adds the sterilization of eggs carried by the mated females, so that females can't subsequently mate with wild, fertile males. This is a big upgrade.

It's a huge win for humanity if they can improve it significantly. Just a few stats:

"The WHO estimates that in 2015 there were 214 million new cases of malaria resulting in 438,000 deaths" [1].

"The majority of cases (65%) occur in children under 15" [2] years old."

1. http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/world-malaria-report...

2. Murray et al. (2012). "Global malaria mortality between 1980 and 2010: A systematic analysis". Lancet. 379

I'm pretty sure wolbachia prevents viral replication, not reproduction of the mosquito.

The article confuses this too, talking about elimination of the mosquito from the area (or I'm just missing something).

"Other researchers are experimenting with Wolbachia as a means of suppressing Aedes mosquito populations. This approach involves the release of only male mosquitoes with Wolbachia. When these mosquitoes mate with wild female mosquitoes without Wolbachia, they are unable to reproduce. The technique requires the release of a large number of male mosquitoes to reduce the overall mosquito population. As with insecticides, this technique would need to be reapplied over time as the population of mosquitoes gradually returns."[0]

[0] - http://www.eliminatedengue.com/our-research/wolbachia

The article links to the project's announcement, https://blog.verily.com/2017/07/debug-fresno-our-first-us-fi... , which says

> "Debug Fresno will target the invasive Aedes aegypti mosquito, which can transmit diseases like Zika, dengue, and chikungunya. Aedes aegypti first appeared in the central valley of California in 2013, and since then has become pervasive in Fresno County. This study will be the largest U.S. release to-date of sterile male mosquitoes treated with Wolbachia, a naturally occurring bacterium, and will take place over a 20 week period in two neighborhoods each approximately 300 acres in size. When these sterile males mate with wild females the resulting eggs will not hatch."

So it's targeting the mosquitoes themselves, not just the viruses they carry.

Ah cool! TIL

wolbachia prevents (sexual) reproduction in various insects by a process called "Cytoplasmic incompatibility". This requires infected male to fertilize a non-infected female.

<disclaimer: IANAB>

Isn't there another technique that leads to mosquitos producing only male offspring? That strikes me as a much better technique, as the mosquito population doesn't die off after one generation, instead females keep diminishing until there are none left.

Gene drives can create resistance easily.

Avoiding CRISPR-Mediated Gene-Drive–Evolved Resistance in Mosquitoes http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/avoiding-crisp...

I don't know anything about this, but is there a possibility of this having negative unintended side effects?

That possibility always exists, but it's hard to see how it could be worse than the half a million deaths per year that is currently attributed to mosquitoes.

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