Nature thinks we could safely wipe mosquitoes off the face of the earth. | Hacker News Reader

Nature thinks we could safely wipe mosquitoes off the face of the earth.

nature.com

38 pointseegilbert62 comments

I am no fan of mosquitoes personally, but pollination is the key thing. Esp. now with the shortage of bees. There may not seem like a direct link to humans.

Without mosquitoes, thousands of plant species would lose a group of pollinators. Adults depend on nectar for energy (only females of some species need a meal of blood to get the proteins necessary to lay eggs). Yet McAllister says that their pollination isn't crucial for crops on which humans depend.

But mess with one part of the ecosystem and risks that it will affect things globally go way up. I'm surprised Nature isn't more circumspect about this..

Maybe genetic engineers could come up with another pollinator, sans the blood lust :-)

From my experience, there is no shortage of bees-- only honey bees, which are cultivated as agricultural pollinators and inbred so as to, apparently be less resistant to disease and parasites.

In my garden last year, no honey bees, but 3 other species of bees all over the lavender, Rosemary, and other flowers. This year, the honey bees are back, mostly on the borage, which they love.

I have often thought the same thing. I have no "moral" or any qualms about this. If we have eradicated smallpox why not the mosquitos or the AIDS virus. However, let's not go too fast on this:

First, if you read the article, there's considerable disagreement among the scientists on what the effects of the disappearance of the mosquitos would be.

Second, fiddling with super-complex systems without having even a rough estimate of the possible effects may be disasterous. Typical example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species_in_Australia, where success is mixed.

This seems a spectacularly foolish idea. Believing that we understand the emergent complexity of any ecosystem to the point that we can predictably alter it is a fallacy we've repeatedly disproven, and yet this is talking about altering the ecosystem of the entire planet.

We wipe species off the planet all the time by accident. Sure, there would be some collateral damage, but you would save millions of _human_ lives a year.

"you would save millions of _human_ lives a year"

...and that fact, in itself, has long-term implications that we can't possibly understand.

Everything we do, or decline to do, has implications we can't understand. Second guessing ourselves into paralysis is silly and pointless. The best we can do is act on the implications that we do understand.

When the benefit is 1M lives/year saved and there do not appear to be any drawbacks, it's damn well full steam ahead.

Overpopulation is a drawback, and a pretty major one.

Overpopulation is already a major problem in many places. Does human life in those places have negative value? Should we cull the population like deer? How is that any different from withholding the cure to a deadly disease?

Malaria is a serious economic drain on endemic countries. It's likely that without this disease burden, living conditions would improve, and the birth rate would go down in these places.

Also, I've had dengue fever, a relatively mild case that laid me up for a week and left my digestive system complaining for months. If I get it again, odds are it will be worse. I say that this is an experiment worth trying; it's not like mosquitoes can't be re-introduced into the wild if somehow necessary.

I also used to assume that getting rid of a disease like malaria would cause populations to sky rocket in developing nations.

Fortunately, this line of thinking is wrong. There is a great TED talk by Hans Rosling on global population growth that shows increased child survival rates result in smaller families and more prosperous nations.

See http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...

That's a good point. Eliminating the need for resources to fight one issue would allow for overpopulation to be mitigated (more education, and more resources poured into increasing available food and standards of living). Reducing the amount of time wasted being sick would also allow for people to improve their own standard of living (as I assume that you didn't get as much done, and were less happy, while you were sick, and during the recovery period).

I disagree. Overpopulation would effectively force humanity to create novel solutions. Perhaps we build up higher, or perhaps we move off of the planet, maybe we'll create giant artificial islands (or continents). We'd be forced to tackle farming in new and interesting ways. All in all, I think being faced with overpopulation would force us to solve a lot of interesting problems.

Either that, or massive amounts of war and extinction. Then again, we run that risk with everything we do.

Precipitating crises as a way to spur innovation? Could work; it certainly has in the past. However, you're phrasing overpopulation as something for the future; it's already here. The world's population is nearing 7 billion, and, according to wikipedia, in 2006 the world's population was using 40% more than the Earth can support[1]. It also gives the median estimated supportable world population as 10 billion, but more conservative estimates are as low as 4 billion.

We haven't quite hit, on a world-wide scale, the point where we have to start seriously considering how we're going to survive as a species (without sterilizing massive portions of the population, or requiring child licenses, neither of which would be good things), but we're nearing it, and we're too tied up in money for many of the really good solutions to work.

All that considered, though, it will spur a lot more innovation than bringing the population down to a stable, normal point and keeping everything constant to maximize how long the resources we have will last.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation#Carrying_capacit...

Heck, if that's your argument lets stop medicinal research. In fact lets do away with medicine as a profession altogether.

And while you're at it, do away with yourself, seen as you're directly contributing to the "overpopulation" problem. What gives you the right to exist and deny it to other who are less fortunate than you?

Here's one drawback: migratory bird populations collapse, leading to an insect they previously ate having a population explosion, leading to swarms of insects that destroy crops, thus marginally raising food prices and leading to 2M deaths from malnourishment. This isn't even a particularly implausible outcome.

Humans are not necessarily more important than anything else. It's a common delusion that, because one is human, humans are the most important species. Basically a more grown-up form of the common belief of children that they are the center of the universe.

The problem with "collateral damage" is that we don't know what it includes. It could include humans, for instance, or it could bring the world closer to humans becoming collateral damage - and we're bringing the world in that direction quickly enough.

EDIT: Instead of downvoting me, please refute my claims. I love being shown how I'm wrong, and take mere downvoting as an acknowledgement that I'm right (as I don't think that I'm trolling - I'm just trying to get interesting conversations going, and to make people think). Focus on the second paragraph, if you would like, it's easier to refute or argue against.

You're probably being downvoted because you're stating an uncommon opinion (humans are no more morally relevant than other species) as fact, and your only support is an argument from similarity to child-like selfishness.

I'd argue that humans are more morally relevant because humans have richer mental lives (evidenced by language, culture, etc.), so we have a higher capacity for suffering and caring about our future lives, and suffering/caring are the two factors I find to be intuitively "morally relevant".

How would you convince me that humans are not more important than anything else? Do you have an argument?

Yes, that was why I thought I was being downvoted, and as a comparison it could have been better - no one likes being insulted.

So, an individual human is more mentally unique than an individual, say, mouse, and that makes us more valuable than mice? Makes sense. Using that logic, since mice are easy to make more of, and are all essentially the same (birds might be better here, because their minds are even simpler, at least pigeons), they're not so valuable. Which also makes sense, and is basically a restating of the original claim.

No, I don't have an argument to prove that humans aren't inherently more morally relevant; but, before this, neither did I have an argument for why humans are more morally relevant, instead perceiving it as being because we're very self-centered. But now I do have an argument as to why we are, which is an improvement and allows me to take all of the assertions of us being more valuable as somewhat valid, instead of an unproven a priori assumption. So thank you for that.

Reversal test: If mosquitos didn't exist in the wild and some species of plants were dying off, would you be willing to reintroduce them to save the plants? Remember, around 250 million people get malaria every year. 1 million of them (mostly children) die from it.

Based on the evidence available, I think the benefits of eliminating mosquitos outweigh the costs. If some plants have to die to save lives and reduce suffering, I'm fine with it.

Then what effect will the plants dying have?

From the article:

...McAllister says that their pollination isn't crucial for crops on which humans depend.

Compared to the lives of millions of people, not any effects I care about.

Unless the crops are crucial for something else, which is crucial for ten other things, which are each crucial for ten more things, and so on. That's the danger.

The scientists in the article assign low probability to that outcome. While species in the ecosystem are interconnected, but the degree of those connections varies greatly. Other species can fill most of the niches occupied by mosquitos, and they'll likely carry fewer diseases.

You seem to be arguing from ignorance and advocating caution. I'd usually agree, but right now millions of people are dying and suffering because of mosquitos. With decisions this important, you can't just play the "what if?" card; you have to make the best choice after looking at the available evidence.

If we managed to eliminate mosquitos, malaria would go with it, just as it has in many developed nations. Afterward, we could reintroduce mosquitos without nearly the risk of malaria we have now.

I'm not sure how true that is of other diseases for which mosquitos are a vector.

The purpose of the reversal test is to eliminate status quo bias, not actually pretend the situation is true and offer better solutions.

http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/statusquo.pdf explains it better than I can (around page 9).

What could possibly go wrong? We've done so well engineering complex ecosystems that there's certainly no possibility of unintended consequences. For a great example of success take a look at rabbits in Australia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia) and perch in Lake Victoria (http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/lake_victoria_sick.php).

Look at Therac-25, the Ariane 5, and the Mars Surveyor! Therefore we should stop all programming!

Argument-by-disaster is a terrible argument, there is not a single human endeavor that has not led to disaster at some point. It proves too much.

Reflexively decrying all environmental modification is at best a cognitive shortcut which should be discarded when it doesn't apply, at worst institutionalized stupidity-by-choice. Dismissing some crank on the Internet who offhandedly mumbles something about eliminating mosquitoes with "what could go wrong?" is appropriate. Dismissing a serious article that seriously asks the question and considers the consequences is a disservice to everyone involved in the article.

You're getting upvoted because you are giving people a chance to mentally feel good about their environmental bona fides because they upvoted you, not because you're making an even remotely valuable argument or contribution.

Agreed, but the main point still stands: there can definitely be factors outside of our knowledge and control which we will simply not be aware of until it is too late. The old "life would be so much easier without this little nature's imperfection" attitude has brought some unintended and tragic consequences more than once.

Thanks to the general availability and utilization of vaccines against smallpox and polio, massive improvements in sanitation and emergency response, and long-term cardiac therapy, the death rate due to cancers is radically up.

Cancer is a horrible disesase. Which one of those changes should we not have made to end up in the situation we're in today?

What causes cancer outside of factors brought about by human intervention?

> Agreed, but the main point still stands: there can definitely be factors outside of our knowledge and control which we will simply not be aware of until it is too late.

There are always such factors.

Take the choice whether to have a child. Said child may be the next Hitler, so clearly it's wrong to have a child. But wait, said child may be the person who stops the next Hitler, so there's almost an obligation to have said child.

Pointing out that there are unknowns is useless. More to the point, it isn't an argument for or against anything because it applies just as well to all options.

No, it doesn't stand. It proves too much. It proves you should never take any action, and for that matter also that "no action" isn't acceptable either. This is not a useful thing to "prove".

See also the logically-unsound "precautionary principle", which has the exact same problem for the exact same reason.

He only said "what could possibly go wrong", hardly the same as saying "it should never, ever be attempted".

It would be interesting to hear some success stories in contrast? I suppose stuff like importing potatoes would count?

Argument-by-disaster is terrible when it's shallow and leads people to jump to conclusions too soon. Spectacular success and spectacular failure can both be illustrative in their own way.

The only problem I have with Therac-25 is that it's overused, surely we have other catastrophic programming examples?

I've completely changed my mind about mosquitoes. I now think they provide a really important, fairly unique ecosystem role and it would be a disaster to get rid of them.

What is it? Well they help recycle the food chain. Those that feed on us are taking energy from the top of the food chain (us) and they then are at the bottom of the food chain. The amount of animals that directly feed from mosquitoes is vast - insects, birds, fish, bats - who then also are part of the food chain themselves.

It's a great role, for a bottom of the food chain animal to feed off the top of the food chain one - especially an animal (ourselves) that causes such ecosystem problems.

If we get rid of mosquitoes what happens to the animals that feed of them? They need to eat something else, something that isn't getting part of its nourishment from the vast, untapped population of top of food chain animals.

Mosquitoes eat flowers (nectar) not humans.

Blood provides some protein for eggs, but is not the primary food for mosquitoes.

Headline is misleading. "Nature" doesn't have an opinion, it's asking a question and reporting the responses of relevant experts.

Yes. The "use original title" rule would work just fine in this case.

In 2009 the first case of dengue fever in America since 1934 (also called breakbone fever due to the pain): http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/07/22/dengue.fever/ and there have been 28 cases since.

The reason is that DDT is wearing off and we are getting more mosquitoes.

the naturalistic fallacy is getting out of hand. I think it's entirely obvious how much the blind idiot god of evolution sucks. or did you want to give up your eyeglasses and allergy medication?

You would think a site called "Nature" would provide a less human-centric point of view: "The elimination of Anopheles would be very significant for mankind."

"A stronger argument for keeping mosquitoes might be found if they provide 'ecosystem services' — the benefits that humans derive from nature."

Just because we (might) have the means to eradicate them doesn't necessarily mean we should.

Though the article ends with a quote about how the niche could be filled by something better or worse, most of the article claims that the other organisms that would fill the niche would make things better. There is a pretty big possibility that things could become a lot worse (say, instead of spreading malaria, the replacements spread ebola).

I'm general in favor of prudence when dealing with the environment, but after suffering through another summer in mosquito-infested northern Italy, I would be fully in favor of exterminating every last one of the damn things. And that's without thinking about the very real benefits from eliminating malaria.

> You would think a site called "Nature" would provide a less human-centric point of view: "The elimination of Anopheles would be very significant for mankind."

You do realize that's a quote from a medical entomologist, not Nature's journalists, right? And that they are obliged to provide both sides of the argument?

Your only valid point is that the replacement organisms might be more dangerous to humans. I find your callousness toward human suffering repulsive. If I could press a button that would instantly wipe out any and all animal species which cause human suffering without any negative consequences, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

The animal species that causes the most human suffering is... humans.

(Or were you being facetious? Especially since you shifted the argument from insects to animals.)

Insects are animals.

I would guess that’s why there is a “without any negative consequences” condition?

If I could, with the push of a button, kill any and all species which cause harm to humans without, in the process, causing harm to or even killing humans I would do it, too. Sure. No second thoughts about that.

I hate nature's flying dirty syringes as much as anyone else, but most of the proposed solutions are either localized to a certain area, or species-specific, or both. Why wouldn't we just start with the disease vector species, then check to see if their eradication had an environmental impact?

It seems only cute animals deserve to be saved, and disease carrying ones eliminated. Whereas I hate mosquitoes as much as anyone, but they do have their ecological place. Pandas on the other hand...are suspect.

I agree that the effort and money spent on conservation is skewed in favor of cute and furry animals. But there is a real upside to getting rid of mosquitoes. From the article:

Malaria infects some 247 million people worldwide each year, and kills nearly one million. Mosquitoes cause a huge further medical and financial burden by spreading yellow fever, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, Chikungunya virus and West Nile virus.

Naive suggestion: would it be practical, to experimentally do this on one island? For instance, eradicate all mosquitoes on Madagascar.

Has nobody at Nature ever read "A Sound of Thunder"? Seriously?

http://www.lasalle.edu/~didio/courses/hon462/hon462_assets/s...

"the ecological scar left by a missing mosquito would heal quickly as the niche was filled by other organisms."

Would the replacement(s) be more deadlier? I don't think anyone or any simulations can answer that.

There are two choices:

1.) 100s of millions of people dying of malaria 2.) 100s of millions of people not dying of malaria, but with likely unintended consequences, either negative or positive, or both.

I'd pick number 2. Number 1 is a pretty bad choice. Worth the risk. Inaction is just as much a choice as action.

or 3) unknown # (0-all) of people dying from the replacement(s)

That's a subset of 2

Shouldn't we focus on getting rid of malaria rather than getting rid of mosquitoes? Their bites are not particularly worse than many other creatures, it's just the malaria that's the problem.

I'm not sure what the best way to do it without wiping out mosquitoes is, but there has to be a way.

Two words: population control.

There are too many of us now for them to keep up though.

The idea is solid and although I'm not completely sold yet, it's definitely worth more exploring. But my question is, why is this article written by an intern?>?!?!?!?

I once called someone I don't like a "human mosquito" because she added no value whatsoever to the world. Good to know that insult is now backed up with science.

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