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Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know about ticks and fleas, but can we all agree to just fucking eradicate aedes aegypti and the 30 or so species of mosquitos which bite humans? They are literally the most dangerous thing (to humans) on the planet. Responsible for spreading diseases which have killed more humans than any other cause (including all wars) throughout human history.

We can leave the remaining ~3,500 species of mosquitos—which don’t bite humans—alone.

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I would instantly quit my job and join any company who's mission was to eradicate mosquitos. Shit, I'm an engineer but if they were full on engineers and short on janitors I'd do that just to be a part of a team doing that work.

I’ve got a bunch of ideas on cheap, simple mosquito traps. I’m just not sure where to start. Patents? If anyone wants to help, get in touch.

Edit I guess I should build some prototypes as a first step.

Ideas aren't worth much. Go build some prototypes and get the thing out there :)

Do it! I've seen videos floating around E.g. [0] that are as simple as a giant fan that sucks in mosquitoes.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BhV-o77RqQ

Do you have any plans for a Crispr gene drive to wipe them out?

We're hiring! [0] At Verily we have a project that is doing exactly that called Debug [1] where we are initially focused on Aedes aegypti. We already have started deploying our mosquitoes out in the field.

Disclaimer: I'm a Software Engineer at Verily, though my main focus is on Baseline / Clinical Studies, however I helped build the website for Debug which was fun.

Let me know if you have any questions!

[0]: https://verily.com/roles/#open-roles [1]: https://debug.com/

What function in the general food-chain do these critters fulfill? What are the implications upstream in the chain should that, perhaps, food-base cause to the rest should they be eradicated.

They suck for humans, but what % of a critical link are they to their immediate neighbors along the chain?

The vast majority of mosquito species do not eat humans.

The 1% of mosquito species which do can fuck off and die, as they’re literally responsible for killing tens of billions of humans.

Seriously, we do a lot of damage to this world, but eradicating human blood suckers wouldn’t be one of them.

You could just move somewhere mosquitoes don't thrive. Being regularly annoyed by mosquitoes is personally a distant memory, and I would not be in support of any attempt to eradicate them.

Mosquitoes thrive as far north as Alaska. The risks drop outside the tropics, but essentially every human on the planet gets bitten at some point.

Where do you live? I've been bitten by mosquitoes in tropical, temperate, and near-polar zones, and at low, high, and mid elevation, in forests, deserts, jungles, and grasslands. And in cities, too, though maybe that's where they don't thrive, because if they do, they get "treated."

California

I have never been bitten by a mosquito anywhere along the coast near the ocean and certainly not in any of the dryer/desert areas. I've spent a lot of time in the Mojave and other parts of SoCal, it's far too dry. Rattlesnake bites while hiking are a far greater concern of mine than mosquito bites, there are simply _zero_ mosquitoes in my daily life, it's a complete non-issue.

The midwest is where I grew up, so I know what it means to have the outdoors made hostile by mosquitoes. It was relatively trivial to move to greener pastures, and I'm glad to have found absence of mosquitoes was one of the rewards.

Talk about anecdata. Some people simply don't react to bites; you could easily be one of them.

How would I appreciate mosquitoes making the outdoors of the midwest hostile without reacting to mosquito bites?

I react awfully to mosquito bites, and absolutely detest them and it's a big part of what keeps me from visiting home now that I prefer to spend so much time outdoors.

The simple fact is there are pros to California's perma-drought condition.

So now you've said "You could just move somewhere mosquitoes don't thrive."

And also "it's a big part of what keeps me from visiting home now".

Surely you see how maybe some people would like to visit home, etc.

My assumption is if you're sufficiently upset by mosquitoes to advocate their active eradication with such fervor as posts in this thread suggest, you might be willing to make some compromises if options readily exist which don't require such a ridiculous proposition as eradicating an entire species of insect from the planet because they annoy you.

Also displayed in this thread, there are people ignorant of the possibility of simply moving somewhere no mosquitoes exist - operating under the assumption that it's unavoidable. Indeed, prior to my leaving the midwest, I had no idea there were places people could enjoy nights being active outside year-round without insect bites.

Obviously everyone is going to have different priorities, for many mosquitoes are a minor inconvenience sufficiently mitigated with bug spray and candles. I assume those people wouldn't be willing to move to escape them, but I presume they also wouldn't be vehemently raging about extincting the species as a priority.

I'm here to tell you - yes, you can move to such places, and it's not even particularly difficult or costly. There's _plenty_ of incredibly affordable desert land in California, where there are effectively no mosquitoes. If moving is too inconvenient for you, buy a recreational desert property and vacation there! It's that cheap. The fall-winter climate is ideal and remains good into the spring, there's no humidity, and of course - no mosquitoes!

Or don't make any changes in your life, and fill yourself with rage about the environment you find yourself in, as if that's going to help.

The San Diego county government reports that mosquitoes are an issue in Southern California, including near the ocean, and specifically including aedes: https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/dam/sdc/deh/Vector/pd... Similarly in other socal counties https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20...

Maybe your diet/genetics/clothing choices are just not as attractive to the mosquitoes in your area - I've seen huge differences in mosquito attention between individuals within a group.

It's also typical that reaction to mosquito bites decreases with age after adolescence (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2571626) so maybe you moved as your reaction to mosquito bites disappeared (and maybe you can visit home again).

I'm sure there are areas where there's enough standing freshwater around to sustain mosquito populations. If you're living in a community densely packed with continuously irrigated yards, there are probably mosquitoes - don't live in those places if no mosquitoes are a priority.

The last time I experienced mosquitoes in California was camping in a rainforest. I am not immune or unattractive to them, they are quite attracted to me.

But I'm also not putting myself in residential areas that would be desert if not for the constant irrigation. You're certainly able to find places with mosquitoes if you're looking for them - why would you do that if you're averse to them?

Trivial for you. What about everyone else? It's silly to move because of mosquitos. That doesn't mean we shouldn't eradicate them though.

My point is if you're serious about eradicating mosquitoes, you should at least consider moving somewhere dry which is a far more practical and immediately viable option.

Who should be in control here? The mosquitos or humans?

Killing off a species so we can enjoy the planet a little bit more shouldn't be a big deal.

The general understanding is that these creatures, at least far as the U.S. ecosystem is concerned, is that they are an invasive species and provide very little value to the rest of the ecosystem.

The Debug FAQ [1] under "Challenges and Impact" actually has a good answer on this that I'll copy below:

> What’s the ecological impact of reducing Aedes aegypti mosquito populations?

> Globally, there are already extensive attempts underway to reduce Aedes aegypti populations in urban environments to protect human health. Aedes aegypti is an invasive species that almost exclusively feeds on humans in order to reproduce. They are native to some parts of Africa, but international trade and other human activity have allowed Aedes aegypti to spread widely. These mosquitoes invade and proliferate in new communities every year, putting more and more people at risk for mosquito-borne diseases.

> The general consensus among scientists is that the ecological impact of removing Aedes aegypti mosquitoes from urban environment would be small. They are not a significant food source for other animals and don't help pollinate crops. The main ecological impact would be to restore the ecosystem to how it was before the mosquitoes invaded.

> For these reasons, the ecological risk of this project is low, particularly when compared to the impact of existing control methods that can be broadly toxic to humans and the environment, and the Debug team is committed to working with communities and regulators to ensure the safety and acceptability of our field trials and releases.

[1]: https://debug.com/faqs/

Thank you for that.

Would introducing bat colonies - kind of like bee hives, which could be moved around serve to help eat some mosquitos?

I've heard that bats prefer bigger insects and don't eat all that many mosquitoes.

The problem is that most cities are too noisy for them (and that agriculture uses a lot of biocides).

To put some things in context also, there are 34 millions of new citizens in USA since 2004. We can expected some increase in people bitten just by this. The population had increased therefore the cases also did (but does not explain all the increase)

Some bats are good to hunt mosquitos, some birds are good also, but there are other options. One of them is well known, easy to manage, hard (can starve for weeks), totally silent, harmless and can adapt easily to a human environment: spiders. Would be much much easier to promote than bats.

The other big group is inexplicably neglected, their real role and statistics as mosquito predators are poorly studied, and most people is not even aware of their existence even if they are 100% designed to overpower mosquitoes in its own game. They can fight them in the open air where spiders can't. I'm talking of flies. Some flies are big mosquito killers.

But I bet that most experts on Asilidae struggle each month to find enough funds for keeping their research alive.

Bats are rabies vectors, so you'd have to look at the cost/benefit analysis on an uptick in rabies vs. a downtick in mosquito-borne diseases. I'm sure this has been done but I don't have a citation handy.

Maybe, but from a balcony of a condo I used to have in downtown Austin I could look down at the world’s largest urban bat colony sleeping under the Congress St bridge over our downtown lake[1]. The over a million bats would fly out in an amazing cloud each evening and fly down the lake in mass searching for insects to eat. It was an impressive sight, especially when they chose to fly toward my building splitting around it in flight a few floors below my view.

I used to use the running trail around our downtown lake frequently and I could hear the bats making sounds above me as I ran under the bridge. Occasionally, I would wonder about those stories of spelunkers getting rabies from just breathing the virus from a large subterranean colony, but thousands of people use Austin’s most popular running trail with apparently no ill effects from the close proximity to so many bats.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/videos/travel/2017/07/28/with-me-as-your...

Yes, I've stood under the Congress Avenue bridge at dusk too (while wearing a hat for guano protection). It's an amazing sight. And it's true that not very many bats have rabies, but a few do. The risk is small but not zero.

My understanding is that mosquitoes (in general, not limited to the human-biting species) aren't a critical link in any ecosystem. They are pollinators, but all mosquito-pollinated species are also pollinated by other insects; they are prey for insectivores, but aren't the primary food source for anything.

There still could be knock-on effects from removing them, but restricting it to the human-biting species might mitigate that.

Hmm. They're a pretty major food source for bats.

https://www.myutahparks.com/things-to-do/bats

I've only done a bit of research, but my understand was that while bats eat a lot of mosquitoes, they're so tiny that even a bat doesn't get much out of each one. The stomach contents of a tropical bat are less than 25% mosquitoes by mass after a night of feeding, IIRC.

I admit I don't know if that's true of all species or in all locations.

Are you willing to hire interns?

Yes! Though I don't see any positions open on our website which is interesting. Send me an email (see my profile for my contact info) and I'll be in touch!

radical--I just sent you an email!

Sidenote: I think project baseline is awesome work. Looking forward to getting access to that data.

Just curious which of the roles at Verily you’d be applying to?

Latin America got close in the 50's and 60's, only to see them return when efforts let up.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/02/05/heal...

Edit: I hate Amp but don't know, at a glance, how to get the full URL.

non-amp url: https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/health/zika-virus-kill-all-mo...

> Edit: I hate Amp but don't know, at a glance, how to get the full URL.

What is the difference between the two for you? I'm on a desktop, and both the AMP and the non-AMP version look literally identical - somewhat mobile-optimized, but not particularly.

For me the AMP url simply redirects to the non-amp on desktop.

Every creature in an ecosystem serves some niche and is part of a very complex balance, and willful eradication of an entire species is extremely irresponsible in that no one can know every consequence.

I thought scientists agreed that wasn't true for the mosquitoes that bite us.

As far as we know*, which is a pretty substantial disclaimer.

On the other hand, letting them live is disastrous too. Malaria has killed half of all people who have ever lived. Also, we unintentionally destroy a lot of species every year, often with little direct consequence to humans, so destruction of another one isn't necessarily ecologically disastrous. Of course, it could still be a bad idea, and we shouldn't do it without sufficient research, but the option to do shouldn't be dismissed outright.

Maybe without that humans would have overpopulated the earth and driven everything to extinction much quicker that what is happening now?

The issue with most current mosquito control (https://www.wired.com/2016/06/zika-mosquitos/) and actually most insect control in general is that, historically and even heavily today, they generally involved chemicals (pesticides). Pesticides in general are not insect specific, and can have some rather serious effects on the environment, other animals, and even maybe humans. They also only tend to be effective against mosquitoes for, say, a couple decades or so before mosquitoes develop resistance, and a new one has to be deployed.

I definitely would personally welcome research on efforts to more specifically target the mosquito and the mosquito alone. Chemical based insect control isn't going to go away in the absence of alternatives, meaning that, should an alternative, mosquito specific approach be developed, it probably will have much less "knock on effects" to the ecosystem compared to what we are already doing.

Aedes aegypti are an invasive species to the U.S. [0] so there's little evidence that they would greatly negatively affect the ecosystem if they were to suddenly be eradicated.

[0]: https://ecdc.europa.eu/en/disease-vectors/facts/mosquito-fac...

That response has always struck me as FUD. You could say the same thing about the actual diseases humanity is trying to, and has successfully gotten rid of. What if the response to people trying to eradicate smallpox was that we should keep it around because we don’t know what the consequence of getting rid of it is? Well, we would still have smallpox around... Should we keep polio around too? Not snarky—is like to understand. Sometimes a known good is better than an unknown bad.

OTOH we're eradicating dozens of species every day without thinking too much about it. Maybe we should eradicate a couple that are actually harmful to us.

> They are literally the most dangerous thing (to humans) on the planet.

Automobiles, sugary foods, an opiods would like a word.

But yes, in terms of threats from other animals, they're at the top of the list.

edit: Holy heck with the instant downvotes. Look: I'm not trying to downplay the threat of malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses. Malaria is the #9 cause of death in developing nations today and totally worth the efforts to fight it. But it's also true that, if you get in a car or live around cars, they are more likely to kill you than a mosquito. Heart disease (which I'm representing here with the phrase "sugary foods" obviously) kills more people everywhere on earth than malaria, including developing nations.

So depending on how we define "the most dangerous thing", it's not entirely crazy to say that the mosquito isn't it.

Uh, no. Mosquitos have killed around 50% of humans that have ever lived through malaria.

[Citation needed]

> Plasmodium, in all likelihood has been responsible for the death of about half of all people who ever lived

From the abstract of this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16250876

Well, it's not clear that that's true in the first place[0].

But even if it is, it's certainly not the case today.

It's not in the top-10 causes of death at the moment. If we limit the scope to developing nations only, it's #9, which is huge, but still killing less than half the number that heart disease does.

Furthermore, most mosquitoes don't carry malaria, but all sugary foods are capable of causing heart disease if consumed in excess.

So it's not unfair to say that sugary foods are more dangerous to humans than mosquitoes.

0: http://factmyth.com/factoids/malaria-killed-half-the-people-...

It’s hard to believe, but just malaria—which is transmitted exclusively by mosquitoes—is responsible for on the order of half of all human deaths throughout history.

~50 billion lives.

You have a source for that stat I would be interested in learning more about how the calculate such a stat.

First of all, that is probably a myth[0].

And second, if we're talking about present day, malaria is way behind heart disease (largely caused by sugary foods). And in developed nations, its way behind automobiles. And in the USA, it's way behind opioids. So my comment wasn't totally off.

0: http://factmyth.com/factoids/malaria-killed-half-the-people-...

A nice debate about it: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/kill-all-mosquitos...

> We can leave the remaining ~3,500 species of mosquitos—which don’t bite humans—alone.

Runner here. No thanks. I would like to run in peace.

The world needs some sort of self-defense mechanism from the biggest parasite of the planet -- human. With significantly diminished mortality due to intra-species conflict, the various epidemics seem to be the only viable way.

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