Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

> a technology that no one could say is safe definitively

Problem with this type of technology is that there is no way to even test if it would be safe. You either have to just take the risk or not do it. And unfortunately someone else will likely take the risk even if we don't. So it makes more sense to me to try it and watch carefully.

BUT there is something that people aren't talking about much. This targeting isn't "kill all mosquitoes" it is "kill the mosquitoes that carry malaria" (Anopheles. Which are different from Aedes aegypti, which carry yellow fever, dengue fever, Zika fever and chikungunya). So doing this to Anopheles shouldn't affect the Aedes aegypti mosquito. So it is a tad safer than killing ALL the mosquitoes. But still potentially unsafe as other creatures may rely on them as a food source more than currently believed.

It also begs the question, can we try this out on a specific species that is far less widespread? Doesn't even have to be mosquitoes.

Disclaimer: Not a geneticist. If I stated something wrong please correct me! And please provide source material so I can read it. Thanks!

If they released this to eliminate Asian Tiger Mosquitoes from the USA it would be a perfect limited scope experiment. They have out competed other mosquitoes in my area and are invasive. They also spread disease and bite 24 hours a day making everyone's lives miserable outdoors. I wouldn't miss them at all. And there's not much life depending on eating Asian Tiger Mosquito larvae from trash with tiny pools of water. They don't make much of a meal for any animal or insect or we'd have far fewer.

It’s disturbing to realize that people here baying form this to be rolled out seemingly know very little about the topic. Mosquitoes aren’t just food for other insects, and bats, and birds, they’re also pollinators. In the context of how many insects and bees we’re killing by other means, it’s hard to predict how much of a critical role mosquitoes play in that regard. Insect numbers have been cratering lately, and kicking whole species off a cliff may not matter, or it may be a critical step. When considering these actions we have to remember just how much stress we are already putting on the food web, and how much more we’ll stress it in the future.

The tiger mosquito your parent mentions, though, is invasive. Ecologists are usually more than happy to target invasive species.

True, but in the context of a pilot program to target native species elsewhere. In short it wouldn’t meet that criteria, because the Asian Tiger mosquito is a recent invader. In the narrow case of targeting recent (decades rather than centuries, and then ATM qualifies as the former) invaders alone, I agree that few rational people would object.

> in the context of a pilot program to target native species elsewhere

Isn't this just defining the scope artificially narrowly to deny that it would be a useful experiment?

Is there an ecologically significant difference in targeting an invasive species?

Maybe some things are worth the risk.

We shouldnt sit around bioethicizing while people are dying of maleria.

Even if your premise is that we should prioritize human life above all else, there's still a very good reason to consider the effect of eliminating any species on the rest of the ecosystem before we just pull the trigger. It's really easy to imagine a scenario where eliminating this mosquito ends up being more harmful to human life than leaving it in place.

I agree that we should think about the ecosystem. But is that something we can reasonably model? From what I understand Anopheles isn't thought to be essential. Plus, this demonstration would show we could do similar things with other similarly dangerous and potentially non-essential animals.

Though a counterpoint, malaria was eradicated from Europe without eradicating Anopheles.

Europe is not tropical.

I'm not sure what that has to do with the topic at hand. Malaria was eradicated from Europe by a lot of stuff that happens when a country moves into a first world economy. Eg: Window screens (a mosquito net for your whole house!), less stagnant water spots (breeding zones), better health care, etc. Malaria was eradicated from Europe because the Plasmodium couldn't reproduce in large enough quantities.

Similar to the Four Pests Campaign:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign

By April 1960, Chinese leaders changed their opinion due to the influence of ornithologist Tso-hsin Cheng[2] who pointed out that sparrows ate a large number of insects, as well as grains.[8][9] Rather than being increased, rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased.[10][9] Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, replacing them with bed bugs, as the extermination of the former upset the ecological balance, and bugs destroyed crops as a result of the absence of natural predators. By this time, however, it was too late. With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides.[10] Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine, in which 20–45 million people died of starvation.[11][12]

The effect has been considered, carefully, by a variety of researchers, and to date the majority of them have found no reason to believe there'd be more than the most negligible of effects on ecosystems. (When specifically eradicating the species that spread disease to humans.)

https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35408835

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/kill-all-mosquitos...

https://outline.com/428REE

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/02/20/4670944...

You can find some articles from researchers in the field that are concerned about removing them (https://phys.org/news/2017-07-mosquitoes.html), but those researchers don't seem to have done as much work in the role of individual mosquito species in their environments.

You say it's easy to imagine bad scenarios. Then state them, with sources.

I've read the exact opposite: That it's hard to find any _real_ risks for eliminating human-biting mosquitoes. I define real as killing near 3k children a day.

https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html

Yes, here it is again, the nearly ten year old magazine article written by an intern. Nothing could be more definitive.

At least it's something. You're welcome to add some sources of your own to the discussion.

We've eliminated hundreds, if not thousands of species, like the Dodo Bird, through human actions. What's one more?

This is exactly the mentality the hand-wringers are terrified is out there.

Early vaccines got the dosage wrong and sometimes killed people... I think in this day and age if something similar happened, it'd be pulled off the shelves, and tens of thousands of lives would be lost due to it being unavailable.

Progress = risk. Yes, it should be measured and thoughtful, but overreaction seems rampant.

It's even worse than you're making out, actually. I'm all for eliminating malaria, or mosquitoes, or whatever. And I'm generally in favor of GMOs and related technologies. However, the described approach uses a gene drive, meaning genetic modifications are transmitted in the wild through the target species.

> So doing this to Anopheles shouldn't affect the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

If all goes according to plan, at least. But good luck containing things if they don't...

It really shouldn't require any help from Hollywood to see the potential failure cases that this sort of technology entails - incredibly thorough testing is merely the absolute minimum requirement.

Trust us, pyrus calleryana- sorry, I mean anopheles gambiae- definitely won't crossbreed with anything.

Had to look that one up, that's a really good example of the sort of unexpected complexities that can come up (many years later in this case).

For others (like myself) who haven't seen it before: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/57/11/956/234351

> Consequently, individual cultivars themselves are not invasive, but the combination of cultivars within an area creates a situation in which invasive plants can be produced.

I fully agree that it is a horrendously difficult problem. But from cross breeding, most of the time the offspring is sterile. Like a mule or liger. But you're right, things often don't go according to plan.

But there is an overwhelming amount of scientists, who are smarter than me and actually study this, that believe it is worth the risk. I'm willing to put my trust into their judgement. Btw, there has been a LOT of testing. But what I mentioned in the OP was more about that at a certain point you have to take a leap of faith.

After having mosquitos invade my house this summer: please kill any mosquitos that bite people and carry disease. I don't care. We've unintentionally wiped out multitudes of interesting, beautiful species that did nothing to harm us, and it's revolting to observe that we're hemming and hawing about taking out the worst species in the history of the planet.

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