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Comment by sambull | Hacker News Reader

Stupid idea with massive impact, now that it's pretty obvious in they they are a utilized food for many organisms [0].

[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2180055-mosquitoes-are-...

There are many, many species of mosquitoes. Just a few of the species carry malaria. If you kill those species, they will quickly be replaced by the other species in the ecosystem. There would be no negative effect on the ecosystem and countless lives would be saved.

Yup. Of the 3,500 species of mosquitoes, only ~200 suck human blood. And Google is only targeting a couple of species.

Google isn't targeting anything, but yes, Verily is targeting ones non-native to the area.

> "On December 7, 2015, Google Life Sciences was renamed Verily."

Right, when the whole company was restructured for the explicit purpose of allowing independent parts of the massive Google to operate independently and efficiently with respect to their different business models.

To be clear, I don't believe any part of Google's ad side has ever influenced their life sciences division, as it has been led by the same man, Andrew Conrad, since 2013. That being said, Andrew Conrad still works for Google as a subsidiary CEO, and I hope he continues to do great things with Verily.

Interesting to see the first world perspective folks here. Probably all high privilege, fat and rich / well sheltered.

"Stupid idea" - you wouldn't be saying that if your kids were dying around you from something preventable because in some cases a non-native species of mosquito is spreading a deadly disease.

Mosquito abatement is not stupid, and targeting things narrowly here as they are proposing is even less stupid.

I'm serious - have you ever lived in a developing country, or even stayed for a few months? The cluelessness and heartlessness here of the entitled and privileged is kind of shocking.

> "Stupid idea" - you wouldn't be saying that if your kids were dying around you from something preventable because in some cases a non-native species of mosquito is spreading a deadly disease.

Should we always let people with dying kids make important decisions? I'm not saying you're wrong, but this is a strange argument to make.

The point I am making is that someone in a rich / sheltered / high lifespan country is calling an idea stupid because it affects a one out of many species of mosquito in a specific area, that is non-native to the area. They seem to totally ignore the benefit in terms of lives saved, both old and young - perhaps because they will not experience the benefit themselves.

Ironically, what I've noticed. Those same folks go totally ape and over-react to even relatively modest threats to their OWN lifespan.

Your point is not wrong - the dying kids argument is often used in high lifespan countries to overreact to things. In this case I think it's not an unreasonable point however.

They also act as pollinators.

http://www.mosquitoreviews.com/mosquitoes-niche-pollinate.ht...

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