750M genetically engineered mosquitoes approved for release in Florida Keys | Hacker News Reader

750M genetically engineered mosquitoes approved for release in Florida Keys

cnn.com

30 pointsbelltaco13 comments

From the article: "a trial in an urban area of Brazil reduced the Aedes aegypti by 95%."

I do share some of the concern about major environmental modification, but a bigger part of me is just excited at the prospect of fewer mosquitoes. I hope this trial goes well!

You don't get fewer mosquitoes unfortunately. You just get fewer Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes, and the diseases they carry. Other species that want to prey on you will increase in number.

Ya know, as much as the general idea of genetic engineering repulses me, mosquitos are one of the only organisms I am perfectly fine with putting aside my reservations for. I dream of a day when humans wipe them from the face of the earth.

I think it's also important to note that certain mosquito species (the ones which most commonly carry diseases) can be targeted, leaving other mosquito populations as they were.

What repulses you about it? In practice, it's not any different than domestication. Just quicker and less resource intensive.

I am not talking about GMO corn or any plants. I'm fine with eating "fancy corn". I'm speaking about GE in the animal kingdom. Genetic engineering has a massive and terrifying potential. Like nuclear weapons, genetic engineering is Pandora's Box, plain and simple. Let us hope humans are smart enough not to open it, this time.

This is known as the sterile insect technique(SIT) and has proven effective in quite a few cases[0]. Looking at the list of times this has been attempted it doesn't look like there have ever been any adverse effects[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique#Succe...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sterile_insect_techniq...

This looks like the official press release:

https://www.oxitec.com/en/news/oxitec-announces-landmark-app...

An earlier press release (https://www.oxitec.com/en/news/oxitec-transitioning-friendly...) describes their self-limiting technology:

> Oxitec’s 2nd generation insect technology uses two small genetic modifications to create self-limiting, non-biting insects that are male-selecting (only male progeny survive from mating with a wild-type female insect). Upon the mating between an engineered Oxitec male insect and a wild-type female target insect, the female progeny die, generating near-term suppression effects. The male progeny survive, half of which carry the self-limiting gene while the other half carry natural insecticide-susceptibility genes. In subsequent generations, the self-limiting gene is diluted via a Mendelian pattern – enabling population suppression for up to 10 subsequent generations before the introduced genes are eliminated from the environment.

So it sounds like they are engineered to leave behind no artificial genes over the long term. (However, there will still be wild mosquitoes descended from genetically engineered ones, but apparently with genes that came from natural sources.)

I love how people are allowed to modify the public world like this with "best guess" attempts at "this shouldnt have any bad side effects" but I can't get a G Drive approved at my company.

Yea it’s funny... it will probably backfire and we will have another disaster by humans... doesn’t really surprise me

To a certain extent this is what Jurassic Park was warning about.

I disagree, in JP they had the intent of not having any effect at all on the environment (outside the island).

My point was that they engineered the dinosaurs to depend on lysine or whatever as well as making them all one gender. The idea was to prevent unplanned reproduction and ensure that they maintained control. As the saying goes, life finds a way. Now fiction and reality are different but the warning is there.

Is there really no world wide org which reviews proposals for genetic modification of species? Something within united nations perhaps ?

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