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Comment by Kelliot | Hacker News Reader

Good news! Although am i the only one a little disappointed that this is only the 2nd we've wiped out in our long history?

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We also wiped out rinderpest. It was a cattle disease, but it means a lot from an agricultural perspective.

There are plenty of dangerous lifeforms we could realistically stamp out -- grizzly bears, for example. The pertinent question is whether it would be worth the cost. This organism can be defeated forever with handmade water filters, and we'll never miss it. But we could burn all the swamps in the world (along with countless "bystander" species) and still fail to wipe out malaria.

> Grizzly bears, for example

And a terrible example!

It was a perfect example. His point was that it would be ridiculous to try.

Alpha predators like brown bears kill so few humans that they aren't worth the effort to chase down and exterminate (see Monster Of God by David Quammen). The real monsters are mosquitos and the disease bearing organisms they vector.

> There are plenty of dangerous lifeforms we could realistically stamp out -- grizzly bears, for example.

Your facetious comment aside, it really depends on what we consider a "lifeform". A number of viruses and bacteria can be wiped out without affecting other species ... largely, because we are their entire ecosystem, almost like this worm.

Are most potent weapons are vaccines, antibiotics, and proper hygiene. With a combination of those, we can eliminate much of what currently ails us.

Except we don't have a vaccine for many viruses and on the antibiotics front we're fighting a war against evolution; and arguably we're not using our ammunition very wisely. Or is that fear mongering?

We were well on our way to wiping out malaria until DDT was banned. Millions of people have died due to that decision.

DDT is still used for mosquito control.

The argument is that DDT causes at least as many deaths as malaria and loads of collateral damage in the ecosystem. There are significant advances on the horizon that look to be the solution to malaria.

malaria is particularly widespread, so some pretty strong evidence would be required to establish that DDT killed more people than malaria.

> We were well on our way to wiping out malaria until DDT was banned.

Wrong:

1. Mosquitoes were becoming DDT-resistant. A lot of them still are.

2. DDT is still used in some places, most notably the ones where malaria is still a problem.

3. Mosquito netting is still a big lifesaver in the regions DDT is still used. Why, if DDT works so well, would we need the massive mosquito netting drives?

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3186

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2005/01/24/ddt/

> DDT is banned from agricultural use (and rightly so because of environmental damage) but can still be used for disease prevention. JTFCSS pretends that there is a ban so they can hang malaria deaths around the neck of environmentalists.

[snip]

> Yes, the mosquitoes in Sri Lanka have evolved resistance to DDT. It doesn’t work any more. In fact, that is the reason why they stopped using DDT in Sri Lanka. It wasn’t because of any ban—it was because it stopped being effective.

It's illustrative to compare the number of parasitic species eliminated to that of non-parasitic species. It's a whole lot easier to knock the crap out of a passenger pigeon than A. aegypti, because the pigeon hasn't been under the selective pressure that the mosquito has.

I'm not able to find any good information on it, but wouldn't there have been some host-specific parasites that went extinct along with their host? It's possible they're even uncatalogued ones, if (as seems likely) parasites that target species other than humans or commercially valuable livestock aren't as well documented as those that do target us and our animals.

From that perspective, it's not very surprising that human-targeted parasites haven't been going extinct without substantial purposeful effort, because their host has been very successful at increasing and spreading its population. If you think of the human population as the relevant "environment" for those species, then the environment is in very good shape...

Oh absolutely. The idea that there's a comprehensive catalog of species extinct and extant is a joke.

And humans, with their ability to thrive in basically any climactic zone, are the ultimate pest species. No wonder that vectors that spread human disease are also so successful -- so much meat to prey upon.

"And humans, with their ability to thrive in basically any climactic zone, are the ultimate pest species." Oh I don't know cock roaches thrive really well in every zone too. And they carry countless diseases too, along with their redundant systems and all. Or how about rats? Also littered with pests themselves there isn't a place on this earth that hasn't been touched by rats.

Roaches and rats would never have spread as far as they have without humans carrying them along.

How do cockroaches and rats cope with Antarctica?

They don't. The caloric expenditure required to survive in a desert like that is only available to humanity.

And bears.. and penguins.. and lemmings..

Well, you're ⅓ there, considering that there are no terrestrial mammals in Antarctica. But I was talking about weed species, not those particularly evolved for a given niche.

You appear to have the Arctic and Antarctic confused. They're opposite ends of the world. There aren't any bears or lemmings in Antarctica at all. And there are penguins in the region, but they're amphibious rather than really being stuck on Antarctica.

We don't cope with Antarctica all that well. Otherwise there would be a permanent population down there.

I think the passenger pigeon just got surprised by a new threat to which it couldn't adapt fast enough. It happens.

Their breeding strategy required massive colonies to fill the local predators' bellies and still have survivors. They didn't really count on a predator that would take entire colonies. Nets, alcohol soaked grain, fire arms, explosives, coupled with a huge national demand coupled with a vast transportation network were nothing like foxes, snakes, and birds of prey.

Musk oxen have the same problem. "Back into a mass protecting the young with your heads facing outward" doesn't work well against rifles. They don't have much of a plan B. Being dark on a barren, white landscape much of the year also sucks.

Many of the pelagic fish also fall into this category. They aren't built for a predator that will scoop up an entire 4000kg school of fish in one swipe.

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