This is nonsense perpetuated by wanna be naturalists. Disease carrying mosquitos could just cease to exist and we will be fine. This topic has been discussed countlessly even here.
Why is anyone talking about gene modification then?
Serious question.
Why not just get rid of mosquitos?
If you can't just get rid of them, it's unlikely that you can modify the genes of all of them.
If you can introduce something to modify the genes of all of them, then you can introduce something to eliminate them all as well.
It seems that elimination is actually easier. Or at worst just as easy. What is it we gain from gene modification?
https://unherd.com/2018/09/commit-mosquito-genocide/
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/ethicsproject/teaching-resour...
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35408835
https://time.com/4319137/so-should-we-just-kill-them-all/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/09/13/what-would-hap...
https://www.livescience.com/what-if-all-mosquitoes-died
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK585176/
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/8/13/20754834/mosquit...
Avoiding mosquito “genocide” has not been a signficant source of policy restraint on eradication efforts, a fact that many of those “discussions” you cite bemoan, but have had no substantial effect in changing.
Because its harder than it sounds: LOTS of effort goes into eradication, whether by large-scale environmentally destructive methods (literally draining the wetlands where they reproduce), toxic methods (spraying poison over areas they reproduce near human populations, which also means over humans and water used by humans), or trickier methods lkke releasing masses of sterile male mosquitos to mate unproductively with females to reduce the number of productive matings.
But these efforts are usually less than complete successes at the best of times, and have gotten worse over time as—as the article here notes!—“Efforts to prevent the spread of the disease have been complicated by existing malaria interventions becoming less effective due to mosquitoes developing biological and behavioural resistance to insecticides and barrier-based controls.”
> It seems that elimination is actually easier.
It sounds like someone has never tried elimination.
The male is created with an X chromosome that will destroy any other X with which it is paired, leaving only other male progeny with the hostile X.
This goes on for a few hundred generations, driving the female population to zero.
There are grave moral questions in this, but eventually the technology will reach those who decide to deploy it, perhaps against the general will. It is only a matter of time.