There are still a lot of other mosquito species. removing just the few that carry human disease will not have a major impact on creatures that eat mosquitoes.
Is your level of knowledge on this just "there are other things called mosquitos ergo it's not a problem," or do you have deeper affirmative knowledge that the animals that eat these mosquitos also eat those other mosquitos, and that those other mosquitos can increase their population to replace the lost food source?
That's called risk.
Pointing out risk is not "fearmongering" lmao
Pointing out risk is a kind of fearmongering when it's technically real but too small to be worth worrying about. Asteroid impact is a real risk too.
I find analogies like this revealing (in the negative sense) of the level of thoughtfulness of bio-engineering advocates. Do you actually think this is an apt analogy? If so, you are not even remotely understanding the problem in front of us. If not, then are you just disingenuously deploying it and you’re unable to conjure up a more apt analogy?
In either case, it’s good evidence as to why I’m not comfortable accepting your prior stack of assumptions. The un-evidenced assumptions that come from a person who thinks asteroid strike risk is remotely similar to gene drives are frankly completely dismissible on their face.
In any case: Yes, you’re right that looking a lot and not finding anything does strengthen the argument there’s nothing to be found. How much? How much certainty do we need? Are there other cheap vectors by which to gain more certainty?
Acting like we have these answers and then saying “hopefully there no pollinators & it’s like an asteroid strike risk!” is seriously discrediting.
(And the asteroid strike thing was only an analogy for remote risk and the definition of fearmongering, not biotech in particular.)
An answer like "we should roll out limited tests and incrementally understand the impact" would be a good one.
"there are other things called mosquitos" is not a good one.
Deciding here, without sufficient evidence, whether I'm OK with eliminating aedes aegypti would be frankly bizarre and totally unnecessary.
Similar to the prior point: the fact that advocates try to advocate for the end state and not, you know, propose ways to de-risk incremental learning, is discrediting.
Luckily this is in progress and all we're likely to see for a bit. It's at least good to hear that it's possible to convince you.
Anyway, you're awfully concerned with "discrediting". I'm not pretending to have credit. I'm just a guy who tries to learn stuff in between surviving. But as long as we're on the topic, your consistently antagonistic reads of my comments don't do you any "credit" either.
Instead of responding "no, I do not know," you responded with an additional set of unfounded assumptions and then accused me of fearmongering for asking literally the most basic epistemological question there is: "do you know this, or are you assuming this?"
Throwing your lot in with "let's do irreversible extinctions of some species based on my zero expertise" doesn't really deserve a generous read, I'm afraid.
It's okay (in fact, desirable) to simply not come to a conclusion on questions where we don't have enough information yet.
> The idea that ecosystems carry plenty of backup, so if a small number of species become extinct there is little harm, has been greatly overestimated, according to the largest global study of its kind.