A world without mosquitoes is in view
February 25, 2019 7:13 AM   Subscribe

The idea has been bandied about for some while: What if every mosquito on earth went extinct tomorrow? (io9, 2014) A decade ago, this was a thought exercise between experts (Nature, 2010), but with rise of CRISPR gene editing (Wikipedia), scientists the ability to wipe out the carriers of malaria and the Zika virus (Smithsonian Magazine, 2016). Very recently, scientists have launched a major new phase in the testing of a controversial genetically modified organism: a mosquito designed to quickly spread a genetic mutation lethal to its own species (NPR, 2019). There isn't one species of mosquito, but about 3,500 worldwide (Wikipedia), and only 100 or so bite or bother humans, so there's no need to kill all the mosquitoes.
posted by filthy light thief (72 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
The soundtrack you didn't ask for: Four Tet - "No More Mosquitoes"

And if you wanted to simply live without the nuisance (or threat) of mosquitoes, The Atlantic has you covered: Where to Move if You Never Want to See a Mosquito Again -- Antarctica, Iceland, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and The Seychelles.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:17 AM on February 25, 2019 [6 favorites]


Yes, eliminate an entire class of animals. There's no way that could have unforeseen consequences.
posted by suetanvil at 7:24 AM on February 25, 2019 [56 favorites]


Yeah, I was just about to ask, "so what goes wrong with the ecosystem if we get rid of mosquitoes?"
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:26 AM on February 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


We’ve been wiping out species left and right. What’s one more?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:27 AM on February 25, 2019 [7 favorites]


It's quite possible eliminating aedes aegypti is more like eliminating human lice than, like, bees. These critters have evolved to specifically eat humans; they're not even native to the Americas.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:28 AM on February 25, 2019 [27 favorites]


This is and always has been one of the worst ideas ever conceived by humans. Instead of doing anything to combat the economic and social inequality that are at the core of malaria and many mosquito related illnesses, lets fucking genetically engineer the eradication of a class of animal that we know for certain is a prime food stock for all kinds of larger creatures. Bats, for example?

I'd call it lazy, but it isn't. It actually takes a great deal more work and thought and energy to 'solve' that problem via gene editing than it would actually combating the systemic problems that are why malaria is a thing. The US used to have a malaria problem, and we still have mosquitos. Seems like we already have ways to deal.
posted by neonrev at 7:30 AM on February 25, 2019 [11 favorites]


Good riddance, fuckers! *waves from Texas, where even the mosquitoes are bigger*
posted by fiercecupcake at 7:34 AM on February 25, 2019 [3 favorites]


The US used to have a malaria problem, and we still have mosquitos.

We DDTed the shit out of them, and there was huge efforts to reduce standing water, etc, and break the cycle of transmission. It was not subtle, but it worked.

Cuba is still mostly free of a lot of mosquito-borne disease because in the early 20th century we massively killed off a lot of aedes aegypti.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:35 AM on February 25, 2019 [14 favorites]


Yeah, I was just about to ask, "so what goes wrong with the ecosystem if we get rid of mosquitoes?"

Probably not too much, especially if we only get rid of the ~3% of mosquito species that transmit human diseases.

lets fucking genetically engineer the eradication of a class of animal that we know for certain is a prime food stock for all kinds of larger creatures. Bats, for example?

Of bats that eat insects at all, mosquitoes only make up about 2% of their diet. Moths are much more important. And again, we're only talking about the ~3% of mosquito species that transmit human diseases.

It actually takes a great deal more work and thought and energy to 'solve' that problem via gene editing than it would actually combating the systemic problems that are why malaria is a thing.

Gene editing is comparatively cheap and only has to be done once. Addressing mosquito-borne illness world wide costs billions of dollars every year and would have to be done continuously.

The US used to have a malaria problem, and we still have mosquitos. Seems like we already have ways to deal.

The US did it by mass application of DDT and the destruction of wetlands, and while we don't have a malaria problem, we do still have growing West Nile and Zika problems.
posted by jedicus at 7:36 AM on February 25, 2019 [69 favorites]


In the wake of climate change greatly expanding the ranges of parasites such as ticks and mosquitos, using gene drives and the like to eliminate them may be the only way to prevent mass disease outbreaks and the extinction of other species such as moose, where a warming-driven explosion in the tick population is killing over half of all calves.
posted by jedicus at 7:40 AM on February 25, 2019 [8 favorites]


Aedes aegypti is an invasive species! It's just been around in the Americas about as long as Europeans have. It seems very unlikely that Aedes aegypti is, specifically, the one species that we must take special care to preserve.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:41 AM on February 25, 2019 [24 favorites]


I don't know about mosquitos, but I wouldn't mind bedbugs being eliminated entirely from population centers!
posted by neeta at 7:45 AM on February 25, 2019 [6 favorites]


Expanding on jedicus's comments, there is nothing that subsists solely on the human-impacting mosquitoes, so saving a million lives per year, and making 400 million plus people's lives better for not having to suffer due to malaria seems like a pretty obvious win. And some entomologists think that with one species of mosquito gone, other insect species will take their place in various food webs, further reducing the impact of the loss of a few truly virulent pests.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:50 AM on February 25, 2019 [22 favorites]


I agree with edeezy. The Lone Star Tick made my life more difficult over thirty years ago. I don't even eat much mammalian meat, but the Alpha-Gal allergy has made such events as pot-lucks and Chinese buffets minefields for me!
posted by Agave at 7:50 AM on February 25, 2019 [6 favorites]


Bats don't eat many mosquitoes. I see this as akin to eliminating smallpox.
posted by BeeDo at 7:51 AM on February 25, 2019 [6 favorites]


Mosquitoes have personally annoyed me and ruined otherwise lovely hikes and camping trips. Its the state bird of Minnesota for a reason. However, my personal annoyance is nothing compared to those that get malaria from mosquitoes.

I am so conflicted about this. On the one had, begone scourge from this earth and take your malaria and itchy bites with you!

On the other hand, destroying an entire class of animal seems like the sort of thing that humans at their worst would do out of hubris, acting as if we as humans are in charge of the ecosystem but somehow not part of it. There could be consequences we can't forsee. Our descendants could either thank us or curse our names. I wish there was an easy answer to this one, but I suppose "shall we kill off an entire species" is the sort of question that naturally doesn't have an easy answer.
posted by Gray Duck at 8:00 AM on February 25, 2019 [4 favorites]


There is considerable evidence that the single most deadly creature to humans and our hominid ancestors throughout millions of years of history has been the mosquito, possibly half of all people who have ever lived. Drisdelle may be estimating at the top of the statistical curve here, but even if she overestimates by a factor of 5, that's 10% of all humans ever.

I'm not one for haphazardly driving a species to extinction without consideration for unintentional consequences, but our best available knowledge is that no species has a singular dependence on mosquitos for survival, and no ecosystem has it as a critical/lynchpin member of its cycle.

Half of all humans EVER may have died from mosquito borne illness. We're now in a position where we can rid ourselves of them, and I think we should.
posted by tclark at 8:01 AM on February 25, 2019 [19 favorites]


I think if you're going to engineer away the threats to human existence you are obligated to also engineer the limits of its success.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 8:10 AM on February 25, 2019 [6 favorites]


This sounds like a devious plan cooked up by the mosquitoes that don't bite humans (yet. hang with me here.). The 100 species of mosquitoes that bite humans are bigger and stronger than the other 3400 species, so the 3400 species got together and hatched (ha!) a plan that would allow them to take over the mosquito world. Their scientists developed a parasite that when inserted into human beings, we would devise a way to kill off the 100 species without negatively affected the 3400. Our scientist's solution was to develop a gmo mosquito that would spread a deadly virus to only those 100 species of mosquitoes. Fucking genius. We humans do all the work that prevents an all-out mosquito war that would probably end in a pyrrhic victory for the 3400. This is just like the story of how the ants wiped the dinosaurs from the face of the planet.
posted by NoMich at 8:12 AM on February 25, 2019 [11 favorites]


A similar approach using x-rays was used 50 years ago to eradicate screw worms. If no species relies on these mosquitos to survive, I’m all for it.
posted by impishoptimist at 8:14 AM on February 25, 2019 [10 favorites]


I see this as akin to eliminating smallpox.

I've often wondered about the lack of protest about this. I suspect there are a number of other viruses we could drive to extinction without anyone worrying too much.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:15 AM on February 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


It's great if it works, but if it doesn't I hope we don't end up with zombie mosquitoes. You think they're bad now?
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 8:18 AM on February 25, 2019


I'm also really conflicted about this. I think I'm leaning ever so slightly towards the "this is a good idea" side, because malaria is such a source of suffering for so many people. But there's just something about this that feels like it's a bad idea. If we can engineer a gene drive that's lethal to the species, can't we engineer something that prevents them from being able to carry the plasmodium? I suspect my feelings would be a lot stronger if I'd ever been at all affected by malaria. Or west nile. Or yellow fever. Or chikungunya.

I also just have a hard time imagining the scientists who work on the mosquito species in question would really, really actually drive the species to extinction. Just, as a lab researcher, I have a hard time getting my head around that. The thing you've built your whole career around, you're going to end it?
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 8:20 AM on February 25, 2019


Instead of doing anything to combat the economic and social inequality that are at the core of malaria and many mosquito related illnesses

That's a good idea. How does 50+ years of economic development programs in the hardest hit areas as well as across the rest of Africa sound?

Or, if it turns out that progress on that front has turned out to be really slow maybe we ought to move more directly to save 450,000 lives a year.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:23 AM on February 25, 2019 [13 favorites]


I also just have a hard time imagining the scientists who work on the mosquito species in question would really, really actually drive the species to extinction. Just, as a lab researcher, I have a hard time getting my head around that. The thing you've built your whole career around, you're going to end it?

See: smallpox.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:24 AM on February 25, 2019 [5 favorites]


I think this is all pretty great, both in terms of potentially eradicating malaria, and also because the concerns about repercussions and ethics are being mainstreamed. It's a good and healthy scientific debate.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:25 AM on February 25, 2019 [3 favorites]


I was traveling in Southeast Asia for the better part of last year and now I'm making my way up South and Central America, so I can only say: Yes please, kill them all.

When my husband and I got all of our travel vaccines last year, the only thing we could get re: malaria was a phone number to call if we got infected. Never mind zika or dengue.
posted by hopeless romantique at 8:29 AM on February 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


If we can engineer a gene drive that's lethal to the species, can't we engineer something that prevents them from being able to carry the plasmodium?

The trick is figuring out how to get your small cohort of bioengineered critters to overwhelm the massive indigenous population... short of a gene drive, I'm not coming up with anything that doesn't involve something even more horrifying, like giving the modified bugs some kind of evolutionary advantage that lets them outpace the locals and overwhelm them after a few dozen generations. (But then you have, well, genetically modified super-mosquitos that can breed more efficiently)

Just, as a lab researcher, I have a hard time getting my head around that. The thing you've built your whole career around, you're going to end it?

There are plenty of other virulent insect-borne diseases, and other mosquitos to study, right? I'm picturing this as more of a smallpox-situation: being able to add "saved millions of lives by eradicating the most lethal disease known to man" to one's resume seems like it would be a net positive. I'm not a researcher, though, so I defer to anyone who has actually tried to change research subjects mid-career.
posted by Mayor West at 8:42 AM on February 25, 2019 [4 favorites]


Just, as a lab researcher, I have a hard time getting my head around that. The thing you've built your whole career around, you're going to end it?

Oh noes I cured cancer!1!
posted by benzenedream at 8:47 AM on February 25, 2019 [6 favorites]


I'm generally pro-science and pro-engineering to solve human problems. But deliberately extincting species makes me nervous. It's an irreversible step; there's no fixing it if we discover 20 years down the road these mosquitos were doing something useful that was unanticipated.

On top of that this particular eradication mechanism uses a gene drive. That's a particularly terrifying genetic engineering technique that guarantees a gene will spread to 100% of offspring, not the 50% that normal sexual reproduction allows. There's some concern that a particular gene-driven-gene might hop species, say to adjacent types of mosquito. The Economist does a good job on some of the scientific details as well as the ethical concerns.

Mosquitos suck though. And malaria is a hugely damaging disease. If you're gonna play God with frightening genetic technology this is a reasonable application. What happens in 20 years when it's Monsanto wanting to sell a new seed stock that's 5% more productive by using gene drives to carry some useful trait?
posted by Nelson at 8:48 AM on February 25, 2019


Yes, eliminate an entire class of animals. There's no way that could have unforeseen consequences.

Just to be pedantic, no one is actually proposing to destroy the class that mosquitoes are in, in the King Philip Came Over From Germany Singing sense of the term (that would be... all insects). We're talking about a very limited percentage of the thousands of mosquito species out there.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:51 AM on February 25, 2019 [10 favorites]


We’ve been wiping out species left and right. What’s one more?

This!

Humans are a scourge on this planet, to be sure, but eliminating mosquitoes is like when the Balrog's approach made the goblin horde scuttle away in Moria. Balrog totally saved some Fellowship butt there. I'll say YES to my own butt (and arms, and legs, and neck, and the back of my ear, wtf, damn those little buggers) saved before the inevitable human-made climate apocalypse, please.
posted by MiraK at 8:54 AM on February 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


I know it breaks hallowed MeFi tradition, but all these posters making sarcastic or knee-jerk comments about how we're just going to eliminate a whole class of creatures without considering the environmental consequences might consider actually reading the linked articles because the scientists and domain experts do, in fact, consider the impact mosquito elimination (which is also wrong because it's not total mosquito elimination) would have on predators and other environmental issues.

I also suspect that a lot of the ambivalence on the part of posters here is because most MeFi posters live in urban areas in developed countries where mosquitos are irritating pests rather than a matter of life and death. While we understand intellectually that mosquitos are a terrible killer in parts of the world, we don't really feel it on a visceral level, so it's easy to wax poetic about grand abstract questions of hubris and ethics. It's not our families or communities that are going to die from mosquito-borne diseases.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:54 AM on February 25, 2019 [44 favorites]


It's an irreversible step; there's no fixing it if we discover 20 years down the road these mosquitos were doing something useful that was unanticipated.

Can you freeze mosquito larvae? If so, we could just keep some spares around in case they turn out to be important.
posted by emjaybee at 9:23 AM on February 25, 2019 [4 favorites]


Think of this - HEARTWORMS FOR DOGS. NO MORE HEARTWORMS FOR DOGS.

Nature finds a way, sure. but.... NO MORE HEARTWORMS FOR DOGS
posted by bradth27 at 9:43 AM on February 25, 2019 [15 favorites]


I just watched the Star Trek Next Gen in which they decided not to kill off the Borg with a programming virus. It had something to do with the abhorrence of species destruction. I don't like the science that offers this, to favor human residents over other planetary residents. The same logic is used to cull or kill native bison herds because theoretically brucellosis is spread by them to food cattle, even though that logic is questionable. When I hear that half of all humans who died were killed by mosquito borne illness...well. We are going to die by our own hand of acidified oceans, and hubris, volcanism caused by the shifting mass from frozen, static, water, to flowing , wet water. Oh never mind except it would appear mosquitos are the Earth's best friend; so much less destructive than nukes, fossil fuels, or profiteering from consumerism
posted by Oyéah at 9:44 AM on February 25, 2019


"there's no fixing it if we discover 20 years down the road these mosquitos were doing something useful that was unanticipated.'

it would have to be something more than just "useful" to counter all the suffering they caused.
posted by ambulocetus at 9:48 AM on February 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


I am surprised at the number of people basing their opinion off of what basically seems to be "gut feeling".

"Gut feeling" is a terrible way to make a decision, and it's in no way a substitute for an informed opinion. Gut feeling is just a polite term for the sum total of our cognitive biases, unexamined stereotypes, and knee-jerk reactions. It's "I don't really know enough to have an opinion but damnit I have an opinion!"

Feeling vaguely uncomfortable with something is a useless metric. At various times, lots of people have felt vaguely uncomfortable with blood transfusions, organ transplants, vaccines, tall buildings, ships made of metal, airplanes... it's the lizard-brain response to anything new. It's not very telling or informative about the actual topic at hand. If someone invented a Star Trek replicator tomorrow, or room-temperature fusion, or a cure for the common cold, I'd expect some significant percentage of people to have an immediately negative and fearful reaction to it, based on nothing at all.

There's no reason besides mystical thinking to preserving aedes aegypti in N. America; it's an invasive species that we humans introduced, and we have done spectacular damage to the ecosystem trying to control it. There is no course of action where we just do nothing; if we decide not to use genetic engineering (or sterile-male techniques via some other mechanism), it will just mean that we continue to spray chemicals and destroy inconvenient wetlands, to say nothing of the incidental damage done to the planet to create all the medical supplies used to treat everything from annoying bites to malaria.

Rationally weighing the cost/benefits is valuable, but operating on the basis of vague unease is not.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:51 AM on February 25, 2019 [37 favorites]


What if every mosquito on earth went extinct tomorrow?

This discussion got off to a bad start because of a very unfortunate choice of a provocative title. Nobody is seriously talking about extinguishing all species of mosquitoes. There are thousands of species of mosquitoes -- estimated at over 3500.
posted by JackFlash at 9:54 AM on February 25, 2019 [7 favorites]


In the Media, they have a saying "if it bleeds it leads". Unfortunately, this fosters fear and anti-intellectualism in people on both sides of the political spectrum. On the Right it causes fear of regulations and mistrust of anything new, and on the Left it makes people scared that big companies are poisoning our food and giving our kids autism. The cure for this is critical thinking and learning how to discern reputable sources. Only when we have reliable information can we come to the correct conclusion. Much of Science is counter-intuitive, or else we wouldn't have needed the Scientific Method in the first place. So please leave the Gut Feelings and anti-intellectualism to our political opposites; that way we resolve conflict and make a better world by making the right choices.
posted by ambulocetus at 10:17 AM on February 25, 2019


It should be debated at length, and I hope it can be done. Eradicating Malaria, dengue, West Nile virus, chikungunya, yellow fever, filariasis, tularemia, dirofilariasis, Japanese encephalitis, Saint Louis encephalitis, Western equine encephalitis, Eastern equine encephalitis, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Ross River fever, Barmah Forest fever, La Crosse encephalitis, and Zika fever. as well as newly detected Keystone virus would be cause for celebration. Wikipedia

I'm allergic to them, getting big, painful, itchy welts that take ages to heal. And I'm one of those people they especially love. Being able to be outdoorswithout DEET and not suffer would be really excellent.
posted by theora55 at 10:22 AM on February 25, 2019 [11 favorites]


The USA doesn't have malaria because we decimated entire ecosystems to get rid of it. As a result, our children don't get malaria and die. It didn't happen just as a by-product of American wealth, we only got around to eliminating it in the 50s. It's been enormously beneficial.

If there is a relatively targeted way for less-well-off countries to do the same, without pouring insecticide into every nook and cranny, I can't see a reason why these countries should be denied the opportunity.

That said, there are ways to do it with traditional methods but they're really hard and expensive to scale.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:54 AM on February 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


Meanwhile, guineaworm is nearly gone, thanks to President Carter (and others).
posted by BungaDunga at 10:57 AM on February 25, 2019 [9 favorites]


I'm a freshwater ecologist. I have also been involved in publications on biotech ethics. The gene drive to get rid of A. aegypti in North America will always make me nervous. This is not a gut feeling. It is not because I'm a misanthrope. It is not because I do not know about the horrors of malaria. It is certainly not because I am not familiar with mosquito bites. It is because I've been studying stream ecosystems for 20 years, and I promise that there is so much we still do not know about foodwebs and ecosystem functions. It is especially because I've read enough biotech research to know that there are questions about horizontal gene transfer and the possibility of gene drives spreading among congeners.
posted by hydropsyche at 11:07 AM on February 25, 2019 [19 favorites]


Related Disney film about mosquitoes and the spread of malaria.
posted by NoMich at 11:32 AM on February 25, 2019


This topic is so intensely frustrating and always the same. Folks playing super cautious over making one animal go extinct, while we have hundreds going extinct right now knowing that will have a negative impact on the environment. I don't believe anyone specifically champions those other species going extinct, even when they enjoy the fruits from the slaughter, but it's still a bit weird to see folks absent-mindedly stan for these horrible animals as if life were suddenly so precious.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:24 PM on February 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


Remember, "Junk DNA?" Like junk DNA, there are no junk species, either.
Huh? General consensus among biologists has it that there's lots of junk DNA. eg Carl Zimmer on the topic here.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 12:30 PM on February 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


gene drives make me nervous too, and trying to balance the known risks of not using it (many many dead babies) and the unknown risks of doing it (ecologies are basically chaotic) is really, really hard. What's the moral thing to do when an intervention has risks, but the status quo is awful?

If we could wipe A. aegypti from the Americas (and probably Africa) with a magic wand, I think we'd be morally obligated to do it. Once you throw in something as new as a gene drive, it gets more complicated, because gene drives aren't magic.

But I don't see anyone crying over Jimmy Carter's guinea worm eradication program. Guinea worm is not quite exclusively a human parasite, so it's possible it will survive even if it can't complete its lifecycle in humans, but there's a possibility that ending its transmission will render the thing extinct.
posted by BungaDunga at 12:31 PM on February 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


Maybe we could create a biosphere or seed lab, except for all the evil bugs and plants we need to trap. Anybody know the steps to trap villains in mirrors?
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:37 PM on February 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


Humans are the only sentient, intelligent beings capable of understanding and appreciating nature that we know of right now. We are the observers that give nature meaning, and we are the only species capable of shaping nature with rational intent. The processes of nature produced us, and it is up to us to ensure that those processes can continue to produce ever more complex and diverse life. Thus, we have two responsibilities toward nature:

1. Rationally shape nature to the extent that we can, to increase biodiversity, increase complexity of life on this planet, and decrease overall suffering.

2. Perpetuate the existence of the human species, allowing us to continue to observe nature, give it meaning, and shape it in a rational and sustainable way.

Under capitalism, we are emphatically not able to do number 1, but in some limited ways we might at least be able to shape nature in pursuit of number 2. I personally think that eradicating the small number of mosquito species that prey on humans and spread catastrophic disease is a worthwhile goal on our way to evolving our society to the point that we can rationally shape nature instead of irrationally destroy it in the pursuit of profit for the few.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 12:49 PM on February 25, 2019 [4 favorites]


I violently disagree that humans "give nature meaning." The universe exists without a known "meaning" and that is fine. Also, the world has value outside of humans...if we go extinct, and some of the world survives, it is still wonderful and amazing. The earth doesn't require us at all.
posted by agregoli at 1:51 PM on February 25, 2019


The universe does exist without a known meaning, and that's why the only meaning it has is that which we give to it. The earth doesn't require us, sure, but we are uniquely situated to take the "first nature" that produced us and shape its development in a positive way. We're already here and fucking with the environment all the time by the very nature of our existence. We might as well come up with a set of principles for the most positive way to fuck with it, and commit to them.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 1:59 PM on February 25, 2019 [3 favorites]


I'll miss mosquitoes about as much as I'll miss the smallpox virus.
posted by Marky at 2:28 PM on February 25, 2019 [4 favorites]


I think if you're going to engineer away the threats to human existence you are obligated to also engineer the limits of its success.

Odds on something going horridly awry and the genetic modification is instead spread to the world human population in such a way that we get a sort of "Children of Men" sitch?
posted by aspersioncast at 2:57 PM on February 25, 2019


Odds on something going horridly awry and the genetic modification is instead spread to the world human population in such a way that we get a sort of "Children of Men" sitch?

People aren't picking up a lot of permanent genetic changes from mosquitoes currently, and human reproduction is not very much like mosquito reproduction, so I'd guess the odds are zero?
posted by Spathe Cadet at 3:33 PM on February 25, 2019 [7 favorites]


People aren't picking up a lot of permanent genetic changes from mosquitoes currently, and human reproduction is not very much like mosquito reproduction, so I'd guess the odds are zero?

Hey, if GMO vegetables are going to mutate me I can’t see why getting stabbed right into the bloodstream by a GMO mosquito can’t.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:28 PM on February 25, 2019


Feeling vaguely uncomfortable with something is a useless metric.

You don't have to slavishly follow your instincts, but ignore them at your own peril.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:19 PM on February 25, 2019


It is especially because I've read enough biotech research to know that there are questions about horizontal gene transfer and the possibility of gene drives spreading among congeners.

I'm 100% completely in favor of eliminating invasive, disease-carrying mosquitoes. But I'm also nervous about this method and inadvertent consequences.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:43 PM on February 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


Tell Me No Lies, GMO vegetables are not going to to mutate you, and the mosquitoes won't inject you with anything other than allergens and parasites. DNA doesn't work that way. I really can't even imagine why you think it would.
posted by ambulocetus at 8:36 PM on February 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


Viruses that mosquitoes carry, can alter DNA if not ours then the DNA of unborn children. However I have read that viruses are the biggest drivers of changes in DNA and play a large role in evolution, one way or another. Here is a discussion about "no junk DNA". This has been a topic in scientific circles for some time. The absolutist theory of mass quantities of junk DNA has been actively reevaluated. And, questioning based on gut feeling is not primitive function, it is a function of active information processing in the human brain, when all the information available has not yet been assembled to make a full or final evaluation. Gut feeling is a recognition forming. Changing our climate has changed the biosphere, and invasive species is a fact of this in part.

Genetic malformations in babies infected with zika virus via mosquito inoculation is a known. DNA does work that way, responding to retro viruses whose work it is to make changes in living tissue, via genetic messaging.
posted by Oyéah at 9:32 PM on February 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


Found an interesting report about DDT, mosquitoes, and malaria.

Things I didn't know: the idea is to kill most of the mosquitoes only long enough so that the people in the area recover from malaria (or die). Then it doesn't matter if the mosquitoes come back, because the mosquitoes can only carry malaria if they've bitten someone with it. If you've eliminated it from local human and animal population, then the existence of the mosquitoes doesn't matter any more.

The second interesting thing is that this all has to take place within four years because after that the mosquitoes have developed resistance to DDT, and DDT becomes useless. Apparently the resistance lasts. DDT is probably useless against mosquitoes in a lot of places now.

The main point of the article, though, is just how bad it is to have DDT in the environment for wildlife and for humans.
posted by eye of newt at 9:50 PM on February 25, 2019


Genetic malformations in babies infected with zika virus via mosquito inoculation is a known. DNA does work that way, responding to retro viruses whose work it is to make changes in living tissue, via genetic messaging.

Zika causes malformations in fetuses by replicating and killing brain cells, not by changing their DNA sequence as a retrovirus does. A cold virus uses nucleic acids to replicate but that doesn't mean it will make germline changes to DNA and affect offspring. The vast majority of viruses do not change human genomes in any way, which is why retroviruses were such a surprise when discovered.
posted by benzenedream at 10:48 PM on February 25, 2019 [6 favorites]


I think the concern is something like, GMO organisms could unintentionally produce new sorts of prions or something equivalent. And because such GMO is uncontrollable and enters nature, you'd have nature fueling a genetic reaction that has catastrophic results for the biosphere. I have never seen any reputable yet lay-accessible article discuss this sort of issue.

And the way to evaluate this reasonably is to apply the logic of "unknown unknowns". There is no rational calculus for risk assessment of GMO interventions at the scale of the planet, because we simply don't have a good grasp on that area of study. To claim otherwise is limited science and banking a lot on the resilience of nature.

I think if you look at the position papers of institutions that deal with GMO policy (like the science policy institutions within the EU, etc.) they usually just go, more research (i.e. basic science) is needed and for the time being we have to be super super cautious and a lot of oversight is required. But that's a boring opinion and nobody writes news about that, they want the polarized opinions.
posted by polymodus at 12:16 AM on February 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


Tell Me No Lies, GMO vegetables are not going to to mutate you, and the mosquitoes won't inject you with anything other than allergens and parasites. DNA doesn't work that way. I really can't even imagine why you think it would.

I was joking.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:34 AM on February 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


I think if you look at the position papers of institutions that deal with GMO policy (like the science policy institutions within the EU, etc.) they usually just go, more research (i.e. basic science) is needed and for the time being we have to be super super cautious and a lot of oversight is required

New York Times: "Although about 90 percent of scientists believe G.M.O.s are safe — a view endorsed by the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the World Health Organization — only slightly more than a third of consumers share this belief."
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:36 AM on February 26, 2019


I oppose most GMO because the overwhelming majority of GMO is to A) make foods produce poison or B) make foods survive poisoning so that they can be sprayed with poison.

I am ok with GMO mosquitoes for anti-malaria. Though i will note the mosquito was a key defense against having lots of europeans invade and occupy your country and displace/genocide your people. Incomplete defense, but useful none the less.
posted by Anchorite_of_Palgrave at 9:25 AM on February 26, 2019


"only 100 or so bite or bother humans"

Until we kill those specific ones off. Then what?
posted by Catbunny at 10:15 AM on February 26, 2019


I figure you'd have substantially interrupted malaria's lifecycle, so even if humans start getting bitten by something else, they won't have malaria to transmit to each other. Same reason why we have mosquitos in the US but not malaria.

(a gene drive that could inoculate mosquitos against malaria would be a lot less scary than a mosquito-killing gene drive, wouldn't it? likely harder, but still)
posted by BungaDunga at 10:35 AM on February 26, 2019


Though i will note the mosquito was a key defense against having lots of europeans invade and occupy your country and displace/genocide your people.

It was also one of the key reasons why Europeans bought and shipped a lot of African people around the world to do unpleasant jobs in tropical climates. If not for malaria and yellow fever, the demographics of the Caribbean might look more like New England (send us your poor, your religious nuts, your convicts yearning to do hard labor...).

Also, colonization spread malaria to many areas where it was previously unknown or tended not to be endemic, including West Bengal (modern day NE India and Bangladesh) where it remains deadly to this day.

Seems a poor deal, on balance.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:24 PM on February 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


I also suspect that a lot of the ambivalence on the part of posters here is because most MeFi posters live in urban areas in developed countries where mosquitos are irritating pests rather than a matter of life and death. While we understand intellectually that mosquitos are a terrible killer in parts of the world, we don't really feel it on a visceral level, so it's easy to wax poetic about grand abstract questions of hubris and ethics. It's not our families or communities that are going to die from mosquito-borne diseases.
Seriously this.

Imagine if we were to try to make some kind of compromise to the rosy imaginings of developing world ecology in this thread and keep one spot on Earth where the Plasmodium malariae is allowed to remain wild. Some island offshore somewhere, far away from us, that would allow us to say that we didn't intentionally cause the extinction of this creature in the wild. However, to have this Plasmodium park we couldn't just dump a whole bunch of malaria carrying mosquitoes onto an island and call it good, there are no animal reservoirs for Plasmodium malariae. To keep malaria alive in a park, we would need to continuously feed it the human infants that are necessary for its ecological maintenance. To propagate to new mosquitoes it must consume us at our most vulnerable. Indeed, the 285,000 children under 5 who are currently being sacrificed to malaria every year would fill an astonishing number of train cars on their way to this hypothetical island. Now that we are increasingly capable of eradicating malaria, to continue to live it would have to also consume any pretense we might have of a sense of universally shared humanity.

That is what we are really allowing to be being suggested in this thread when we discuss a task this important in terms of hubris, genocide through inaction - and to what end exactly?
posted by Blasdelb at 2:42 AM on February 28, 2019 [6 favorites]


Another recent study: A New Way to Keep Mosquitoes From Biting -- An appetite-suppressing drug makes them act as if they’ve already feasted on blood. (Ed Yong for The Atlantic, Feb. 7, 2019)
The experiment really shouldn’t have worked. Several years ago, Laura Duvall from Rockefeller University decided to feed mosquitoes with experimental drugs designed to suppress the appetite of humans. Perhaps these chemicals might also reduce the insects’ appetite for blood? And, by extension, stop them from biting people and spreading diseases?

“The whole thing started off as a joke,” says Leslie Vosshall, who led the study. “The assumption was that the human drugs would kill the animal or have no effect. It was a stupid thing.”

So imagine her surprise when it worked.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads dengue and Zika, is an exceptional human hunter, drawn to our body heat, odors, and exhalations. When a female finds and bites a person, she doubles her body weight in blood, before lapsing into a days-long food coma. During that time, while she slowly digests the blood and converts it into eggs, “her interest in human cues is dialed down to zero,” Vosshall says. “You can put your hand in a cage of blood-fed females and you won’t get a bite.”
"Small-Molecule Agonists of Ae. aegypti Neuropeptide Y Receptor Block Mosquito Biting" (Cell, Published: February 7, 2019)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:16 AM on February 28, 2019 [2 favorites]


Your Questions About Italy's GMO Mosquito Experiment, Answered (Rob Stein for NPR, March 1, 2019)
In February, scientists started releasing genetically engineered mosquitoes in a high-security laboratory in Terni, Italy.

NPR was the only news organization allowed into the lab to witness the first releases. Correspondent Rob Stein reported on the start of the experiment: "Scientists Release Controversial Genetically Modified Mosquitoes In High-Security Lab."

We asked readers to share their questions about this GMO mosquito experiment. Nearly 300 questions were submitted, on topics ranging from its potential impact on the food chain to alternative solutions like developing a malaria vaccine.

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions, answered by Rob Stein.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:48 AM on March 1, 2019


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