Submitted by lughnasadh t3_yortnc in Futurology
Reply to comment by Alwayssunnyinarizona in English company Oxitec has released a simple, easy to distribute commercial product they say cuts Dengue Fever spreading mosquito populations by 96%. By just adding water, genetically modified mosquito eggs mature into males whose sperm cannot result in viable female larvae. by lughnasadh
I agree - while I generally don't promote messing with nature, there are so so many other species of mosquito that would fill in, should we eradicate 3 or 4 of them. At least where I live, many of them are invasive anyway.
Aedes aegypti, an important vector for Dengue and the subject of the study, was brought to the New World during the slave trade 500yrs ago. Seems like the New World had been doing fine in its absence before then.
In the case of Southern California they’ve been here ten years. It barely gets to freezing at night so they never die off. They’re so new people don’t know what to do about them. If dengue ever makes it to Southern California the people here are fucked.
It's odd that it hasn't, there's enough movement of people from endemic areas into Southern California.
Per the news they came in on a shipment of lucky bamboo around 2011.
Yeah so many defend mosquitoes but they are often invasive. Not native. Like the feral cat population of Australia.
There’s only one type of mosquito known to transmit deadly diseases out of the 200+ different mosquitoes.
Ridding the world of this one would prevent millions of deaths and mental disabilities that come about through this mosquito. No scientific paper has come to the conclusion that getting rid of it would have any noticeable effect on the environment since other species would take its place.
Nature isn't smart. It's random. Humans are smarter than general nature.
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