Posted on 09/14/2014 11:30:18 AM PDT by BenLurkin
U.K.-based company associated with Oxford University that believes it has developed an alternative to pesticides: genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes. Oxitec’s mosquito carries a lethal gene that it then passes along to its offspring. The modified males are bred in a laboratory, then released into the wild, where they mate with local females, who lay eggs that will die before reaching adulthood.
"With insecticides, you have to take the product to the insect, which means you have to take your fog or spray into people's houses, and people don't like that. If a fogger machine is coming down the street, people close their windows and doors,” Parry says. “You know that 50 percent or more of the places mosquitoes are breeding are in people's houses, and you just can't get at them. The beauty of our little mosquito is that they don't have to ask permission to go on to someone's property. They are biologically programmed to find the females."
Oxitec's OK513A mosquito has been released and monitored in the Cayman Islands, Malaysia, Brazil and the Florida Keys, with promising results, Parry says.
"In every open-air trial we've done in urban environments—even cities filled with buckets of standing water because there is no running water—the results are the same. We recently crashed the local aedes aegypti population in Mandacaru, Brazil by 96 percent in just six months," he says.
That success has been tempered by criticism, mainly from anti-GMO activists concerned about the unintended consequences of meddling with Mother Nature.
...
Critics are also concerned about a complex ecosystem response. "Reducing the numbers of aedes aegypti could increase the population of aedes albopictus, and we might not only get more of that species, but we may find that they evolve to be a more effective transmitter of disease," Wallace says.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Critics seem to have a lot of concerns — I think they’re mostly worried that human lives will be saved. They hate it when that happens!
This tech could also be used to spread other stuff.
If this is the stuff Bill Gates is heavily funding, it will probably simply spread sterility among humans. He gets a giant boner thinking of sterilizing other people.
What could possibly go wrong?
Hyundai mosquitoes would be built to last longer and probably cost less
Probably they don’t want human lives saved, although the Gates Foundation is a little schizoid - they have actually give huge amounts of money to life-saving things in Africa (along, of course, with mass contraception). I don’t know if they support abortion there, but they do in Latin America with grants to Planned Parenthood for “services.”
That said, the technology could be good and the foundation would have the money to fund it. But what is essential is that there be strict monitoring of the programs - and that we have a US government that actually cares about human lives and supports life. Unlike the current one, need I add.
I’m just suspicious of the Gates foundation. Heavily invested in birth control, with Bill being outspoken in favor of the need for *coercive* birth control and sterilization. But also very heavily invested in vaccines and vaccine technology. You’d have a hard time convincing me that as outspoken Bill is in favor of population reduction he hasn’t considered combining the two.
Have the endangered species act people heard about this?
Possibly. But mosquitos can’t choose their targets, and I don’t think he really plans to wipe out Africa.
Monitoring is necessary. For many years, mosquitos have been “engineered” to spread sterility to other mosquitos, obviously without much effect. (Judging by the population in my backyard in Florida!).
But it’s an interesting idea for delivering good medications or immunizations to populations that might not be reachable in the regular way.
I think if you were to tell him you had technology that would reduce Africa’s population from 1B to 100M he’d sign that check so fast the pen would catch fire.
Technical Background. Interesting.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/09/the-mosquito-solution
That’s a very serious statement you just made, but the way you phrased it made me laugh. I also wonder what Zuckerberg of Facebook is doing or is planning to do with all his billions just burnin a hole in his pocket. When you have that much money, I would presume the urge would be to spend big clumps of it from time to time on something tactile or obvious, so you and everybody could see how truly rich you are. What’s the fun of being in the Billionaire Boys Club if nobody knows it but Lois Lerner?
So we're all better off being infected instead of uninfected????????
Oddly enough that is sometimes true. Exposures at a young age help us develop immunity that we use to fight off a later infection. Polio is an example of a disease that became rampant after better hygiene eliminated casual exposure to the virus.
...epidemics of polio disease were reported from developed countries in the Northern Hemisphere each summer and fall. These epidemics became increasingly severe, and the average age of people affected rose. The increasingly older age of people with primary polio infection increased both the severity of the disease and number of deaths from polio. In 1952, polio reached a peak in the United States, with more than 21,000 cases of paralytic polio.In the immediate pre-vaccine era, improved sanitation allowed less frequent exposure and increased the age of primary infection. Boosting of immunity from natural exposure became more infrequent, and the number of susceptible people increased, which ultimately resulted in the occurrence of polio epidemics, with 13,000 to 20,000 paralytic cases reported annually.
http://polio.emedtv.com/polio/polio-history.html
They've modified them to not reproduce, so we have to buy more next year.
They should have modified them to only produce males (which do not suck blood btw) and in a few seasons they would go extinct.
If I had billions like that, I would buy chunks of prime real estate in places like Martha’s Vinyard, then build shanty towns on them, and bus homeless people from all over the country to them.
That sounds like a good long term investment; income producing property, partially subsidized by the government. It can be done properly and with dignity for the low income. I believe the same thing is being considered around here in the Bay Area of Ca. Treasure Island in San Fransisco used to have the military there. Now, I believe it has been sold to the city and is being redeveloped. It’s a scenic wonder, where every room will have a view.
Honestly, I think they’ve passed the phase where they can get a thrill buying this or that new thing. Now they just want the rest of us to go away and leave them in peace to enjoy *their* planet.
However they have to make that happen...
“What could possibly go wrong? “
Nothing ever goes wrong! I went to Kauai 40 years ago. Went for a nighttime walk on a golf course. There was a giant toad every 3 feet. Seems they had imported the toads to prey on a pest that attacked their crops. Cane Toads? It was one of the most bizarre sights I have ever seen. There were thousands of them, each within their own three foot circular territory. They had no natural predators, and were completely out of control!
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