[Curtman]

Maybe this is off-topic for this forum, but I found it very interesting.

Release of Mosquitoes With Suicide Genes Attempt To Eradicate Dengue Fever

Quote:

If Eden had been created by people, what would the planning debates have looked like? Two months ago, in a remote province of Eastern Malaysia, genetically engineered mosquitoes were released into the wild in a two week experiment aiming to see if wild mosquitoes that infect humans with Dengue Fever might eventually be suppressed or eradicated. The 6000 mutant mosquitoes were the biotechnological brainchildren of Luke Alphey, chief scientific officer of the British biotech company, Oxitec. He has pioneered a technique to inject a suicide gene into a wild insect population in a single generation, causing the pest population to dramatically decline in a bug-ocalypse of dead pupae. The genetic technology, called RIDL, is a fascinating bit of bio-geekery explained in a video below. The politics by which the ecology of the planet might be re-engineered to cause less disease might be even more important for understanding the shape of the future than the tech. This is not the first time that genetically engineered suicide mosquitoes have been released into the wild, and it continues a pattern of acting, then announcing, and then dealing with objections.
...
Oxitec’s RIDL technology works by almost the same method that the dinosaurs of Jurassic park were controlled. The term RIDL comes from “Release of Insects carrying a Dominant Lethal”. The idea is to create mosquitoes that have two copies of a dominant suicide gene that causes them to die at a specific life stage unless they get a special chemical. You raise thousands, millions, or billions of mutant male mosquitoes in a mutant mosquito factory, getting them past the suicide stage by giving them the special chemical. In Jurassic park, the dinosaurs were deficient in lysine which had to be a regular part of their dino-chow, while Oxitec’s mosquitoes need the antibiotic tetracycline to turn off their suicide genes.

What's scarier, mutant mosquitos or malathion?

[SprCForr]

Eradicating Dengue Fever is a great goal.

I don't see how this would be a fear or is it because it fits their agenda:

Quote:

One concrete fear raised by GeneWatch is that RIDL might eventually be used to successfully suppress Aedes aegypti, which spreads Dengue, thereby opening up a niche that might be filled with a non-targetedd mosquito like Aedes albopictus, which also lives in Eastern Malaysia and also spreads Dengue. Albopictus might not take over the niche, and even if it did it might be less dangerous, but the likelihood of this or similar problems has never been formally ruled out.

[CommanderSock]

This is similar to Tsetse flies eradication attempts in tropical Africa.

The eradication of these tropical pests will open up vast swathes of land for future farming and human habitation all across and below the 10th parallel.

[Themista]

If this project is successful, it would really make a difference for people suffering from the threat of dengue all over the world. However, I hope and let's pray that these genetically altered mosquitoes don't pose a NEW problem.

[jeff744]

Hopefully they can delay this to multiple generations later, it would expand the effects to be almost a complete destruction of the target.

[Freakinoldguy]

And while I applaud the intention I don't think it's the wisest way to eradicate the disease. Anytime you fuck with nature there always appears to be unforeseen consequences that usually prove extremely harmful somewhere down the line. Just ask places like Guam, or Australia.

Example. I just read that the US has decided not to use "super mould" to kill off drug crops because someone had a rush of shite to the brain and finally figured out that it could have unforeseen consequences that nobody's thought of.

[ShepherdsDog]

Mosquitos are actually major pollinators. kill them off and that fucks up the local flora that depend on them.

[Guy_Fawkes]

It's been a year since they started I wonder if the results have been published yet?

[ShepherdsDog]

no one has heard from the research outpost or the two teams that were sent in to investigate.

[Freakinoldguy]

ShepherdsDog wrote:

Mosquitos are actually major pollinators. kill them off and that fucks up the local flora that depend on them.

Like I said.

For every action there's a reaction.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Actually, this ain't new. I seem to recall reading an article a few years back about "Kamikaze mosquitos". Don't recall if it was Dengue fever they were trying to eradicate but I do remember thinking it was an interesting angle.

[2Cdo]

If true I can't see anything good coming from this.