Posted on 06/04/2025 7:27:17 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
Gene editing holds the potential of suppressing mosquito species that carry deadly diseases — and raises ethical questions.
Yet the development of this technology also raises a profound ethical question: When, if ever, is it okay to intentionally drive a species out of existence? Simoni said he hopes Target Malaria can move beyond the lab and deploy some of the genetically modified mosquitoes in their natural habitats within the next five years. The nonprofit research consortium gets its core funding from the Gates Foundation, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Open Philanthropy, backed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna.At the heart of Target Malaria’s work is a powerful genetic tool called a gene drive.
“Technology is presenting new options to us,” said Christopher Preston, a University of Montana environmental philosopher. “We might’ve been able to make a species go extinct 150 years ago by harpooning it too much or shooting it out of the sky. But today, we have different options, and extinction could be completed or could be started in a lab.
“This is not a difficult audience, because these are people that are living in an area where children are dying,” said Krystal Birungi, an entomologist for Target Malaria in Uganda, though she added that she sometimes has to fight misinformation, such as the false idea that bites from genetically modified mosquitoes can make people sterile.
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(Excerpt) Read more at us.headtopics.com ...
Better they die than humans.
Save the gay mosquitos!
Humans are not exempt. Bats/birds/other insects eat mosquitos. Other things eat those things. Humans may be at the top of the food chain, but we are VERY dependent on what's below us to keep us alive.
We should rid the world of Prog Marxist Democrats first, and see if things get tolerable.
bring back ddt.
I’m not in favor of eliminating all mosquitoes. As other posters point out, mosquitoes are important to many other species. Put me down as a JIMBY (Just in My Back Yard).
I am of the opinion that one should treat the area where they reside and by NO MEANS tamper with Gods design of nature. Mosquito’s have their place within and serve a purpose. The arrogance of man is never ending and this would be just another baked up idea that our government grifters would pilfer and loot.
“Absolutely not. The food chain is an important part of life, and mosquitos are part of that.”
99% of the species that ever lived on this planet are extinct, and the remaining life adapts. Let’s add mosquitos to that extinction list.
There are 8 billion humans on the planet only because we live in an environment we have engineered to support us. The most ecologically destructive practice is agriculture, which purposefully destroys the native ecosystem to replace it with human-supporting food stocks. I flew once into Fargo on a beautifully clear day in early Fall. From 10,000 feet the world was a sea of wheat. The entire prairie ecosystem had been annihilated.
I would prefer that we don't forget our need for bio-engineering and instead allow irrational sentimentality to govern policy.
Chairman Mao messed around with this kind of thing and it didn’t go well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign
ya if we learned anything from the fouchie debacle it is that just because you can do a thing doesnt mean you should.
Not a good time to ask me. I have bites all over. I’m one of those people that are just magnets for the things.
But not in that order please?
I understand that there is no specie dependent on the Black Fly.
Have at them!
Round these parts, I could do with a lot less midges and no see ums.
Yes. Get rid of fleas, ticks and mosquitoes and the world will do just fine.
Should we get rid of mosquitoes? That’s the debate AI is going to have about humans.
Bam, there it is. Knew it. Gates wants to end everyone and everything. He dreams of the butterfly effect.
Yes, just like we should rid the world of leftists.
Just like leftists, mosquitos survive only by sucking the lifeblood of the more productive in the world.
Don’t mosquitoes challenge the immune system of their targets and, presumably, strengthen them? Hate to find out the hard way that that’s true…
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