First Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Released In the United States (nature.com) 89
A biotechnology firm has released genetically modified mosquitoes into the United States for the first time. Long-time Slashdot reader clovis shares the report via Nature: The experiment, launched this week in the Florida Keys -- over the objections of some local critics -- tests a method for suppressing populations of wild Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which can carry diseases such as Zika, dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. [...] Aedes aegypti makes up about 4% of the mosquito population in the Keys, a chain of tropical islands off the southern tip of Florida. But it is responsible for practically all mosquito-borne disease transmitted to humans in the region, according to the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD), which is working closely with Oxitec on the project. [...] In late April of this year, project researchers placed boxes containing Oxitec's mosquito eggs at six locations in three areas of the Keys. The first males are expected to emerge within the first two weeks of May. About 12,000 males will exit the boxes each week over the next 12 weeks. In a second phase later this year, intended to collect even more data, nearly 20 million mosquitoes will emerge over a period of about 16 weeks, according to Oxitec. "There is the usual opposition of the 'It's GMO, so it should not be done' variety," adds clovis. "As for ecological food chain considerations, one should know that aedes aegypti is not native to the western hemisphere. It is believed to have been imported from Africa during the slave trade era."
What's a native? (Score:3)
"As for ecological food chain considerations, one should know that aedes aegypti is not native to the western hemisphere. It is believed to have been imported from Africa during the slave trade era."
Go back far enough and we're not native either.
Re: What's a native? (Score:5, Insightful)
Go back far enough and atoms aren't native.
The only ecological function of parasites is to keep wild animal populations in check. We can do that just fine ourselves without the fringe benefits of brain-atrophying viruses infecting our unborn babies.
Eradicate them all!
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The only ecological function of parasites is to keep wild animal populations in check.
It isn't so simple. In many places mosquitos are an important part of the food web.
https://theconversation.com/th... [theconversation.com]
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but not Florida. We don't need them at all, they only have negative value.
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Yes. Any other questions?
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But this is non-native invasive mosquito. It doesn't belong in Florida, think of it as kudzu with wings and disease. It never was proper part of ecosystem, ever.
Re: What's a native? (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't so simple. In many places mosquitos are an important part of the food web.
Only five mosquito species transmit human diseases. If we went farther and eliminated all 200 species that bite humans, there would still be 3,000 species left.
The ecosystem wouldn't even notice the change, but we certainly would.
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The ecosystem wouldn't even notice the change
That's an incredibly confident statement to make when you have zero knowledge of the potential impact of that change. Do you really think that other species aren't bitten by those mosquitoes? Do you really think that the deaths those mosquitoes cause in said species has no effect on the ecosystem as a whole?
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Wrong, yes, and yes.
You have not read any of the literature that the people studying this have put out, and it shows.
Re: What's a native? (Score:5, Informative)
Mosquitos, yes. Aedes aegypti, the one specific invasive species, that actively hunts humans, and carries most mosquito-borne human disease? Not so much. From TFS:
>Aedes aegypti makes up about 4% of the mosquito population in the Keys,
Wipe out that species, and the many native species will rapidly expand to fill that niche. In fact, so long as the displaced native species still exist (and breeds quickly), wiping out pretty much any invasive species tends to result in overall health of the ecology improving rapidly.
And since this GMO mosquito does NOT use gene drives, and simply renders the half-breeds unviable, the risk of it significantly affecting other species of mosquito is vanishingly low.
Other groups have developed gene drives that make all descendant's male in perpetuity - which would far more effective at eradicating a species, but come with a large risk of spreading across species (interspecies breeding does occur, and a heavily male population increases those odds), potentially eventually wiping out all species of mosquito in the world. *That* would be a problem.
But thankfully those plans have not yet gotten permission to proceed... at least in the US. The prospect of gene drives being released elsewhere worries me. With malaria killing a half-million people a year, many hard-hit places might be far more interested in a quick and effective, one-time, permanent solution. And by the time the problems started appearing it would be far too late to do anything about them.
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I've read about gene drive development to insert a protein that stops the malaria cycle. It doesn't do anything else. And since the mosquitos don't benefit from malaria (and probably are harmed by it in a very small way) it seems like an ok thing even if it spreads farther than intended? It won't lower mosquito populations, and affect other animals that rely on them for food.
Re: What's a native? (Score:4, Insightful)
Very few animals, if any at all, rely so heavily on the handful of mosquito families that bite humans that those going extinct would harm them. There are thousands of mosquito species. Most animals that eat them eat dozens of different species. There's nothing special about a human blood filled mosquito to a critter which sustains itself off insect protein.
Now in some areas the species that bite humans may be the dominant species, but that's because we're feeding them and creating places for them to breed. If they were gone there's a very good chance another species would fill that environmental niche, and it's unlikely that it would be one that feeds on humans.
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I'm actually even more opposed to gene-drives for purposes other than driving a species to extinction.
A gene drive is a "machine" built upon extremely powerful DNA-editing tools we stole from bacteria, which re-writes offspring DNA to ensure 100% heritability of both the gene drive and its payload - something impossible through normal natural selection.
Once you release a gene drive into a population, it will almost certainly remain there until the species goes extinct. The only conceivable way to remove it
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Kill off the invasive species and the native species will fill the niche again.
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Re: What's a native? (Score:2)
Bats are cute little critters...and they don't eat only the skeeters that bite humans, they eat all kinds of bugs. In fact, I'm pretty sure the ones around the northeastern US eat more moths than mosquitoes. Moths are annoying, but they don't bite people.
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Wait, you're calling humans parasites to mother earth? Sounds about right.
Yo Grark
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The only ecological function of parasites is to keep wild animal populations in check
No species has a "function". It either reproduces, evolves or dies out.
Re: What's a native? (Score:2)
Ah...so it's just coincidence that all those flowering plants just happen to attract pollenating insects.
You Follow The Science religiously, right?
Re:What's a native? (Score:4, Informative)
There is a scientific definition for what constitutes a species. There are several factors involved in speciation [wikipedia.org] including reproductive isolation [wikipedia.org].
Aedes aegypti [wikipedia.org] is non-native based upon the argument that it would without human interference remain isolated by geological boundaries such as oceans.
Humans have occupied the moon temporarily and may one day reside and reproduce there entirely by their own means without outside interference.
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Self-made evolution [forbes.com] where humanity controls their own evolution; not as subject to the existing laws.
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Humans have occupied the moon temporarily
Great. Now we have to worry about moon mosquitoes.
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"As for ecological food chain considerations, one should know that aedes aegypti is not native to the western hemisphere. It is believed to have been imported from Africa during the slave trade era."
Go back far enough and we're not native either.
Go back to Hadean times, and nothing was native.
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Probably. If something can be transported away from its native habitat to someplace where it can still survive (I'm looking at you, stink bugs!), it eventually will.
Re: What's a native? (Score:2)
african rosy wolfsnail, norway rat, german cockroach, chinese mitten crab, burmese python, etc.
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That's a flippant and not very useful comment.
Native species have evolved in an ecosystem which is balanced.
There are a depressingly large number of examples of non-native species which have caused very real harm because either there are not enough predators of the new species or other species in the system don't have any defenses against the invader.
I only bother to reply to your trollish comment because people really need to understand the very high economic and environmental cost of non-native species.
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"As for ecological food chain considerations, one should know that aedes aegypti is not native to the western hemisphere. It is believed to have been imported from Africa during the slave trade era."
Go back far enough and we're not native either.
You've missed the point. This isn't about who or what can claim it's from a particular location. This is about whether these mosquitoes have been around long enough to have significantly affected the food chain. Enough time hasn't yet passed that we've had millions of generations of birds and other critters adapting and evolving to only eat these particular mosquitoes. Because they were introduced within the last few hundred years and aren't the dominant food source for anything else in the food chain, noth
Covid Mosquitoes b movie on the way? (Score:4, Funny)
Covid Mosquitoes b movie on the way?
Re: Covid Mosquitoes b movie on the way? (Score:2)
Someone stole your idea I think. It was called "Birdemic!"
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Their offspring should die before they are old enough for females to begin biting but in a trial at Brazil the experiment did not turn out as it was supposed. Read https://hireessaywriter.onl/ [hireessaywriter.onl]
Cute one - the mosquitos write essays for people now?
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It's not surprising. In the wild, mosquitoes breed in vast numbers. Extremely rare events that you might not see even in what would be a large scale experiment *for the lab* are something you should expect in a field trial.
I worked in mosquito control for many years, and I knew the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District very well. During my time it was almost certainly the most advanced and effective mosquito control district in the world -- and I knew hundreds of districts well. I would tell people familiar with the Keys I was going down to visit FKMCD and they'd be surprised: they didn't think the Keys *had* a mosquito problem. In fact the Keys would be uninhabitable were it not for extremely aggressive mosquito control. Every island in the Keys is surrounded by mangrove -- perfect mosquito habitat -- and of course human structures only added to the problem.
This kind of thing is actually typical of the Moon Shot type stuff FKMCD used to do. For example, they're the only district I know that did laboratory tests of pesticide susceptibility on their local mosquito populations, a move that probably saved them millions of dollars a year. They were an early adopter of vehicle tracking and did what was in effect real time dispatching of spray trucks based on incoming surveillance data. The result was a level of control so high that visitors often have the impression that the Keys have no mosquitoes, although residents know better.
Despite this the old-time FKMCD people I'm still in touch with are bitterly opposed to this GMO mosquito release. They see it as an experimental approach to a solved problem. That is true, but the shortcoming to the tried and true solutions is that they cost a lot of money. This GMO thing isn't really a way of cutting human mosquito exposure to lower levels, it is possibly a way of achieving the level of control Keys residents are accustomed to *for less money*.
I think some of the opposition comes from political reactions to a more conservative board that tried to cut expenses, sometimes in inadvisable ways, like skimping on maintenance. The "GMO" thing of course is a PR red flag opponents can use against them. My position is in between. The old FKMCD was not a tight-run ship financially, although I probably benefited from that personally. But even with its free-spending ways, what it achieved was a bargain in terms of economic impact. I think getting there for less money would actually be a good thing, although I am chary of wishful thinking in interpreting the results. Lots of golden bullets have been proposed over the years for mosquito control and none of them have worked out. What definitely works is situational awareness and a rapid, targeted, measured response.
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The study and results he refers to are genuine. I assumed there was a problem with the URL but not necessarily the post.
I for one (Score:5, Funny)
welcome our new Genetically Modified Mosquito Overlords.
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Nature will find a way!
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So that's what could possibly go wrong?
The trick (Score:2)
And these concerned environmental warriors have a plan:
Opposition to the Florida field trial has been fierce from some residents in the Keys. Worried about being bitten by the mosquitoes or that the insects will disrupt the Florida ecosystem — and generally unhappy about being chosen as a test site — some have threatened to derail the experiments by spraying insecticides near the release points.
Two
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Third is that the GMO mosquitos are all male, and their female offspring will (hopefully) die in the early larval stages. Seeing as it's only female mosquitos that bite, Florida residents are not going to be bitten by GMO mosquitos [Insert Ian Malcolm quote here].
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Third is that the GMO mosquitos are all male, and their female offspring will (hopefully) die in the early larval stages. Seeing as it's only female mosquitos that bite, Florida residents are not going to be bitten by GMO mosquitos [Insert Ian Malcolm quote here].
MGTOW mosquitos! 8^)
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They're afraid of it being passed to humans and then most of the residents of Key West won't be able to have progeny.
Oh, I had to chuckle. Key West has a very large population of non-reproducing people. Many LGBT folks there.
Let's make a better mosquito they said. (Score:2)
Let's make them robust against things that might hurt us they said.
Let's make them extra horny so they outbreed the bad mosquitoes they said.
What could possibly go wrong, they said.
What can possibly go wrong? (Score:1)
Spouting facts is not an explanation.
What is conspicuously happen here is what the far reaching consequences of such a thing happening would be.
Bearing in mind that if that were the case, then there would be female mosquitoes with this lethal gene that are going around and biting.
So I repeat the question.... what can possibly go wrong?
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nothing of import would happen, we don't need this insect at all. Its existence has brought mass death to mankind.
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So there's really no chance whatsoever that this sort of modification that is present in a mosquito that bites wouldn't, say, make the hop from mosquito to human? That there are fundamental factors involved which prohibit it?
If so, great... and maybe I just have an overactive imagination. I know I don't understand the science and I will readily admit that.
But to simply dismiss someone's concerns about something just because its chances are low or otherwise diminish their concern by saying something a
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Yes, there's really no chance that evolution is Lamarckian.
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yes, just look at Jimmy Durante's nose! That's squeeter DNA I tell you!
Re: What can possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
Your complete lack of arguments shows the total willul ignorance and utter cluelessness emerging from it and your ideology.
And you freakin didn't even think that we could just make the mosquitoes immune to becoming a carrier! Which proves your lack of a right to contribute anything at all to this discussion. Do you think it is preferred of the mosquitos species to kill their food source?
If anything on this planet is a scourge and a plague and a cancer that is literally destroying ALL the species as we speak
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this thing wasn't in Florida even 500 years ago.
You have no argument to support that this non-native invading species has any value, the ecosystem existed without it. It brings disease not only to humans but native animals.
Science and logic are on my side. Anyone with a functioning brain can tell there is no value in this invading non-native diseased species that is harmful. People like me get to decide and so they have, ignoramuses who ignore science and history like you don't get a vote.
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So I repeat the question.... what can possibly go wrong?
It doesn't work as well as they had hoped, and ends up costing more money than just hosing everything down with insecticides like they have been doing.
That's pretty much the extent of what can possibly go wrong.
well aedes aegypti (Score:1)
haven't we seen this movie? (Score:1)
Re: haven't we seen this movie? (Score:2)
Let's just get this to its logical conclusion:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
Don't lizards eat mosquitoes? ;)
Experiment Over (Score:5, Interesting)
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...or in another state. It's not like we're running out of test subjects.
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Re:Experiment Over (Score:4, Insightful)
Modify them to inject Covid Vaccine (Score:2)
Seems OK, except for One thing (Score:2)
Like one guy said, they propose the only thing that could go wrong is they keep reproducing. The other risks do seem small in comparison to possibly getting rid of this dangerous disease carrier.
Well... I do see one problem. If women/girls are bit when they are young before having babies, they are then immune to Zika before they get pregnant. When you reduce the population to a tiny population of mosquitoes, then less people will be immune. And even though getting bitten while pregnant is less likely, you r
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Prior art in Wales: Mosquito Mayhem (Score:2)
The worst bites are from fucking 'activists' (Score:1)
Opposition to the Florida field trial has been fierce from some residents in the Keys. Worried about being bitten by the mosquitoes or that the insects will disrupt the Florida ecosystem — and generally unhappy about being chosen as a test site — some have threatened to derail the experiments by spraying insecticides near the release points
The anti-science right makes bad choices for itself. Right now we see this in the daily Covid deaths of antivaxers. The anti-science left forces bad choices onto everyone else.
Re: The worst bites are from fucking 'activists' (Score:1)
Stop acting as if this had anything to with science.
Your straw man impresses nobody.
Science would be, to make those mosquitoes, who are *only carriers*, immune and unable to carry the diseases.
Science is NOT literal unstoppable self-carrying genocide!! What are you? A literal Dr. Mengele?
Imagine if we treated symptomless Covid carriers like that! Just make them all infertile because we're such insane fucking morons as we are egoists.
And suuure, it will "never" spread to other places. Just like it "never" sp
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The politics of anti-science have nothing to do with the outcomes. Both extremes are equally dangerous. The anti-vaxxers do have a bit more chance of dying of Covidthemselves, but they are far far more responsible for the fact that we are probably never going to be rid of Covid and all the life and economic and social harm it is causing.
Gotta love that last line (Score:1)
"It is believed to have been imported from Africa during the slave trade era." So, these days, opposing the project would be racist.
Bad idea (Score:2)
"It is believed to have been imported from Africa during the slave trade era."
So it's the wrath of god and should not be trifled with. :-)
Screwworm eradication (Score:4, Informative)
The federal gov't thankfully eradicated the awful screwworm from the US decades ago, almost the same way. Link: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aph... [usda.gov]
Literal genocide. Seriously, fuck you! (Score:1)
Whatever true literal psychopath came up.with this: Fuck you!
It is like genetically modifying people with Covid to be *sterile*, with the declared goal to make them go extinct.
You know, as opposed to *curing* them and making them immune to becoming a carrier! Like normal people would do.
Whoever came up with this, must be locked up in the same place we'd lock up a Dr. Mengele or Hannibal Lecter. To receive many years of therapy. Many, many, many fucking years of therapy.
The Florida Keys are tropical islands? (Score:2)
The story says, "...in the Keys, a chain of tropical islands off the southern tip of Florida.", but the Tropic of Cancer starts south of the islands.
The Law of Unintended Consequences: (Score:2)
Disclaimer: 'unintended consequences' can be good or bad. But you won't know which until they're upon you.
I ain't even worried. Nothing I or anyone else can do about it now. Whatever happens, happens. I'm just sayin'..
Thank god they waited for 2021 (Score:2)
Can you imagine if they'd have done this last year? I mean that dumpster fire of a year wasn't bad enough without whatever scifi horror that would have concocted for us.
Can we do the same for Cicadas? (Score:2)