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Breed Safe Mosquitoes
The most dangerous animal on Earth (other than man) is the mosquito. But this is only because the mosquito is used by eg plasmodium as a vector. So outbreed the infected mosquitoes to defeat malaria. | |
If you're a talented insect breeder, this might even be bakable[??], because Bill and Melinda Gates have examined their ambitions and decided to give becoming worth something more to all humanity, a go. Their foundation funds this kind of thing.
The breeding part of the idea seems quite simple. Create
nice habitat for feedlot densities of anopheles mosquitoes, separated from wild mosquitoes. When it gets going, start to ship bags of larvae to your target areas.
The difficult part would be in swamping the wild populations in such a way as not to introduce the malaria parasite into your domestic mosquitoes. The problem is that any person (or also perhaps animal) in a fever, bitten by a mosquito, will infect that mosquito. And then that mosquito will go on to bite the next person, and pass on the parasite.
So mosquito introductions would need to be done before the start of the season? (To give the clean mozzies a head start).
Definitely, this would have to go hand in hand with overkill treatment measures in the particular area being focused on. All new infections would need to be caught early. I think a large village might be the ideal target pilot test community. (Not too few people to dent the infected mosquito range, but not too many to achieve the co-operation needed.)
One thing that makes me doubt the prospects of success is that these days people sometimes contract malaria in the Kruger Park. The story is that there are so many Mozambican illegal immigrants passing through that they've re-introduced malaria to the area, but I find that hard to believe. So if there aren't humans infecting the mosquitoes, maybe it's the monkeys or baboons? Or the birds? It is a half-baked, rather than a baked idea.
Anyway, the idea would be to pick places at the edges of the malaria area, hit those hard, move forward, monitor the places you've been, and roll it forward.
Hmm ... yes, another fly in this ointment is that the cops would quickly get to work squeezing bribes out of the people doing this, too. (My brother had to pay 5 bribes to bribe-hunters in Mozambique on a recent visit. He's giving it up, as a consequence.)
Kill 'em all
http://www.radiolab.../story/kill-em-all/
GM mosquitoes with self destruct [the porpoise, Apr 01 2014]
Laser-death
http://en.wikipedia...wiki/Mosquito_laser
[bs0u0155, Apr 01 2014]
Malaria life cycle
http://www.niaid.ni...ages/lifecycle.aspx
Mosquitos become infected with malaria as adults. [spidermother, Apr 02 2014]
Oxitec
http://www.oxitec.com/
Baked by Oxford University spinout Oxitec. [theleopard, Aug 11 2015]
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Annotation:
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This isn't a bad idea, but there are a lot of
schemes being looked at which focus on the
mosquitoes rather than the parasite. |
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These include swamping the mosquito population
with sterile insects (to cause population collapse),
and more ingenious schemes using GM mosquitoes
whose offspring are infertile, and many others.
People have also looked at ways to make the
mosquitoes resistant to the Plasmodium parasite. |
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I'm not completely convinced that adding large
numbers of Plasmodium-free mozzies will solve
the problem - I think you'd just get a population
bubble for one generation, with people being
bitten more often (though often by non-
Plasmodium-bearing mozzies), after which you'd
be back to square zero. |
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Could it be that a mixture of sterile-offspring and viable-offspring Plasmodium free might work? Or an alternation? |
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1. Provide volunteered blood meals to a mixture of such wild mosquitoes as one can lure out, and GM mozzies, with the aim of x-percent sterile offspring in the cycle. Do this in the low season so as to start the high season with reduced wild stocks. |
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2. As the season arrives, bring on the clean mozzies. Actually the aim is to spread their lavae, since it probably matters more to occupy the best bits of stagnant water than to get the best access to blood meals. The volunteers wouldn't have to feed wild mozzies at this phase. |
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3. It may be a good idea to have sterile-offspring phases during the season, just to bring down the numbers of mosquitoes on the wing. |
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I live in what used to be a malaria area, and not that far from what has once again become one. I get bitten quite often by Anopheles mosquitoes, but don't get malaria because the infected mosquitoes haven't reached here, yet. They can't be destroyed, but whatever makes an anti-malaria program successful results in a population of clean mosquitoes in the end. |
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I just don't much like the idea of DDT being used here again. |
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As for the bubble, if that bubble rolled forward like a wave, surely that would be enough to beat the problem? |
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Anyway, predictably, the really smart people are onto this already. |
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----
Half-way through Kill-em-all I'm a creeped out. Mosquitoes are part of the ecosystem. The larvae do all sorts of useful things for ... Life ... |
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Slightly beyond halfway, however, this gets into the podcast, however, so I'll just shut up about this. |
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What's needed is a nasty mosquito killing virus that
uses Plasmodium as a vector. In this way, the
mosquito would get a taste of its own medicine. The
mosquito would feel selective pressure to not die of
the virus. It has a couple of routes at this point: 1.
become resistant to the virus, 2. become resistant
to Plasmodium. |
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Humans will be around with our genetic wizardry to
make sure #1 isn't an option. |
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//Mosquitoes are part of the ecosystem. The
larvae do all sorts of useful things for ... Life ...// |
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Actually, certain mosquitoes have been
considered for deliberate extinction precisely
because they play no significant role in their
ecosystem, at least as far as we know. |
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Some mosquito species are pollinators, and some
are important food for aquatic animals and for
birds, but the most malaria-bearing species could
disappear with relatively minor impact and huge
benefits to people. |
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Given the number of good and innocent species
we've exterminated, I think the idea of
exterminating a handful of mosquito species
ought to be considered seriously. Nobody
mourned the smallpox virus. |
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I would bet five of my hard-earned dollars that all of these
people doing all this expensive research involving not
killing mosquitos grew up in places that don't have
mosquitos, like the Atacama Desert or the United Kingdom. |
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Nothing that eats mosquitos thrives exclusively upon them.
No other species rely upon them for survival. They are
unnecessary to this world (as are many other organisms).
People seem to think that eradicating an entire species will
irrevocably imbalance the ecosystem causing all pregnant
women to miscarry followed by the explosion of the Earth's
core. |
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If somebody halfbakes a genetically modified flamethrower
that incinerates both mosquitos and people who
are famous for no reason, I'll bun that. |
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Someone will eventually invent the perfect mosquito annihilator, and we can be sure that someone will launch it. It's really only a matter of time before mosquitoes are wiped out or demilitarized. |
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The thing about ecosystems is that, if mosquitoes are extincted, another insect will fill the gap. Maybe not perfectly and maybe not immediately, but almost certainly with less danger to people. |
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//all of these people doing all this expensive
research involving not killing mosquitos grew up in
places that don't have mosquitos, like the
Atacama Desert or the United Kingdom.// |
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Having met some of them, yes, that does seem to
be the case. However, since the areas worst
affected by mosquito-borne diseases tend to be
poor countries with bad infrastructure, that's not
surprising. |
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The people I've met (including the head of the
research group mentioned in [porpoise]'s link) are
not all wishy-washy about ecology. They are very
well aware that children die every few minutes
from mosquito-borne diseases, and seek only to
stop this by whatever is the most expedient
means. |
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//if mosquitoes are extincted, another insect will
fill the gap// It's not even a question of filling a
gap. Disease-carrying mosquitoes are often a
minority species anyway - the vast majority of
mosquitoes do no harm to humans and wouldn't
need to be eradicated. And those that are
eradicated are mainly filling the ecological niche
of sucking blood and vectoring disease. |
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Agonising about extincting a few mosquito species
is a bit like agonising over whether to use new
antibiotics to wipe out MRSA, or a new vaccine to
eradicate SARS. |
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// not all wishy-washy about ecology // |
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Maybe I overreacted. The particular slice of wilderness in
which my home lies is beset with people trying to 'save' it,
many of whom do not live here and cannot state in any
kind of detail what they are saving my home from (from
me, perhaps). Greeny-mee-mees get under my bonnet
sometimes. I'm sorry if anyone in here got hit by the
shrapnel. |
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Ah - maybe we're in agreement after all. As you
were. |
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In that case, please pass the flamethrower. |
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I like this: <link>. Proof that almost any problem can
be solved with lasers and/or imaging. I'd have
thought that listening for the annoying whine they
make would be better than waiting for them to cross
a fence. |
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Mosquitoes make wine? HEY, SHUT THAT
FLAMETHROWER OFF!! |
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The cheap way to tackle malaria is with DDT. It's crude and washes up all over the place. I'm inclined to believe the greenies on this option. |
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However, if DDT really is the answer, I would say that at least to begin with, it should be coupled with another part of the answer: Urbanisation. Having a 70% rural population just makes everything more difficult than it needs to be. Put all the effort into the cities, and leave the countryside to fend for itself (until such time as you conjure up limitless resources). |
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It's been a while since I did this, but things are probably much the same today: Drive through the city before dawn, here, and you'll see some sidewalks lined with sleeping men. It's a kind of open air dormitory. And one of the things that have occurred to me, seeing this, is "This is better than life in the countryside". They know what they're about. Most come from the beautiful green hills out there toward the mountains (etc), but even living on the street is better than the world the sentimental would choose. |
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So the logical choice seems to be: Make cities habitable, and fix what remains of the countryside when that's done. This is a bit of a distance from the malaria question, but IMHO it's the step that comes before the malaria programme. |
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I'm imagining that mosquito breeding would be a reasonably cheap alternative - especially if all you do is select for being disease-free. It may not be as effective as I'd imagined, but that's a different club of seals. |
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More expensive GM mosquitoes pay their way by adding to the store of knowledge. |
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--- Edit.--- It's just occurred to me that if you increased (safe) mosquito populations enough, you'd make people take more steps to prevent being bitten. (This wouldn't work on the shores of Lake Malawi, where there are already more mosquitos than oxygen molecules, but in most places it ought to have at least some effect.) |
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// Put all the effort into the cities, and leave the
countryside to fend for itself (until such time as you
conjure up limitless resources).
// |
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If we simple country folk weren't already putting most of
our effort into your precious cities in one way or another,
the countryside would be our limitless resource and we'd
fend for ourselves just fine. |
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Stick that up your urbanization! |
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Unless I am mistaken, no mosquito is born able to
spread plasmodium. |
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Therefore simply breeding disease free mosquitoes
does not protect people in any way. It's not like a
human can only be bitten once, so introducing
more mosquitoes actually increases the risk of
spread, by increasing the chance of infected, then
uninfected victims. |
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Apparently, however, there are efforts to
breed/engineer anopheles mosquitoes that cannot
transmit malaria, which is something different. |
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Certainly Plasmodium resistant (whether by GM, selection pressure, etc) would be preferable to mere disease-freeness. |
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The idea of the disease-free mosquito would be that in the larval stage it competes with the larvae of the wild mosquitoes. In season, it could very well be that to a reasonable approximation there are an infinite number of stagnant ponds for mosquitoes to live out most of their lives in, but if not, the extra mosquitoes would put pressure on the infected ones. |
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[Alterother], the countryside works fine for country folk supported by urban facilities like good quality GM seed, tractors, etc. When it comes to going back to self-sufficiency, while it's quite survivable, it's survival at a precarious 3rd World level of comfort and security. I've seen a little bit of actual self-sufficiency, and often it's ... insufficient ... (hence the continual backlog of urban housing here). Probably the cruelest thing our previous government did was to try to force people to live the life, living off the land. In contrast to the urban migration that has resulted from that lid being lifted, things are quieter in the country now. A positive is that places that used to be grazed bald, and were bleeding away now have some grass on them. |
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This idea simply wasn't making sense to me until the last two annotations. |
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As [MechE] implied, mosquitos become infected as adults; wild larvae, and newly emerged adults, are uninfected. There are some diseases that are transmitted to the offspring, but malaria in mosquitos is not one of them. |
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Ah ... All right, so my problem is that I "knew for sure" that malarial mosquitoes become infected at the larval stage, whereas in fact this only happens when they're adult. Clunk. Penny drops. |
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Well this means malaria is much more containable than I thought, unless there are other species that also act as hosts. |
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It also deepens the mystery of the Kruger Park malaria (in the absence of non-human hosts). |
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Consider this. AFAIK, Anopheles is inactive during the day, and gets most active just after sundown. Tourists come from malaria-free places, so there's no pool of malaria among them. And after dark, most of the staff have long since left to the staff villages, some distance away from the tourists. Add to this the probability that the Park has a very active in-house anti-malaria program, and I would think this would be enough to make the place malaria-free (even with lots of illegals taking their chances with the wildlife, and passing through.) |
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So how does it happen that every so often, Park regulars (like guides) pick up malaria there? |
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Just not to end off-topic, it would seem to me that the way to end malaria would be something like the all-urban approach, extended to wilder places. Hit the edges of malaria hard, focusing on eliminating the disease in human populations entirely, and roll a front forward from here. This approach would nicely fit in with South African national self-interest, actually. Push the malaria line back into Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and then offer to sort out their border regions. And then borders of the border regions, and so on. |
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It's quite scandalous that malaria still exists, given all the obstacles the parasite must overcome. |
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I think the problem with nets is that they require constant discipline over long periods. All it takes is one good party to make lots of adults careless; and children wouldn't be children if they weren't careless. |
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One thing that would be handy (this is pure wishful thinking) is a test that detects early stage malaria. You'd need the chemical trigger that starts the blood cells bursting, and some kind of AI to recognise parasite, compact enough to be put on a microcontroller. Big weakness here is that inhuman demand for constant discipline again. |
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The most affordable guaranteed successful measure might be to just remove the inhabitants and their livestock from the malaria-edges for a season. That should be long enough to break the life cycle. Roll people out and then back as the neighbours go. ... |
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But malaria can somehow enter a game reserve, so this might not even be enough. |
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//A more practical solution would be a live-virus
vaccine like that used for influenza.// |
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Yes, except that malaria isn't a virus. People have
been working on malaria vaccines for a very long
time. |
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I think the only way non-parasite infested mosquitoes would help is by covering every square millimeter of my skin with them, then the parasite-ridden ones wouldn't get a look in. Not a great option. |
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What happened to that idea to breed a gazillion boy mosquitoes, irradiate them sterile, then release onto the local girl mozzies? |
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//breed a gazillion boy mosquitoes, irradiate them
sterile, then release onto the local girl mozzies?//
They still do that - at least I think they do it for
mosquitoes, and/or tsetse |
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they fly down a concentration gradient of CO2, right?
Emit the right amount to attract them, when they
get too close they're sucked into a giant vacuum
cleaner, filter them out, desiccate them and burn
them for the required CO2 to attract the next lot. |
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[skoomph], no disrespect, but if you want to see
comfortable and secure self-sufficiency, come up to Maine.
I'm not saying we don't benefit from the technology and
products that come out of large population centers,
because we do, but we'd be alright without it. There
wouldn't be riots and pillaging, we'd all just have to come
together and work a little harder (which we do for a
cumulative few days/weeks every winter when the lights go
out). Meanwhile, city dwellers would be royally and truly
fucked without us. If you've ever eaten a McDonald's french
fry, read a glossy magazine, or wiped your ass with brand-
name toilet paper, you've used a Maine-made product
without even knowing or thinking about where it came
from. Those are just the examples I can think of off the top
of my head. When it goes all Mad Max, where will
Manhattanites grow their potatoes and harvest trees for
paper products? Central Park? |
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The world got by before the steam engine, and the only parts that would survive if its descendant technologies were lost would be those rural areas not too dependent on these, yes. |
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I suppose whether it's better for 3% or 30% to live on the land becomes a matter of opinion, but for higher rural percentages at current population levels there's a correlation with high levels of poverty. |
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But then, again, beyond absolutes like starvation, what constitutes poverty is also just a matter of opinion. There are wild parts of the world whose inhabitants probably laugh more minutes per day than do the undrugged rich. They're the wealthy ones by some measures - and teaching them discontent to turn them into assets that can do the dying in some or other fight somebody wants the rest of the world to fight is probably not the great favour some sincere folk might imagine. |
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I suppose I'd better stick to less accurate but more easily measurable standards of wealth. By those standards, rural Africa doesn't do very well. And much of rural Africa now knows this. So your balance may have slewed over to the excessively urban in the US, but here it's the other way round. The situations are too different to disagree about at present, but I suppose the warnings of those who've gone too far down this road are something to keep in mind for future reference. |
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The trouble is getting by in a self-sufficient way - certainly North of here - involves living short lives, i.a. |
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Only moral scruples and the small risk of kuru stand
between New Yorkers and their most abundant food
source. |
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// But then, again, beyond absolutes like
starvation, what constitutes poverty is also just a matter of
opinion. // |
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It does indeed. According to whatever federal bureau
decides these things, I'm practically destitute, yet my wife
and I live in great comfort. Why? Because we own all of our
vehicles, live in an apartment above our place of business,
have no outstanding debts, don't have any credit cards, and
reside in a region with low taxes and cost-of-living. I don't
even have a credit rating. We're doing just fine on about
fifteen grand a year, including modest recreational
spending. We're even putting away some savings. There are
folks elsewhere who make ten times our annual income and
yet they're drowning in debt. |
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Poverty is a matter of opinion, yes. Probably also a matter
of perspective. |
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Just invent the next bitcoin. BitBun is the obvious one. |
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Yes, definitely about money. ... Until the zombies arrive. |
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And maybe about value for money. Which is about value, really. Which is about values. Just little value-generating values, I mean. I mainly mean. Well the Capital V Values, too, I suppose, but not every day. |
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This is not also not a proper sentence, and yet somehow it's a lot worse than all the quasi-Russian sentence phrases up there that speak like we speak. |
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//"What if we eradicate species x ?" |
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Hmm, that would be a bit boring....viz the UK, where everything that wasn't cute or tasty has been eliminated. Serious lack of animal species in the UK compared to just about anywhere else. |
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Care to provide any evidence to back up your
incorrect statement? |
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I can look out my window to verify that statement. |
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It's rectangular, and set very high up on the wall. To see
out of it I must balance on the back of my commode and
leap across my cell, grab the iron bars that prevent my
escape, and pull myself up to ground level. Still, I get some
indirect sunshine reflected off the guard tower, and it's
nice to watch the sharpshooters fidget nervously as they
wait for me to make any sudden movements... |
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// Probably the cruelest thing our previous government did was to try to force people to live the life, living off the land. // |
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[skoomphemph] I curious what government you're referring to. |
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I'm somewhat interested in the conflict that I see between rural and urban society, and didn't realize that some country had tried to de-urbanize. |
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Right off the top of my head, Cambodia comes to mind.
"Live the simple life or we'll build a wall out of your skulls"
was the national motto a few decades ago. |
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I'm not advocating de-urbanization, or even speaking out
against cities in general. Some of my highest-tipping kennel
clientele are city folk (I think my rates are so low they feel
like they're stealing from me). I like my iPad and my Blu-
Ray player. I simply resent the implication that we wouldn't
be able to survive out here without the big metropolitan
areas supporting us, when in fact quite the opposite is
true. Our lifestyle would change, things would be winter-
difficult all year round, but we'd get by just fine. |
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[scad mientist], the South African government. The old regime had a policy of "influx control" aimed at the selective prevention of urbanisation. In fact it had a de-urbanisation angle, too, because they tried to make all black urban migrants temporary. The hardship this caused urban residents is notorious, so no need to expand on that; the harsher hardship it caused people living in beautiful places like the Tugela river valley is less notorious. |
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[Alterother], I'm all for rural living in the right circumstances, and even a measure of self-sufficiency. My gripe (to the extent that I have one) is the idea that this is the goal to aim for in Africa. It also seems a waste putting limited resources into things like supplying rural electricity, when this can be done so much cheaper in a city. Just in our peculiar circumstances, if we could somehow get our cities to function, everything else would follow pretty much by itself. |
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It's the very self-sufficiency of the old way of country living that means it can be left to survive if it can. |
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I suppose I universalise the points argued to make them of interest to more than just my own little parish? |
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Wow, I'm ashamed I missed this great discussion,
but to chime in late if I can: As for mosquitos,
(bs0u0155)'s first comment is right on the mark. I
think the best idea is to make the infected
mosquitoes die of the infection and we are set. As
I read more on bacteria, it may not be the
mosquitoes we need but maybe the bacteria they
carry. Pulling parts out of the Jenga-like circle of
life seems like a dangerous plan, but if we are to do
it, please do it with lasers and the bigger the
better. |
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As for wealth, I just heard a great description of
true wealth as "the point were all your needs and
future needs are secure". This is a better definition
than I have heard before as it shows how
(Alterother) may be wealthier than others who
have much more, because he could have created
security that others only dream of. It also explains
why so many lottery winners end up poor, as they
lack the knowledge to turn monetary wealth into
true security. |
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Oh and marked for tagline "(fill in the blank) or
we'll build a wall out of your skulls". |
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[skoomph], I'm certainly guilty of the same sin. |
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Coincidentally, I was at a synthetic biology
meeting today which was attended by the
mosquito man. |
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His company breeds male Aedes mosquitoes which
carry a gene which is lethal in the embryos. They
release large numbers of them in Dengue-ridden
areas. These males mate with the females, and
then all the offspring die. |
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It works extremely well, and has been used to
clear some areas almost completely. |
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Malaria is harder, because there are several
different Anopheles species which carry it (often
in the same area), but it's apparently a tractable
problem. |
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//As I read more on bacteria, it may not be the
mosquitoes we need but maybe the bacteria they
carry.// |
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if we were dealing with bacteria, malaria would
likely be a mild nuisance by now. You'd get some
symptoms, complain to a Dr, then chalk up another
victory for antibiotics. Annoyingly though, they're
Eukaryotas, tough ones. They even managed to
defeat Gin and Tonic, which previously had a 100%
record in improving everything ever. |
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Interesting, [Max] . From the sporadic reading I've done, it seems there were 3 main suspect species, only one of which had a strong preference for (possibly dependence on) human blood. There could well be more, but I think the number is finite and smallish / manageable, assuming there are no other problems. |
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If our government get serious about preventing the return of malaria they should offer to help / apply pressure forcing the acceptance of help, to Southern Mozambique - certainly when the right Anopheles killers become available, but preferably long before that. |
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And from there it would be just plain short-sighted not to roll this on ever Northward. ... Yebo. In my dreams, I fear... |
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... I had a friend once who spent a year of his youth living [8th's] dream. He was dropped off on Marion Island in the South Atlantic by the Antarctic research crowd's vessel, with little more than a .22 rifle and some hard liquor. Job? Well obviously to kill all the cats there. |
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I think they actually succeeded in driving the cats of Marion extinct, but there are plenty of islands waiting for solutions to their rat and cat problems. (I think the cats were possibly put on Marion to sort out the rats). This kind of biotech makes problems like that solvable. |
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I suppose this is really a new idea, but for rat islands (and maybe possums in New Zealand) the solution might be a two-pronged attack. Breed Superpossum, who's got lots of testosterone (for aggression) and produces terminator sperm. Let them reign. Flood possum country with ... |
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Hang on, it's just a furry version of the same idea, isn't it? |
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//From the sporadic reading I've done, it seems
there were 3 main suspect species// |
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There are many species which transmit malaria,
and my understanding (from today's presentation)
is that the main culprits are several species of
Anopheles, and that different regions have
different combinations of these species. In any
one region, there are often two or more species. |
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(For Dengue, transmission is only by one species -
Aedes aegyptii.) |
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Yes, the most detailed thing I read was specific to I think Dar es Salaam, and I've gone and generalised that. I must remind myself that I managed to come under the impression that larvae carry the parasite, so I suppose this is to be expected. |
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Nice to think that malaria might be on its last legs, though. |
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//Only moral scruples and the small risk of kuru stand
between New Yorkers and their most abundant food
source.// |
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Oh crap, better go get myself checked out… |
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// moral scruples ... New Yorkers // |
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Presumably those are the immigrants who haven't fully absorbed the social ethos yet .... |
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