• albigu@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Mosquitoes are very common wherever I’ve lived, and I must say this sounds like a bad idea. Rather than investing in ways to reduce mosquito populations through well known social methods (garbage collection and regular inspections for instance), we’re now asked to put our faith in a brand new science-y technique with unforeseeable future ecological consequences under the promise that this time it’ll definitely make all mosquitoes extinct. Not only is this ecologically very short-sighted, but also tangential to the realities of the regions most affected by mosquitoes which are poor or rural areas with limited access to health services or waste disposal. I have a hard time believing that every mosquito from Europe to inner Brazil would be affected by this gene edit in such a short timeline, and I’d wait until such extinction is reproduced in some form in a closed lab setting before putting any hopes on it. But if the go-ahead is inevitable, I’d recommend starting by the Aedes agypti before going for all of them.