The Shrine

We have the biotechnology but will we use it? Should we?

Would definitely make the outdoors more enjoyable. Especially places with a lot of lakes like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ontario, etc.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6006 ... id/600732/

It's a hard call. Mosquitoes are undeniably inimical to human life and always will be. Whether or not they keystone other species' food webs is something that I think needs to be explored, but with a pandemic on, there's not a lot of time for fucking around.

Okay, I know this is an emotional moment for all of us. I know that. But let's not make snap judgments, please. This is clearly an important species we're dealing with and I don't think that you or I, or *anybody*, has the right to arbitrarily exterminate them.

They are undeniably important.

Microcephaly is also undeniably deadly.



Zika is sexually transmitted and so far completely incurable. We could be in the opening stages of AIDS, version 2, in, say, 1983 - deaths from AIDS that year were comparable to new Zika infections in 2016.

AIDS was pretty much ignored until the 90's.

1.5 million human beings a year currently die of AIDS, and its eradication from the human population may now be impossible.

Another bit of a case study...humanity *almost* had malaria eradicated via aggressive DDT "warfare" against African mosquitoes in the 50's and 60's...then the DDT controversy began. Malaria resurged, more drug-resistant than before, and is back in the millions of cases per year. I'm not saying DDT is great stuff, mind you; but there are studies to be done there on the toxicity and health harm to the human species, and to Earth, of each choice.

That's another good case study - and therein lies the rub - mosquitoes are a key component of a great many human pandemics. Global parasitic species that eat and share our blood are bad for human beings on a non-trivial level. They will always spread some of the most virulent of human disease - bloodborne illnesses are for various reasons often particularly nasty, as I'm sure you know.

It's not ever going to be something epidemiologists can overlook. In fact I would not be surprised if a case may be made that mosquitoes have killed more human beings via epidemic than all of our otherspecies predators, combined.

We should not blindly rush to eradicate an entire species or tinker willy-nilly with gene bomb technology. I fully agree.

I just very much want people to realize that mosquitoes spread profound and unfathomable human suffering, death, no-joke economic losses, and other very real things - usually among the poorest of the world's poor, too.

While I tend to imagine genetic manipulation will eventually lead to some sort of super virus that will eradicate most of humanity, that's an eventuality that is far off. In the meantime, I'd be cool with no mosquitoes.

Let's exterminate earwigs too, while we are at it. Those things freak me out.

Ironically, it's beginning to look like it was the anti-mosquito toxin put into the water supply, pyriproxifen, that seems to be causing the microcephaly. They don't use it in Columbia, and none of the pregnant Zika infected women had children with the condition.